Instagram, which is owned by Facebook,
is one of the leading social
media networks around the world.
Over a billion people use
the app to share and connect with others.
Instagram was founded in 2010,
and when Facebook bought Instagram in 2012,
they were perfectly positioned to become the platform of
inspirational content while Facebook
centered around connecting with others.
Instagram's mission is to bring you
closer to the people and things you love.
Instagram does that by letting you share photos and
videos accompanied by a short text caption.
You can follow friends, family,
interesting people, brands,
and businesses you want to hear from.
You can also chat via direct message conversations.
Instagram is widely used around the world.
According to Hootsuite,
89 percent of the users are outside of the US.
The countries that followed
the US with the highest number of
Instagram users includes: Brazil with 70 million,
India with 69 million,
Indonesia with 59 million,
Russia with 40 million.
In terms of gender,
Instagram usage is pretty much evenly split with
52 percent women and
48 percent male users worldwide according to Hootsuite.
Instagram is especially popular with younger users.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in early 2019,
72 percent of teens from
the ages 13-17 said they use Instagram,
compared to 69 percent for
Snap chat and 51 percent for Facebook.
This is especially relevant for companies or
businesses looking to reach a younger audience.
An eMarketer survey conducted in 2019,
73 percent of US teens report that Instagram is
the best way for brands to reach
them about new products or promotions.
Instagram usage keeps growing.
Two months after Instagram launched in 2010,
the app had 1 million registered users
and that number grew to 10 million in the first year.
In June of 2018,
Instagram reported that they reached
1 billion monthly users worldwide,
and usage has kept growing since.
Let's explore how people use Instagram,
and what platform could mean for marketers.
To start using Instagram,
you simply download the app on
your phone and you create an account.
All you need to sign up is an email or a phone number.
Then you create your profile with
a picture and a short bio where you
introduce yourself and you are
ready to start sharing and connecting.
You can upload photos or
videos and share them with your community.
You can edit your photos and videos
directly from the app with the embedded filters.
You can add captions and
tag people and the location if you like.
Then your image is ready to share and
other users can see it in their feed.
They can then like,
comment and share the post.
With your privacy settings,
you can restrict who can follow you
and see the photos and videos you've shared.
You can also share images and
videos to your Instagram story.
Stories appear at the top of the feed and the content
you share in your story disappears after 24 hours.
Unlike posts shared in the feed,
Instagram stories make use of the full mobile experience.
You can add filters, stickers,
and other fun interactive elements
to create an immersive experience.
If you want to share longer videos
than 60 seconds on Instagram,
you can use IGTV.
You can access IGTV through
its separate app or from it in Instagram.
If you use the separate app,
you will see videos from the accounts you follow.
IGTV videos are shown in
vertical format as it is a mobile first application.
Live, is a way you can share a live video on Instagram.
When you go live on Instagram,
you can connect with your followers in real-time.
People can tap your profile picture from
their feed or go to your profile to join your live video.
Once people are viewing your live video,
they can leave comments,
like, donate to your cause and share it.
After you end your live video,
you can add it to your IGTV where people can watch
longer and full screen videos on your profile.
Here we see an Instagram feed which consists
of photos and videos from people,
businesses and hashtags you follow.
When you go to your Instagram profile
or click on the home button,
you will see your feed.
If you just signed up for Instagram,
your feed will be pretty empty.
As you explore the app,
you can add friends,
family and businesses as well
as other people you're passionate about.
To find the accounts you want to follow on Instagram,
you can search by specific topics or hashtags,
location and account names.
When you post on Instagram,
you can accompany your posts with
texts including a hashtag.
Adding a hashtag categorizes your post as
related to the topic that follows the hashtag.
For instance, if I post
this funny cat picture and I add
the hashtag, #funnycats.
This picture may come up in searches for funny cats.
Another way to discover
accounts to follow is through explore.
Explore resurfaces trends as they emerge in real-time.
Connecting you to events and
conversations both near you and around the globe.
Explore will also update
depending on your activity on Instagram.
Posts are selected automatically based on things
like the people you follow or the posts you like.
Now that you understand a little
better at who's using Instagram,
let's dive a bit deeper into how
businesses can use Instagram for their marketing.
People on Instagram want to dive deeper
into their interests and discover new ones,
they're eager to learn more,
connect with the community and hear from
the people and businesses that inspire them.
In fact, in a survey
commissioned by Facebook in November 2018,
83 percent of people surveyed said that
they discover new products and services in Instagram.
In addition to being a discovery Engine for brands,
Instagram can also drive sales and advocacy.
Eighty-one percent of people surveyed said that they
researched products or services on Instagram,
and 80 percent use Instagram to
decide whether to buy a product or service.
People discover products and services on
Instagram while they browse their feed.
Businesses can share photos and videos on Instagram
and thus generate awareness
and interests for their products.
By sharing photos and videos,
showing the behind the scenes of a business,
or announcing new products or
services or sharing customer testimonials,
businesses can tell their story on Instagram.
Instagram's visual nature allows
businesses to be creative and showcase their personality.
Instagram stories offers a unique way
of sharing photos and videos,
and another great opportunity for businesses to share
more about their products or
services with the Instagram community.
The interactive features and Instagram stories
allow the community to directly engage with the business.
By using stickers, businesses
can encourage people to engage with them directly,
like prompt them for questions,
poll them on their preferences,
and let them send messages.
Instagram also has features
that are accessible only to business accounts,
but the business account,
you can include more information about
your business and encouraged people to get in touch,
you can add a link to your businesses website and
include your businesses phone number,
location, and email.
From there, you can start accessing
features that can help keep customers informed,
manage direct messages more easily,
learn how people interact with
your content and be discovered by more people.
Let's look at an example.
Here is the Instagram account of Classy
Claws a nail salon in Vancouver.
They specialize in funky nails and they use
their Instagram account to
showcase the nails they've been working on,
they give a behind the scenes look of
their business while also celebrating their employees.
They let people book appointments
and message the salon through the app,
let's listen to what Bee Lalli,
owner of the salon has to say about that.
"One of the things that's helped me build
the brand that I built is really the ability in
responding back to your direct messages on
Instagram builds such a strong community.
The people that you respond to
start messaging you all the time
and the amount of people that relate to
my brand come through to my slide.
Marketing myself through Instagram
helped my business evolve from
a table in the corner of my kitchen
to Studio in Vancouver.
Without the Instagram I would not have gained attraction,
gained the clientele, gained
the respect around the brand that I built."
Here's another example, this time a much
bigger company, restaurant chain, Chipotle.
They use their Instagram account to share
a mix of content related to
their food with a funny twist.
Many of the posts relate to
their customers law for their burritos and taco plates.
Posts includes news about
promotions like disposed on national burrito day,
and some posts encouraged people to tag
a friend for a chance to have
a free meal delivered to that friend.
Chipotle also used Instagram live during the lock
down for a guacamole
making class with their executive chef.
When you have a business account on Instagram,
you can also start advertising.
Advertising on Instagram makes it possible to reach
audiences who might otherwise not see your posts.
If you have a business account,
you will see a promote button appear on
your posts to turn your posts into an ads.
When you promote a post,
it will appear as a sponsored post in
other people's Instagram stories or feed.
In addition to creating ads on Instagram,
you could also use Facebook tools to
create ads that appear on Instagram.
For instance, you can create
ad campaigns in ads managers,
ads managers provides comprehensive tools to
create ads on Facebook and on Instagram.
When businesses use ads manager,
they get access to a large suite of creative options and
opportunities to select the audience
to reach better advertising message.
It also comes with
rich insights and optimization opportunities.
We'll learn all about that later in this program.
Let's look at an example of
an ad campaign on Instagram by Clif Bar,
focused on generating awareness for
the new Clif Nut Butter
filled and Fruit Smoothie Filled Products.
Clif Bar used a series of 15-second ads in
Instagram stories with
a message high-end taste appeal like this one.
The team showed these ads to people whose interests
aligned with the characteristics of its core customers,
health-conscious, active, and adventure seeking.
The campaign resulted in
significant lift in brand awareness and purchase intent.
The visual nature of the Instagram platform and its users
interest in discovery makes Instagram
a very attractive platform for marketers.
In this program, we will explore in a lot more depth
how Instagram can feature in your social media marketing.
Now, let's first look at
another large but very
different social media platform, LinkedIn.