At first look, Instagram may appear like another internet trend – but in reality, it’s an excellent business tool that’s here to stay. While Instagram may be loaded with shirtless selfies, exotic holiday destinations and millions of cute puppies, it’s actually a decent platform to launch an item and develop a brand. You may even be able to see yourself how critical it can be for many small business, or have noticed how everyone seems to be racing to gather as many followers as possible. With all the hype about Instagram in business magazines and sites, the commotion is hard to overlook.
But is Instagram really useful for social media marketing success?
Yes. But only if you understand how to utilize Instagram effectively. When done right it can drive incredible amounts of traffic or clients to your business or site. In fact numerous businesses, viral sites, fitness models… have seen enormous achievement entirely from the successful marketing of their Instagram accounts. Demonstrating that if you’re able to play your cards right, and utilize Instagram effectively, you too can experience huge profitability from this social media stage.
To truly understand how Instagram can be so successful, let’s take a look through a potential customer/client’s eyes:
Let’s meet Ted. Ted likes watches and is a strong Instagram user. Now let’s say Ted actually isn’t happy with his current watch and has been thinking about purchasing a new one for a while now. Ted finds himself browsing through watches on Instagram using the hashtag #watch to gather some ideas about what he is looking for. That’s when he stumbles across an awesome photo of watch posted by a brand he has never heard of before. Intrigued, he follows through to the brands Instagram page. Here Ted finds a gallery of what he thinks are extremely cool watches. Each photo has hundreds of likes and the brand has thousands of followers. Of course Ted feels he can trust this brand. How could he not? Look at all the other users who seem to trust this brand – here the social proof of this particular Instagram page will substantially influences Ted’s decision to buy a watch from this Instagram page (which often only requires him to follow a link to the watch’s site mentioned on the Instagram profile).
So while Instagram certainly provided an outlet to reach Ted, this sale probably only occurred due to the popularity of this particular brands Instagram page.
If you don’t already know, this effect is called social proof (which can be defined as a psychological phenomenon of social influence, where people assume the actions of large amounts of other people represent the right behavior/action).
There is no wonder why there is so much talk about the importance of social proof on Instagram, and how its effects can be incredibly profitable if utilized correctly with social media marketing. So do yourself and your Instagram account a favor and check out our Instagram Services.