You may think that Instagram is only for millennials obsessed with photographing themselves or their lunch but really it is a whole new area of marketing and business opportunities to explore. Instagram business accounts help you reach new clients and companies that you wouldn’t be able to on other social media. It is an area of the market often overlooked due to its focus on an image but now is the time to utilize Instagram for your business and grow a profile in a fairly untapped area.

Why use Instagram?
Instagram boasts 1 billion+ active accounts each month with 80% of these following a business account. Instagram allows you to tell your story and highlight your business visually, crafting a new interest in what you do. Graphics and quotes are an easy way to engage with users and using hashtags help you to reach people who don’t follow you yet. The news feed algorithm favours active business accounts and suggests similar accounts for you to follow or see how they use the platform.

Business Profile:
The analytics feature alone is enough to entice businesses to the platform as it gives you insights into your follower base, interactions, peak posting times and paid advertising options. You can boost a post to reach more than just your followers and find new clients based on shared likes or similar accounts followed. Approximately 2 in 3 profile views are from non-followers, proving the reach the business profile gives you. A business profile is completely free and all paid advertising is optional though encouraged to get the most out of the platform.

Instagram Advertising:
One of the benefits of Instagram advertising is that it seamlessly blends into a news feed. Many ads on social media appear very out of place and obvious that they are an ad, Instagram formats advertisements like a regular Instagram post and targets it to people similar to your audience. The difference between a regular post and a paid promotion is that on paid options there is a direct link to your business profile, website or shop that gets highlighted to alert users that they are looking at an ad. It also has analytic options for regular users so they can see why the ads are targeted to them.