More than 25 million companies worldwide are already using Instagram for business, and more than 200 million users at least one business profile every day.
As Facebook refocuses on connecting people with content from family and friends, Instagram has become the “new home for brands” where engagement is high, followers are brand-loyal, and real business goals can be achieved.
Here’s everything you know about how to use Instagram for business—whether you’re just getting started or you simply need to refine your existing strategy.
This four-part bite-size series explains how to use instagram for business. How to become an influencer, how to spot a fake and how brands should use influencers and instagram itself.
Before starting, you need to understand why it is important to use Instagram for business…
Instagram has quickly grown into a massive social network with both a mobile and web presence. It shows no signs of slowing down, yet only 28% of Instagram marketers are using it for business.
- 60 millions photos are uploaded to Instagram every day.
- 1,6 billion likes happen per day on Instagram.
- 50 million users have signed up to Instagram in the last 6 months.
- 57% of users access the site every day.
- Engagement rates on Instagram are 15 times higher than Facebook and 20 higher than Twitter.
- The most popular hashtag on Instagram is #love.
- Today, 86% of top brands have an Instagram account that’s up from 71% from last year.
- 73% of brands post at least one photo or video per week on Instagram.
- Brands on Instagram with over 100K followers have grow by 163% in 3 years
- Engagement with brand post on Instagram are growing at a greater rate than brands are adopting the network.
The power of visual content is becoming increasingly important for marketers. Studies show that the visual appeal matters in 93% of cases when people go to make a purchase. Visual content is not only easier and faster for the human brain to process, it is a great way to generate more attention and leads. Photos can make or break your marketing strategy and should be considered highly important.
- Visual data is processed 60 000 times faster by the brain than text.
- 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text.
- 65% of your audience are visual learners.
- On Facebook, photos perform best for likes, comments and shares as compared to text, video, and links.
Part One: Instagram Influencers
Influencers aren’t always who you think they are. Here, I explain what is an influencer from a digital point of view.
An influencer is a person who in a few months or years has built a community around a center of interest, a subject, a cause or any other area offering attraction which is often a passion and a real motivation to invest in a universe. Usually, someone is considered an influencer when they have ay least 10 000 followers.
Whether in the field of fashion, beauty, travel or hi-tech, Instagram can answer these themes if you have ideas and creativity. Bear in mind, Instagram needs pictures so the subject has to be aesthetically represented – ‘instagrammable’ one might say.
Having a few tens of thousands of subscribers can sometimes be a sufficient criterion to claim to be influencer on Instagram. Let’s see some examples of niches and which gender is dominant:
Food: Mostly women
Travel: Men and Women
Fashion: Mostly women
Makeup: Women, but Men can have a makeup page !
Gaming: Men
Lifestyle: Men and Women
At this point, influencers start working with brands even if they have eight thousand of followers, it is called partnerships. Every influencer has to do partnerships or collaborations to develop his account and also get trusted by his followers and brands.
Usually, a collaboration, or partnership, is unpaid if you don’t have at least thirty thousand of followers. Indeed, you will only have free products (watches, jewelry, tea, detox products, …) in exchange of a picture on your instagram account. Sometimes you could get paid if your followers buy the brand’s products with your promo code that the brand gave you to share.
So you are starting to get paid when you account goes bigger and bigger, influencers who has got millions of followers can get paid 25 000 euros for a picture!
At our scale as micro influencers, you can get paid between 100 and 500 euros per sponsored post.
Before a company can start planning a campaign, they should also consider the budget and make plans accordingly. While influencer marketing isn’t always expensive, proper planning and budgeting can help avoid unnecessary costs.
It’s crucial to understand that the cost of working with influencers will vary according to the influencer’s follower size and the industry you’re in.
Those will fewer than 2,000 followers may charge around 124 euros per Instagram post. The price may increase to 258 euros per Instagram post for influencers with 75,000 to 100,000 followers. And if an influencer has more than a million followers, they may charge over 1,400 euros for a single Instagram post.
The cost of working with influencers on Instagram will also vary according to the sector in which the influencer specializes. The Influence.co report found that travel influencers charge the highest, taking an average of 220 euros for each sponsored post. Next come entertainment influencers, followed by home and lifestyle influencers charging 209 euros and 204 euros per post respectively.
Once companies understand all of these costs, you will have a better idea how much they might need to spend on your campaign. And depending on the budget, they can decide how many influencers to work with and how much they can afford to spend on each of them.
