Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms today. Since it is a visual platform where only images can be uploaded, not a blog post or text like twitter, it is totally a visual social media platform.
Because of this feature, Insta has reached the peak of its popularity with 1 Billion monthly active users and 500 million daily users. It is the most engaged social network after Facebook.
Since it is owned by Facebook, you can share your Instagram feed to facebook and vice versa.
From a business point of view also it is one of the profitable platforms with 83% of users discover new products on Instagram. I think it’s an amazing opportunity for businesses. ,
If you see the users on Instagram, you will notice that it is mostly above 50 people, specifically under the age of 35(25-34 age group) and the second-largest age group on Instagram is 18 to 24.
Is it worth being on Instagram? 
Now you must be thinking if Instagram is the right social media platform for your business.
First of all, if you want to promote your business on Instagram, it is important to find out if your niche audience is on Instagram. if yes then it is a great opportunity to promote your brand and you on Instagram.
If your audience is not on Instagram, you need to find out where your audience hangs out, is it on Facebook, Pinterest or any other social media platform.
Like suppose your product is related to senior people or above 50 years of age group, you will find a very mediocre response from the Instagram audience, as it is not your targeted audience.
if your niche is related to kids, growing up children, their problems, their college-related problems or a group of young people who are searching for a job or business opportunity, Instagram can really help you, as most of the young people from the age group of 25 to 34 hang around ion Instagram.
It is then easy to tap these people and provide them with great solutions is a great opportunity for you to build your own brand.
But it is also important to not always promote your blog post by throwing links every now and then. You need to humanize your brand with sharing with them your personal photos on Instagram. people can be related to you and create a bond between you. Most importantly you are creating a brand for yourself, which you can then diverse on other social media platforms also.
one of the important features of Instagram is that it is constantly changing and making amendments in its algorithm, it’s a good and not so good characteristic of Instagram. constant changes can be very difficult to handle.
Some of the changes have very popular on Instagram like the hashtag, in fact, most of the impressions are acquired through hashtags. You can get this data by tapping the view insights and you will get all the data.
If you are not getting impressions on the hashtag, you might be using the wrong hashtags.
Removing follower is another important feature of Instagram, instead of using any third-party app for removing bot or fake followers on Instagram, you can do it manually by going to followers list and removing the ghost account.
Business Account on Instagram
Instagram offers you a free business account to brands which want their businesses recognized as a business.
Business account many useful features compare to a personal account like Instagram analytics, ad targetting and contact me button.
More than 15 million people using an Instagram business account to reach their audience and provide them useful services on Instagram.
As a marketer, you should know that great visuals play a huge role in the success of a post. It has started in 2010 and since then people are using business account in a hope that it will reach its potential customer with the help of inst analytics and great visuals.
Benefits of Business account of Instagram
It’s a visual platforms
As I mentioned earlier also, Instagram is a basic visual platform where images and graphics play a major role. If you keep a strategy for your business account and work on it with great visuals and images, the audience will take notice of your product and services.
Instagram insights
Instagram has its own analytics, which helps to recognize the engagement on your posts. With the help of these Instagram insights, you will get all the important data like which the most popular post, how many impressions and most engagement, on which time your audience is on Instagram and so on.
This is a really helpful data if you are promoting a product and service on Instagram. Once you collect all the data needed about your audience it will be more easy for you to promote the related products to your audiences.
Contact button
It is one of the features which is more like a facebook contact button. but it’s very useful for your audience, your audience can contact you through email, phone or your address you need to fill in.
Depending upon your audience you can add any of these calls to action to your Instagram profile, which can easily help your audience to contact you.
Instagram Ads for Business
Facebook owns Instagram, so it is obvious that Facebook is using its robust technology of creating ads for businesses.
If you are familiar with facebook ads, it is the same feature you can easily target your audience and make conversion through these ads. With Instagram ads you can set up the run and track ad campaigns.
Links on Instagram Stories
Instagram allows you to add clickable links if you are fan following is big enough, and if you have more than 10,000 followers you can add links to your posts.
It is another good reason to expand your followers on social media. Before, this feature was only available to Instagram verified accounts.
How to create an Instagram business account
It is very easy to create a business account for Instagram. first, download the Instagram app on your phone.
Though you can use Instagram on desktop or laptop, for using its all features you need to download it to your smartphone.
Create a non-business account
Select your username and password
find accounts to follow or skip this step
upload a profile picture to your account
switch your account to business account through profile>settings
The best part of the business account on Instagram is you can add your business address and website to your profile. so whenever people come across your post, they will see your website and thus help to create awareness about you and your profile.
Once you set the Instagram profile, create useful content by clicking on the plus sign sited on the bottom of your screen. You can add images from different sources, once you get familiar with how to take pictures and edit them you can now start exploring Instagram stories.
Setting up the Instagram business page is easy, but it is important to keep engaging with your audience with great images and visuals.
SEO Benefits of Instagram
Is it possible to get SEO benefits from your Instagram account? Yes definitely you will get SEO benefits if you are working as a local business, you can promote your business name while setting up your profile. You can use your local area name in your handle, and it will easily help you to get found.
Also, there is a feature of Alt TAg, where you can add a tag or keyword when you upload an image.
All these simple tricks definitely help to SEO your Instagram posts.
Final thoughts:
Instagram offers great opportunity to build your business account which offers you great details on your account.
Instagram also offers you its own analytics, much like Google Analytics, if we leverage this data correctly, it can help a lot to reach out to your target audience easily.
Instagram ads is another feature where you can reach to a much larger audience by promoting. Pick one of the most popular boosts and promote it through Instagram ads, which will help you to get better conversion.
Instagram allows you to have more than one account, so you can keep your personal and business account separately.
Since Instagram basically is a mobile app, it is very easy to upload the images on a go. With a huge follower of 1 billion monthly active users, and 500 million daily, it’s a great opportunity for businesses.
Hashtags and emojis play a huge role to find out a particular Instagram handle and to see the impressions of a particular post.
Instagram influencers use business account very seriously and use it to expand their brand and increase their followers.
In many ways, Instagram acts as a facebook extension, particularly emphasizing on a visual element for business.
Automated posting on Instagram is another topic which I want to share your experiences with us. Though it is not officially allowed on Instagram, many successful Instagram users use it.
It is always on a safer side not to use these automated tools, as it is always risky that your account may get banned.
Instagram ads is another tool which helps you to promote your business on Instagram. Choose one of your popular posts to promote it through Instagram ads. If you are familiar with Facebook ads, it works almost the same. Since Facebook owns Instagram, it uses the same technology to promote the adds.
Hey Friens, some still prefer to have a personal account over a business account, which one do you prefer? What strategy you follow to increase your engagement with your readers.