How Your Business Can Succeed on Instagram

what is instagram

Standing out from the crowd on Instagram is essential. We share our top tips to help your business to attract thousands of followers and build your brand to gain more customers on this very successful social media network.

Instagram is one of the biggest success stories of recent times and it’s one of the best apps for creating and sharing artistic photos. If you are not familiar with Instagram let us first explain what it is and how you can use it to promote your business.

Instagram….What is it?

what is instagram

 

If you like taking pictures on your smartphone then you are not alone. Most of us have smartphones these days, so that is good news when it comes to sharing your photos with the world. Instagram is a service that enables you to apply a digital filter or effect to photos taken on your mobile device, and upload them on the Internet.

Once uploaded, your photos can be shared among other Instagram users and other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.

The whole process of taking, editing and sharing photos is done through Instagram’s easy-to-use app, which is free from Apple’s App Store and on Android phones through Google Play.

Since it launched in 2010, Instagram’s popularity has rocketed to more than 300 million active users. If you have been active on Facebook during that time, you’ve probably seen photos posted by friends with Instagram’s image manipulating filters applied to them. It is no exaggeration to say Instagram is an app that everybody who uses social media is talking about.

Facebook saw Instagram’s potential and famously paid a cool $1 billion to acquire it in 2012. With the might of the king of social networks behind it, Instagram has added the ability to share videos. We can all expect many more features soon.

 

What Makes it So Popular?

instagram filters

The coolest thing about Instagram is its selection of filters. Take a photo, then add a filter to give it an instant retro chic feel. Although it is true that other apps offer many more filters than Instagram, but it is still head and shoulders ahead of them because of the quality of the filters, not the quantity.

Each of the filters transforms the feel of your photos, from low-fi retro effects to stunning black and white options. Each one of them has been carefully crafted to give striking results.

Instagram is exceptionally easy to use. What makes so cool is that you can just point your smartphone and shoot. In just a few taps you’ll have a stunning photo to share with the world.

 

What Can You Do With Instagram?

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a simple camera app. Taking a photo is just the beginning. Instagram is all about community, with a strong ethos of sharing your creations with your friends, both old and new. Snaps are posted to the Instagram website and optionally shared to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Tumblr at the same time. If your phone has GPS, you can add your current location to your snaps, and check in on Foursquare.

For excellent examples of how business use Instagram – and for inspiration, check out Instagram’s Blog for Business.

Photos can be given a hashtag, much like Twitter, which enables people to find photos about specific topics. There are also complimentary apps that expand Instagram’s functionality.  These include Instamap, which enables you to find photos based on their location or hashtag, and see the results on a map.