What is Instagram?
Instagram is a picture sharing app, and it’s hugely popular boasting over eight hundred users. Just like Facebook, you can follow others to see their content and vice versa but its primarily a photo-sharing service. By adding a ‘#’ or a hashtag (for example #cutecat #eiffeltower) to a photo, a user can categorise their content, and other users can search for these photos using those keywords.
Instagram works best as an app that you use on your smartphone. It’s available for free on the iOS App Store, on Android from the Google Play Store and the Windows Phone Store. You’re going to need to sign up to get started, or you can log in with Facebook. Most celebrities and personalities use Instagram, which has proved to be extremely useful for rising the net worth of companies and businesses.
A History of Instagram
Instagram started developing in San Francisco after Kevin Systrom, and Mike Krieger decided to re-focus their multi-functional HTML 5 check-in project, Burbn, on smartphone images. Functionally, Burbn had become too close to Foursquare, as Krieger thought, and both of them realised it had gone too far. Burbn was then pivoted to be more geared towards photo-sharing. Instagram is an amalgamation of ‘instant camera’ and ‘telegram’.
On October 10th, 2010, the Instagram iOS app was released through the App Store. Over the next couple of years, Instagram gained various investors, and on April 9th, 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for one billion dollars. On March 3rd 2012, Instagram was released for Android users and was downloaded more than a million times on that day.
Advertising on Instagram
It’s a smart idea to see if your intended audience is using Instagram and if they’re not, you face the risk that your advertising will be viewed only by people who aren’t interested in the services or products you sell.
Instagram utilises Facebook’s robust advertisement programme, which is particularly useful for engaging your audience through their interests, location, past experiences and more.
Ads that appear as photos, carousels or videos, just like regular Instagram posts (except for call-to-action ads) that allow them to fit into the users feed without the user feeling that their experience on Instagram has been disrupted by invasive advertising.
You can get by without advertising for your business –but with advertising, it’s how you’re going to stand out from the other companies for millions of others using this app by targeting people you need to see your content at the right time.
Instagram Statistics
- One billion people use Instagram every month, and half of those use Instagram Stories every day.
- Instagram’s potential advertising reach is to 849 million users, and businesses upload one-third of all stories viewed.
- Instagram was the second most downloaded app (Youtube being the first) in 2018.
- Brunei may not have the most Instagram users, but it is the country where Instagram hits the most significant percentage of the population: 60%, to be exact. Note that only 37% of the U.S. population are potentially influenced by Instagram (see below). The next of the top 5 countries are:
- Iceland 57%
- Turkey 56%
- Sweden 55%
- Kuwait 55%
If you’re advertising to people in these countries, Instagram could be a highly effective outlet for both organic content and paid Instagram content.