The Visual Business: Instagram Insights and Curation Tools

According to RuthAnn Wiesner, “if content is king, then Instagram is its own castle”. As to why Instagram matters that much for business, here is a list of reasons compiled by Socialbakers:

• 300million monthly active users (MAU)
• 75million daily active users (DAU)
• Top 25 Instagram brand profiles receive 110 times more engagement than on Twitter
• Over 1Billion Likes Daily
• 3,600 new photos shared every minute everyday

Instagram Insights for Business
The visual platform itself is proving to be a good marketing tool for marketers and brands alike. As of August 2016, Instagram announced its release of Stories, aiming to take a swipe at Snapchat´s successful video messaging tool. In short, a platform that features plenty of opportunities for small and medium-sized business and just about any brand looking for a return on investment for their efforts.

Instagram makes sense to adopt as part of your social media outreach. Why? Consumers are 58 times more likely to engage with branded content on Instagram compared to Facebook and 120 times more likely compared to Twitter.

Getting Your “Instagram” Stories for Your Business

To get it up and running you need an “Instagram” business account. You can create one from scratch or upgrade your personal one. To upgrade, click the turn wheel icon in the upper right section of your profile and hit “switch”. Warning: personal accounts can’t benefit from Stories at the moment.

Benefits of Instagram Stories
Is there anything else besides the fresh social marketing perspective? You bet!

Stories allows your business account to be easily discovered by followers and non-followers. You also get access to Analytics, which gives a better insight to what works and what converts across your visual strategy.

Instagram Tips and Tricks
It’s all about creating engagement and a sense of community with your followers. To do that, you need to transform your Instagram business channel into a visual storyteller. Here is what you can consider:
a) Show personality
b) Less is more: keep it 80% non-business and just 20% products/services
c) Have call to action elements
d) Follow back and engage
e) Comment on other users’ photos
f) Tag customers for contests and celebrations
g) Use hashtags
h) Say thank you
i) Don’t over-abuse the Direct Messaging options 

The Greatness of Community
Additionally, photograph events and capture video with customers interacting with your products and services. Do not forget call to action elements such as life hacks, product reviews or suggestions for upcoming product launches, promotions and giveaways. Implicate your community members!

Getting Help from the Popular Kids
Follow back, engage and comment with #influencers of Instagram. Tagging users is a great conversation starter, however don’t overuse it.

There is no limit now for using hashtags, but don’t overdo it either, as it sends out the wrong message. Alas, keep the hashtags relevant. Don’t use only the hashtags that get massive clicks, but also the ones that get less, but more targeted traffic.

Harnessing the Power of Instagram Photos
Instagram is all about the “instant” visual: image, video and now story. How you choose to tell your story is more relevant than you think. This blog post from Yotpo showcases the uniqueness of “insta” stories:

1. Instagram photos convert better than other types of visual content
2. Instagram pics also convert because customer trust photos from previous customers
3. Using Instagram has a positive effect on increasing e-comm conversion and engagement
4. Instagram photos can be used in marketing materials
5. Using Instagram photos allows you to repurpose valuable content, integrate user-generated content
   Additional Practices and Curation Tools

To get a grasp of how existing businesses are succeeding, first check the Business Instagram page. Proceed by giving a chance to either of these curation tools to help you filter through stories, or to create better, more appealing stories for your Instagram business.

VSCO
This is an Android and iOS photo-editing mobile app with high quality filters, with a free download button. You can use this part social network and photo editing platform to really set yourself apart from the rest.

Snapseed
Available on both iOS and Android OS, this is more than just your average photo editing mobile app. You can fine-tune photos by applying effects with a brush instead of filtering the entire image. Extra: save groups of filters as a template after the initial use, and reuse them Shakira style, “whenever, wherever”.

Boomerang
This is an in-house Instagram goody, which allows you to create 1-second videos with no audio. Essentially super short GIFS that loop back and forth. Vinederful, in a way.
Before You Go…

Bottom line: Instagram is more than just a photo-editing & social sharing tool, proving that businesses can convert and strategize through the power of visual. One perfect example of success on Instagram is National Geographic. Thanks to a large network of photographers their images never fail to tell a great story.