5 Reasons for Brands to Embrace Instagram Instead of Facebook
Being on the right side of marketing means you have digitized your marketing style and have adopted social media marketing. You understand the importance of having a branding strategy that involves social media. You are already reaping the rewards, but you can't shake the feeling that there could be more to be gotten. You yearn for more customer engagement and more visibility. What if we told you the answer is quite simple. The answer is in a social media platform you have been using over the years. No, you guessed wrong. We aren't talking about Facebook. We are talking about Instagram.
No, we are not messing with you. The statistics are there for us to see. This infographic explains it perfectly. The infographic shows Instagram is thriving much more than Facebook. Still, marketers are often blind to this because of their bias for Facebook and the statistics that it has a more significant number of users. However, this more substantial number of users doesn't translate to organic interaction as Facebook organic marketing has reduced by 63% since 2012.
On the other hand, Instagram's organic marketing has grown by about 115% since 2012. Apart from this, Instagram users interact more with brands, with an interaction percentage of about 68%. This is far more than Facebook users' interaction rate of 38%.
Your ability to get more interaction on Instagram is because your brand reaches your followers more, unlike Facebook, where you only connect with about 6% of your users. Well, what do you know? Larger doesn't always translate to better. There is more to this than we have revealed. To find out more about why you should use Instagram over Facebook, read on.
1. Easier Content Consumption
Human beings are visual creatures. Our mind has a bias for visuals. Images can grab our attention quickly, and we are attracted to images. Our ability to process images is fast, and within a short time, we can recognize or identify with images. We owe our bias for pictures to our visual senses, which are very active. This love for visuals makes Instagram a place to be for people.
Content these days have incorporated visual elements in them, and as a business, you have tapped into the visual side of content. From your experience, you have seen how people react to visual content. They love it and are going to interact with such content easily. Instagram is a fun place to be. Unlike Facebook, which focuses on passing information and text in somewhat serious tones, Instagram enticingly does the same.
Instagram stories come to mind. Instagram stories have many visual means of engaging people on social media. The Instagram stories poll, the Instagram stories question sticker, the Instagram stories countdown sticker, etc. These are all fun ways to pass information while holding the audience's attention. Instead of just words that people can lose interest in, you post visual content that people find exciting and communicate the information you want them to have. No wonder they say a picture speaks louder than a thousand words.
Instagram's preference for fun content draws people there. These people aren't just numbers. They engage with the content they see there. Engagement is more effortless because, unlike Facebook, where informational text and visual content litter a user's timeline, Instagram is purely visual.
2. Connecting More With Audience
We mentioned earlier that Instagram allows you to connect with an audience more than Facebook. Here, you will see how as we will make the connections for you. Remember, people have a bias for visual images, and this is the foundation for how Instagram allows businesses to connect more with their audience. Are you with us? Okay. Let's make an example by painting a scenario. Let us imagine that you are an inventor and just created an exciting product. Would you write about using the products and what makes them awesome or show them?
You would prefer to show what makes the product awesome that you will be satisfying the 72% of users who prefer watching videos to understand how a product works. There are various creative ways to show people what you sell or the services you provide. You have the Instagram story feature and the IGTV feature. You can decide to make your visual content short or long, depending on your creative strategy.
By leveraging the visual content bias, you are already creating a solid visual marketing strategy for your business. The best part is that when your visual content resonates with a prospective customer, they share that content with their followers. That way, you get more people and leads to funnel into customers without spending more on an advertisement.
3. Users Love Instagram
Users want to be on Instagram for different reasons. Users find Instagram more mobile-friendly than Facebook. As we mentioned earlier, Facebook can be chaotic with its content. You will be moving from text to video to pictures. That way, you can get lost in the social media content you don't have an interest in. It isn't the same with Instagram as it has narrower content that users find appealing. The more limited content type makes Instagram more optimized for mobile than Facebook.
An example of better optimization for the mobile is how the story feature fits Instagram better than Facebook. Stories offer a lot more for marketers, and it has various features which Instagram users enjoy and marketers can use to connect with these users.
Another reason users love Instagram is that they attach positivity to Instagram. People find it more positive than Facebook. Instagram users are more forgiving from what we have noticed than any other social media platform. Instagram is an escape for a lot of people. It has its fair share of trolls compared to other platforms; it is better.
As a marketer, your presence on Instagram is already associated with positivity and with the right content, you will have more than enough leads to funnel.
4. Instagram is Business Friendly
Instagram favours organic marketing. There has been a 115% increase in organic marketing since 2012. The growth started just two years after the creation of Instagram. An indication of this is that trying to sell on Facebook directly hasn't yielded impressive success. Commerce is visual, and Instagram taps into the visual.
The targeting algorithm of Instagram is powerful. You would think Instagram was created solely for selling. Also, your business has a better chance of discovering on Instagram with the new and improve the explore option on Instagram, which would prevent manipulation of Instagram visibility and allow more organic growth. Plus, there is consistency with the Instagram news feed, unlike Facebook, which consistently changes their algorithm for news feed, making Facebook more difficult.
As if the visibility is not enough, Instagram is working on making it possible for customers to purchase your Instagram page. All your customer has to do is click the picture of the product you have posted and make an in-app payment to get the product. Instagram is going to help you convert leads.
5. It All Translates To Engagement
All we have been talking about since translates to a massive increase in engagement. Engagement is the goal of any social marketing strategy, and Instagram, with its features, gives you precisely that. Instagram has a billion monthly users, 500 million daily Instagram story users, and 68% of users visit Instagram daily. These returns are impressive when you consider that Instagram came long after Facebook did. The numbers here aren't just inorganic, as about 68% of Instagram users interact with brands.
The nature of the content of Instagram and some of the features highlighted above make it a favourite among users. This is why you as a business should be there. The much engagement you desire is right there on Instagram, waiting for you to tap into it.
This guest post was written by Jessica Chapman, a top writing editor from Chicago. Jessica manages for free, a team of writers in essay help uk and college paper.org reviews. To find out more about her editing life, click this link. She is into sport and politics, enjoys travelling.
