Instagram has come a long way since its launch in the year 2010. In the beginning, it seemed like a simple photo-sharing platform, but over the years it has transformed into a marketing channel. Regular feature updates have made Instagram a valuable marketing platform to promote brands and products. It is a particularly effective platform for e-commerce companies because of its format. Businesses can build a commanding visual presence on Instagram with the help of photos, videos and stories.

Most people who use it are also known to be avid online shoppers. If you see private Instagram profiles, you may notice many of the users get fascinated by the advertisements and tend to buy products. Moreover, more than 75% of the users have bought at least one of the products advertised on the social network platform at least once. Instagram also has the highest engagement rate as compared to other social media platforms. Given below are some Instagram stats and a few Instagram marketing tips that can help you if you want people to recognize your brand and drive traffic to your website.

Important Instagram Stats

1. Instagram is the 6th most popular social media platform with more than 1 billion users. The population of the world is almost 8 billion, so it is possible to reach almost 12.5 % of the world’s population using this social media platform.
2. Almost 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day and 500 million people use Instagram stories everyday.
3. Almost 71% of the users are under the age of 35.
4. Instagram users approximately spend half an hour per day using the social network.
5. Almost 70% of the companies are already using Instagram ads to promote their products.
6. The average Instagram posts contain 10.7 hashtags since the use of hashtags on Instagram has increased phenomenally since 2018.
7. 50% of Instagram users follow at least one business.
8. Instagram helps almost 80% of the users decide whether to buy a product or not.
9. This massive social media platform has been downloaded almost 3.8 billion times. Even though all the people downloading the app don’t use it, downloads can support marketing strategies.
10. Almost three-quarters of the most used Instagram hashtags are branded.
11. 180 million Indians and 170 million Americans use Instagram.
12. An advertising reach of 928 million and advertising revenue of $9.45 billion has made Instagram a very lucrative platform for businesses.
13. Instagram is also used for influencer marketing by 67% of the businesses.

With such impressive statistics, it is no wonder that Instagram is hugely popular with companies trying to promote their brands.

Instagram Marketing Tips

1. It is possible to add links to Instagram stories to drive traffic to your site since more than 500 million people use Instagram stories every day.
2. It is also possible to keep an eye on your competition using an Instagram scraper since nearly 70% of the companies are using Instagram ads to promote their products.
3. It is important to make the posts entertaining by talking about trending topics and asking interesting questions. It is also a good idea to hold contests to make it more interesting for the users.
4. Posting at the right time is also equally important since Instagram shows the latest posts at the top.
5. Giving rewards like gift cards and free trials in exchange for user engagement is a great way of getting the users interested in your post.
6. It is also important to understand your audience by using Instagram insights. You can know the number of times the link in your business profile was clicked. It is also possible to know how many unique accounts viewed a piece of content. You can also know how many times your post was saved and how often your video content was viewed. You can use an online video editor to create great video content.
7. It is important to use relevant hashtags to categorize images and video content so that people can easily find your content. It is a good practice to avoid overused hashtags and not spam.
8. Call-to-action is designed to elicit an immediate response from the person reading it. It is a targeted marketing strategy to encourage your users to take action. You can encourage your users to like or comment on your post to increase engagement.

Notable Features of Instagram

1. Instagram stories link stickers are a very valuable feature for small businesses since they can directly link to their product pages and attract more consumers and thereby sell more.
2. Users can also collaborate on posts and reels and content creators can send invites to other users and create feed posts mutually.
3. Instagram allows users to upload photos and short videos via desktop. However, users cannot share stories or reels via desktop.
4. Instagram’s new data analytics tool gives better insight to marketers about their followers. The new data analytics tool is one of the notable features of Instagram.
5. Map search feature also allows users to find the location of various businesses within the Instagram app.
6. Meta has rolled out new 3D avatars which are good visual representations of the users’ identity. These avatars can be created in the Instagram app.
7. The option to go live on Instagram is also available. With the help of live video, users can communicate with their followers and engage them with comments and reactions. Engagement numbers can also be viewed for a video. Comments can be pinned to the top of the stories in video format.
8. Subscriptions allow 3 types of content that users can subscribe to. They are subscriber live, subscriber stories and subscriber badges. Subscribers have to pay a monthly amount for accessing the exclusive content of the creators. Creators may soon be able to export their subscribers to other platforms although currently this facility is unavailable.
9. Instagram has also used link stickers so that you can add links to all the Instagram stories. It is no longer mandatory to have more than 10,000 followers to add links to your stories.
10. In case you upload multiple photos, it is possible to delete a specific photo and not the entire post.
11. Creators can earn more money from their followers by buying badges during a live video. The viewers can buy badges in increments of $0.99, $1.99 and $4.99.

Conclusion

From the aforementioned Instagram stats, Instagram marketing tips and Notable features of Instagram it is evident that Instagram is truly a wonderful social networking platform for businesses to promote their products and drive traffic to their website.