In this document you will find all you need to know about Instagram in order to use it as a powerful tool to increase brand awareness, engagement and grow your business.

1. Instagram:
A powerful tool to grow your
business
By Gabriela Oviedo

2. About Instagram
Instagram is a mobile app used for photo editing-
sharing and social networking service that enables
users to take pictures and videos, edit them, and
recently to stream live.
Users share all these content publicly or privately in
the app with other users. This platform can be
connected to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. to share
the content with followers outside Instagram. You can
also add several Instagram accounts to manage them
and you can easily switch from one to to another.
For organizations now you can indicate in Instagram
that the account is a Business and you you have
access to insights about your followers and you can
promote your posts. Instagram is one of the most
popular social media networks worldwide.
Source: Wikipedia

3. Instagram’s Value Proposition
• Track what your followers are up to.
• Fastest easier way to share photos.
• Let you search for pictures by hashtag.
• Everything you post will be in your followers’ news
feed.
• Only social media platform which is mobile focus.
• Offers native advertising
In order to consider whether Instagram is a good platform for your business, first you
must learn what is Instagram’s value proposition.
Instagram allows brands and business to interact directly with their target audience in a
more personal way. User can feel an humanized brand that tells stories through powerful
images and interacts with them with content that are of their interest. This is their main
Value proposition, besides that it allows you to be creative and find different ways to
engage with your audience.
• Consumer engagement with visual
content has increased.
• You can create Instagram contests
• Tell stories through moving animation
• Instagram ads
• You can now filter comments on
Instagram
Other valuable characteristics of Instagram are:

4. Who uses Instagram?
500M
300M
Android
50%
IOS
50%
Male
32%
Female
68%
88.44
27.52 26.98
16.34
0.00
20.00
40.00
60.00
80.00
100.00
US
Users
Russia Brazil Turkey
35+
10%
Less than 35
90%
Instagram has a total of 500 million
users, from which 300 million are
active on a daily basis = 60%
Instagram users are 50% iPhone
owners and 50% Android
On Instagram 68% of users are
female while 32% are male
Instagram has been more appealing
to younger demographics since 90%
of its users are under the age of 35
years old.
The country with the highest numbers of
Instagram users worldwide is US. Followed
by Russia, Brazil and Turkey.
US
18%
World
82%
US Instagram users represents a 18%
from all users around the world
Demographics source Wikipedia

5. When to post on Instagram?
Source: Hubspot
One of the key factors of the success or failure of Instagram posts is knowing when your
audience is online. If you post at 9:00 a.m. but your followers are at work or they don’t check
the platform at that time, your post will have less impact, less views and less engagement.
1
• You can post from Monday to Thursday during all day, except for the hour
between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.
2
• Video posts are most likely to do best when they are posted at night between
the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.
3
• Specific times that were shown to work well for some posts are at 2:00 a.m.,
5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.
The best time to post on Instagram is when your followers are online and when they spend
longer time on the platform.
Optimal times/days to post on Instagram

6. Instagram for Business
Instagram started as a social media platform for users only and later on, a lot
business of companies joined the platform to promote their products. Let’s
evaluate, why would a company wants to use Instagram
Mobile Rocks
People uses their smartphone to access Internet. Since Instagram is a mobile app its
traffic has increase rapidly during the last year.
People engage more on Instagram
There are more users on Facebook than on Instagram, but the people on this platform
engage more with brands. Instagram’s engagement rate is 4.21% per follower.
Creation of targeted focused campaign through Hashtags
Hashtags a very important feature because allow brands to target their communication
to people who is directly interested in their product or service.
Instagram allows Creativity
This app is about visual stories, all the content has to be visually appealing in order to
catch more eyeballs. Instagram has filters that allows you modify your pictures and make
them more appealing, and you can share it right away.
Source: Forbes

7. Instagram for Business
Relate to your Audience
You can create content that can relate to your audience: behind the scene, day-to-day
routines. Followers love to engage with brands when they feel a personal connection
with them.
Makes your brand easier to be found
If your content is visually appealing and you can relate to your audience, your brand will
be more likely to be found by new followers who share the same interest.
Brand you self through content
Followers don’t like that brand sell directly on Social Media. Instagram allows you to
share visual content, tell a story and have interesting captions to promote your brand.
Your post get more exposure
With the integration with Facebook you can now boost your post on Instagram as ads.
You can reach people and your posts will more guarantee to be seen because they
appear on the users newsfeed. You can target people who is not following you and
generate brand awareness.
Source: Forbes

8. Instagram Analytics
Instagram recently included the option of having analytics of the content that you are
sharing and posts that you boost. You have to activate your account as a business account
(it’s free) and you have the analytics available.
You can see your follower’s demographics: age, geolocation, gender, etc. You can also see at
what time your followers are online to identify the best times to post content. You can see
the results of your posts: engagement and reach. It gives you the most relevant information
you need to know to make adjust your strategy and have better results. This analytics are
free on your account.
There are also third party sites
that provide analytics for
Instagram such as:
- Quintly
- SimpleMeasured
- Instafollow

9. Is it worth to use Instagram?
Instagram is a great platform for all the reasons mentioned before, but in order to determine if it
is worth for your organization to used it, first you must consider the following:
• What are the objectives you want to achieve?
• Is your target audience on Instagram?
• How much time they spend on the platform and how much they engage in the platform?
• Can you pursue your objectives through Instagram?
• Are you willing to put the effort on generate content frequently and nurture your community?
Is your answer is yes, this platform is worth it because of this interesting stats:
• Instagram is consider the most important social network by American teens than any other (32%)
• Instagram has 500 million users from which 300 million are active every day, that’s 60% of users.
• Top Brands on Instagram are seeing a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent.
• Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6 percent more engagement.
• Instagram’s per-follower engagement rate for top brands is 58 times higher than on Facebook and
120 times higher than on Twitter
• The average engagement per Instagram post has grown by 416 percent over two years
• Posts tagged with a location receive 79 percent higher engagement
Source: Hootsuite

10. Instagram for B2C or B2B
• Instagram is more beneficial for B2C than for B2C businesses because of its
nature of being a social media platform that allows brands to approach directly
to consumers through images and videos.
• B2B business requires more research, more dialogue between the two
companies, and negotiation. This relationship goes beyond social media, it is
more face-to-face or by phone because requires more details.
• Although, there are some B2B companies that have Instagram accounts and
that promote their services and products on the platform, but B2B marketers
are more likely to have higher results on Instagram, because their
communication goes directly to their target audience.
• To consider Instagram for your business you have to identify if your target
audience is on this platform, if it is not, is not worth to be on the platform just
because it is a trend. B2B target audience spend more time in other platforms
since Instagram is more used for younger demographics and for people that
wants to engage with their favorite brands.

11. National Geographic’s Success
National Geographic is a great example of an organization that has successfully used Instagram to further its
objectives. They have increase their community in an organic way without paying add.
National Geographic is an organization dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. They support
expeditions and scientific fieldwork promoting natural conservation and inspiring audiences through pictures,
vibrant exhibitions, events and great stories. – National Geographic
• National Geographic has 62 Million followers
• Is the Top non-celebrity account on Instagram
• From May 2015 to October 2016 it has grown 45
million followers
• More than 1 billion likes on its posts
National Geographic found through images a new way of telling
stories. They have inspired people to conserve nature through
sharing powerful images on Instagram that have been taken by
their researchers and photographers. It’s content has become
known increasing its reach very quick. They have achieved their
objective and more. They attract eyeballs right away, every image
captures attention and the caption of each picture provides the
details behind it. National Geographic increased brand awareness
which became an increase in web traffic and donations from this
Instagram posts.
Many brands look at National Geographic as a case study of
success on Instagram, to take all the things they have done
well as an example to excel their Instagram accounts and have
better results
Source: National Geographic

12. Caesar Entertainment's Success
Source: Instagram Business
This Casino and Resort launched a highly targeted campaign to increase their sales by people booking
vacation packages with them. Their results were double digit from the ad spend.
Instagram helped us effectively
capture the excitement of our
properties during key sales
initiatives. With the help of
CitizenNet’s ad technology, we
were also able to scale our
Instagram volume, and beat
previous benchmarks through
audience discovery and
automated media optimization.
Dwight Pirtle
Internet Marketing Manager,
Caesars Entertainment Corp.
“
”
The great success of this brand’s
campaign is that were able to identify
its target audience by afinity with their
service and products. Their add were
tairlored to all their segments and the
results were very good for them

13. Instagram Business – Expected costs
• For using the platform you don’t have to pay a fee, its free.
Platform
$0.00
• If you want to increase your reach and increase followers, Instagram recently activated ads on
the platform and through Facebook, so you can add your desired budget to promote your
posts, define your audience and your goals.
Ads
As need it
• Managing social media platforms is time consuming if you want to do a good job and nurture
your community. The results are not immediate so you have to consider that it will take time,
but at the end it’s worth it. You have to be consistent in order to watch those results
Time
• If you want to have result on social media you will have to higher a community manager
that can generate content for your platforms, schedule the post, reply to comments or
questions, etc. Salary $21.00 hourly rate.
Community
Manager

14. Get started on Instagram
https://business.instagram.com/gettingstarted/
You want to know more about how to set up your account and start your marketing communications
through Instagram, check this guide that will help you understand all you need to know to create,
manage and excel your account.

15. Information sources
• http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-times-post-pin-tweet-social-media-
infographic#sm.000028dsarfrrek8x3m2mbxr71fsf
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennifercohen/2015/05/05/8-reasons-all-brands-should-be-
on-instagram/#5100be97447b
• https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics-for-business/
• http://www.merrittgrp.com/mg-blog/how-national-geographic-is-winning-on-social-media
• http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/here-hour-hour-breakdown-when-people-
post-instagram-167094
• http://65.media.tumblr.com/3c84f9684e9717224c126a4bb3d53e20/tumblr_inline_obae6
aJ6lz1svf3j7_540.jpg
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-active-instagram-users/
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/272933/distribution-of-instagram-traffic-by-country/
• https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2365-
6/14858504_1074968919288135_5180799481846693888_n.pdf