Social media marketing is a highly cost-effective, attractive way for small businesses to reach new audiences and stay connected to their existing customer base. Social media has grown in popularity in the last 10 years, as users begin to realize the connective powers of the Internet. Today, we’ll look at Instagram and see how small businesses can use it in a social media marketing plan.
Social media marketing gets a 2-for-1
If you have an active social media marketing plan, you may have already selected four or five social media platforms on which to work. If you haven’t considered Instagram, you should. Instagram is a service that enables users to share photos and record short videos of up to 15 seconds. Although it signed on its first users in 2010, Instagram now has a user base of more than 100 million users worldwide. It was acquired by Facebook in 2012.
It’s not really a duplicate service of Facebook, though. One of Instagram’s great features is the ability to share Instagram content with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. The ability to share content with other social media sites reduces the amount of work for the poster and potentially increases the size of the audience, all at the click of a button. So how can you use Instagram as part of your social media marketing plan?
Share photos.
If you have a business that sells products, you can quickly make an Instagram catalog of items that you can share with your interested user base. When you receive a new item, or want to promote a particular product, Instagram is a great, quick way to let your community know what’s new. You can even use Instagram to edit photos and make quick corrections to the images, for a more professional look.
If you have a service-based business, you can still use Instagram to share photos of you and your team in action. You can also use it as a quick way to introduce key staff personnel to your customer base. It’s a great way to build and maintain the customer relationships you already enjoy.
Share videos.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? With 15 seconds worth of video, you can create brief professional commercials, motion graphics videos and invitations to visit your website or your business to take advantage of special deals. You can also archive these videos on your site.
Share content with other social media sites.
With Instagram’s ability to share photos and videos with other social media websites, you can quickly get your content out to three or four different potential audience streams using just one social media marketing service. This is an exceptionally efficient way to make the most of your social media marketing time, and to extend your reach to several different potential audiences. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have a lot of “cross-over” users, but they each have their own fair share of users you can reach only on one of those services. It’s a great way to ensure that you get the most out of your social media marketing buck.
If you would like more information about social media marketing, and how you can put a social media marketing plan into action for your business, please email our creative director, Dave Ramsell or call Dave at (330) 243-0651 for a consultation.
Photo Credit: Instagram
