While it’s hard to remember life before Instagram (nor do we want to), the pop culture phenomenon turns 10 years old today. That’s right, we’ve been doin’ it for the ‘Gram for an entire decade.
Instagram didn’t become one of the most habit-forming apps in history by accident. It uses behavior design methods to understand the audience’s motivation, create easy actions and constantly prompt them to influence behavior.
This is the same approach we take at Off Madison Ave when developing strategies for our clients. In honor of this milestone anniversary, we’re sharing what we love most about Instagram as social media marketers and ways you can implement these tactics in your own social strategy.
Community Building
At its core, social media is about community and Instagram does this extraordinarily well. From travel inspiration to makeup tutorials, there’s a hashtag for that — and more importantly, behind that hashtag is an entire community of people for your brand to reach.
Creating a strong and meaningful community is a two-way street. There are so many niches on Instagram, devoting the time to interacting with the people in yours will help you boost engagement and build a solid foundation on the platform.
Creative Storytelling
As the name implies, Instagram Stories are great for storytelling. Creativity soars on Stories — ensure you have a clear beginning, middle and end by storyboarding before posting. Don’t commit the social sin of using auto-generated backgrounds, design aesthetic and cohesive Story frames to keep your audience engaged.
For long-form videos, turn to IGTV to house your highest-quality content. Last year’s IGTV series integration primed episodic content to thrive and added another layer to storytelling on Instagram. With this, you can tell serialized stories and categorize them by seasons, themes, etc.
Social Shopping
Raise your hand if your wallet has been personally victimized by shopping on Instagram. ✋ It’s a powerful selling tool with 70 percent of shopping enthusiasts turning to the platform to discover products. Now that Instagram Checkout is available to all U.S. businesses, you can even offer customers a seamless experience by letting them buy from you without ever leaving the app.
Increasing Influence
Love it or hate it, influencers rule Instagram. The good news is you can leverage this to organically foster relationships, build brand ambassadors and reach new target audiences. Whether you’re partnering with a local influencer or the world’s most famous doll, incorporating influencers into your social strategy helps move the KPI needle forward.
Reel Competition
Reels are currently Instagram’s golden child. Launched in August to rival TikTok, the quick videos are aiming to replicate the type of content that flourishes there.
Instagram is promoting Reels with the same vigor a la IGTV in 2018, even doubling the video length to 30 seconds just last week. Now is the time to take advantage of this new feature while Instagram’s ever-elusive algorithm is rewarding Reels content, allowing for (free) increased exposure as it tries to compete with TikTok.
Happy birthday, Instagram! 🥳 I know we aren’t supposed to pick a favorite child, but you’re mine (sorry, TikTok). Thanks for capturing all of our memories, one perfectly filtered moment at a time. We can’t wait to see how you continue to change the social media marketing landscape in this next decade.
Is your business in need of Instagram coaching? Off Madison Ave is now offering social media one-on-ones for personal consultations with a social media strategist.
The best results come from working together.
Ready for more? Let’s talk.