If your lasting impression of Instagram is of carefully cropped shots of amazing sunsets, exotic locales, sizzling celebrities, scrumptious food, and good doggos, then you need to check the app out again.
“While the app was initially meant for still images, content creators and everyday users can now share photos and videos in various forms, like Story posts, Instagram Reels, and long-form videos on IGTV,” Caroline Forsey wrote in HubSpot’s article “How Does the Instagram Algorithm Work? (+Changes Brands Should Know in 2021)”.
Brands and marketers can ill afford to ignore the potential of the social media giant, which became even more powerful during
Consider some of these staggering current Instagram statistics:
HubSpot says Instagram now has more than 25 million businesses on the app which will help the company reach $18 billion dollars in ad revenue this year.
“What was once a simple photo-sharing app is now a key business platform, supporting multinational brands and innovative entrepreneurs alike in achieving their brand engagement and growth goals,” says HubSpot in its Instagram Engagement Report, “2021 on Instagram: What Do the Numbers Say?”.
If your brand has been away from Instagram for a while there are a lot of new features to unpack from Stories to Reels to IGTV advertising to Instagram Shops and Instagram Guides.
One of the reasons we love working with HubSpot at adWhite is the vast resources they make available to marketers. For example, the Instagram algorithm article is just one available on the app with titles such as:
Honestly, for our money the best starting point to jump into branding on Instagram is the Instagram Engagement Report that HubSpot and Mention teamed up on. The report is chock full of useful facts based on analysis of 100 million Instagram posts shared across one million users.
While the potential for brands and marketers to connect with customers is great, there are no easy shortcuts to building an audience on Instagram.
“To effectively capture the attention of their desired audience, brands need to maintain a balance between implementing new strategies that will help increase their follower count and optimizing engagement and community-building efforts within their current follower base,” the report says.
The average number of followers per Instagram account is:
Love them or hate them, Instagram influencers are apparently here to stay with their projected growth up almost $6 billion since 2020.
“But despite naysayers, influencers are proving that they’re here to stay. In fact, they’re projected to be bigger than ever in 2021, becoming a $13.8 billion dollar industry by the end of the year,” said the Influencer Marketing Hub 2021 benchmark report.
Influencers can cut through the noise and help brands communicate with their customers in an authentic manner.
“Influencers create real connections by engaging their audiences with relevant content, which establishes a level of trust that businesses weren’t able to gain by themselves,” says the HubSpot report.
Marketing on Instagram is not a level playing field as some categories and brands enjoy a built-in advantage depending on their product offerings. For example, 28.5 million users follow Italian luxury auto manufacturer @lamborghini, the most for any brand except for the official @Instagram account.
It should not be a surprise that the maker of out of this world sports cars is a top brand as “Home & Auto” is the Instagram business category with the most average followers with 192,000 average per account. That is some 4X higher than Content & Apps (50K followers) and Government Agencies (45K followers), the next highest two categories. Food & Personal Goods, Publishers, and Non-Profits & Religious Organizations round out the top five.
For some business categories, gaining traction is harder, such as the bottom five which all have less than 10,000 average followers:
“Whether your brand is in the most competitive category or the least, it’s crucial to differentiate yourself from competitors, invest in your Instagram strategy, and showcase your unique value propositions to reach your intended audience,” says the HubSpot report.
Okay, so you are not going to create an Instagram account, make your first post, and simply sit back and watch the business roll in. You will have to roll up your inbound marketing sleeves.
Here are five things that HubSpot says you can do to boost your Instagram audience:
Contact adWhite today to find out how we parlay our status as a HubSpot Platinum Partner to help your business develop an inbound marketing strategy that will attract, convert, close and delight your customers.