When To Use Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are ideally:
- Timely Stories only last 24 hours, sothey can be more in the moment
- Casual Selfie videos orbehind-the-scenes content are more common
- Designed for engagement Your Storieswill be watched by your current followers
- Sound on Most users watch InstagramStories with their sound on
Example Instagram Stories for business would be:
- Breaking announcements
Instagram Posts Vs Instagram Stories: Is One Better Than The Other
Instagram posts and Instagram Stories both appear on thesame platform, but theyre extremely different from one another.
If youve landed here, its because youre trying to decide between Instagram posts and Instagram Storiesor youre trying to figure out what content is best for each format.
Were here to help!
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What Should I Share On Instagram
Small businesses actually have an advantage over big brands when it comes to using Instagram for visual storytelling. Unlike big brands, small business owners know every detail of their business and are present every day to capture authentic, timely content.
You also know your customers in a way that big businesses dont. By adding the personal touch that big businesses lack, you can humanize your business, show off your values and personality, and foster customer loyalty faster.
For inspiration, here are ten great ideas and examples of small businesses using Instagram successfully:
Cant see the examples below? View them here.
Make an emotional connection: Visuals are a great way for you to show off your cause and your volunteers. The advantage to being a nonprofit is your emotional connection, and visuals are a great way to show that.
Introduce your employees: This is a great way to show the human side of your company.
Show the steps: Let your audience get involved by offering a sneak peek at a new product.
Go behind-the-scenes: This will leave a lasting impression on current and future customers.
Get customers involved: Encourage the use of a specific hashtag or show the customers themselves at your business! By capturing customers in the moment, you can create authentic content that truly connects your audience to your business.
Capture a real moment: Instagram is an effective social media channel for conveying authentic emotive content that can inspire someone to act.
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Disadvantages Of Boosting Your Ig Post
Every action, even on social media, comes with its own set of pros and cons. Here is a list of disadvantages you might encounter when boosting your Instagram post.
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You can only target one audience at a time.
Choosing the best audience for your products is key to effective marketing, and it’s possible to select that when you boost an Instagram post. But what if you want to duplicate the post and share it with a different audience?
Unfortunately, A/B testing is not possible on boosted Instagram posts. That’s bad news if you are interested in knowing if your post gains more engagement from, say, men or women or people in their teens rather than people in their thirties. This information would have helped optimize your future posts.
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There are limited promotion goals for you to choose from.
Of course, every brand wants to increase its profile visits, website traffic, and promotion views. But what if you’re more interested in conversion rates? That is something that boosting posts does not offer.
Additionally, the results of boosting a post vary depending on many factors, like the quality of the content you’re boosting and the type of audience you choose for the post. If you feel that your advertising needs cannot be met by boosting, consider using Instagram Ads.
Advantages Of Instagram Ads
Generally, using Instagram Ads is a more sophisticated way of promoting your brand. Here are specific advantages of placing Instagram Ads:
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Enhance your audience targeting.
The audience targeting option for boosting posts is not as good as the Instagram Ads Manager tool. For boosted posts, you can only pick an audience based on age, location, and interests.
But since Instagram Ads is fully integrated with Facebook Ads, you will enjoy the perks of Facebook’s supreme campaign customization options, diverse formatting, and assorted targeting capabilities, all coupled with Instagram’s high engagement levels. Using Instagram Ads, you may create multiple audience personas and customize content based on various audience needs and interests.
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Monitor your campaign’s success.
Through the Ads Manager, you have access to real-time and detailed information about your ads on Instagram.
Access to these analytics will inform you of which campaigns get the best engagement. This will also tell you how many of your ads converted into sales and leads and how much you’ve spent and made on your campaign. In addition, placing Instagram Ads gives you more goals and customizations for your ad.
All in all, if you keep using Instagram paid to advertise, you can tweak and optimize your ads to get the best results.
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Ive Seen People Create Collages On Instagram How Can I Do That
Pic Stich and Pic Collage are both great for making beautiful collages.
Additional popular apps to use in conjunction with Instagram are and . These apps allow you to repost your favorite photos or your customers photos from your account.
For more tips on creating eye-catching images with your smartphone, check out this post: How to Create Stunning Visual Content with Your Smartphone
Instagram Vs Instagram Lite: What Are The Differences
Facebook has relaunched the Instagram Lite app. So what are the differences between it and the main Instagram app?
Instagram is easily one of the most popular social media platforms out there. Even though Instagram is steadily growing and adding new users everyday, it’s not the most accessible app in less connected areas. That’s where Instagram Lite comes in.
Instagram Lite recently rolled out for the second time in March 2021, but what’s different this time around? And how does it compare to the original Instagram app? We’ll cover everything you need to know about both of these mobile apps and help you decide which one is best for you.
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How Can A Business Measure Their Success On Instagram
Iconosquare is an easy-to-use, free analytics platform for Instagram. Iconosquare allows you to easily check out which of your photos are generating the most engagement, track your likes and comments, and see even more analytics.
Do you use HootSuite? You can install the Iconosquare app as a stream in your HootSuite account to manage your Instagram presence more easily.
When To Use Instagram Posts
Instagram posts are best for content that is:
- Evergreen Content that you wantpeople to be able to see forever
- Curated Aim for high-value content onyour Instagram feed
- Designed for reach Posts are morelikely to reach new audiences than Stories
- Soundless Most users scroll their feedwith the sound off
A businesss Instagram posts may be:
- Professional product shots
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Is Instagram Popular In 2021
Certainly, Instagram is still popular in 2021 and remains one of 6 social networks that have more than a billion users.
It is expected that over 50 million new users will be on Instagram by the end of the year, and although this is not the growth as a couple of years ago, it certainly means that Instagram will remain fully relevant for both personal and business use.
The situation with the average age of users will remain the same. Most users are between the ages of 25-34, followed by users between the ages of 18-24.
That is why it is necessary to target that age range, which is primarily made up of millennials. While the younger generations tend to prefer TikTok more.
Probably some new social network will attract the majority of the population of kids born after 2015 but it is too early to discuss that topic.
There is almost no difference in terms of genders because 51% of users are female and 49% are male.
Another piece of information that speaks in favor of Instagram still being popular is how much time people spend daily on Instagram.
This data is very easy to get because smartphones measure it, and the average is about an hour. So that leaves Instagram at the very top, just a few minutes less on average than Facebook.
The fact that the average user spends an hour on Instagram a day means that he or she has a lot of opportunities to see ads, to engage with your profile, and so on.
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Can You Buy Instagram Reach
The answer is very simple yes, you can.
But donât think that this is a solution for low reach, a small number of likes, and other problems you have been facing lately due to changes in the algorithm.
Although many websites offer the opportunity to buy followers, likes, and anything else that will affect your reach and engagement, it will not have any real benefit for you.
We are not saying that these sites are unreliable. Most of them will give you what you paid for, but the point is that it will bring nothing but empty numbers. As you know, Instagram has even made the number of likes invisible, so it means nothing to you anymore.
Now they are implementing an option to allow people to choose whether they want to see a number of likes or donât, but it still wonât be useful to you.
We know itâs tempting to get tens of thousands of followers in a single day and that everyone has thought of doing it at least once.
However, this is not a shortcut to choose.
That way you will jeopardize your credibility, performance metrics will become unreliable and all this doesnât guarantee higher reach nor bigger engagement.
And worst of all, your profile may be deleted. Instagram is constantly fighting fake followers, likes, etc., and even has updated its terms of use to identify and remove inauthentic accounts.
You can lose everything you have achieved so far because you want to take a shortcut.
Hire professionals to increase your Instagram reach
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Tools To Create Content
Since Instagram Stories feature has been around for a while, you will find better and feature-rich options to create a perfect story. Instagram Reels is a relatively new kid around the block. While the company has added most-relevant features for the Reels, its nowhere near the Story to create content.
Below are the major tools to compose a nice-looking Instagram Story.
Text: You can add text to your Instagram Story with a bunch of gradient backgrounds.
Boomerang: With Boomerang, you can create captivating mini videos that loop back and forth, then share them with your friends.
Layout: As the name suggests, the Instagram Layout lets you fit up to 6 photos in a single Story. You can select from a bunch of frame sizes and shapes.
Superzoom: Superzoom lets you zoom into the content using various effects such as Heart, Fire, Dramatic, Beat, etc. Its popular among the young generation.
Hands-free: The new hands-free feature allows you to record a video with just one tap.
On top of that, you can always add a bunch of effects, stickers, draw doodles, and even add text with fancy fonts, place, and time to the Story.
Instagram has nailed the Story experience. On top of that, you wont have a hard time finding the tool that you are looking for. Everything is nicely laid out to keep it as simple as for the end-user.
Music: Music is a core part of making anattention-grabbing Reel. Instagram is offering tons of ready-to-go music clips to choose from.
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Reach And Engagement Differ Significantly
The difference is not difficult to understand at all.
Reach is the number of people your Instagram post has reached, hence the name.
So these are all those viewers who have seen your content. This is something to pay attention to when you want to increase the number of followers.
Organic reach is especially important, but there will be more about that later.
When we talk about engagement, it is easiest to explain it by saying that engagement includes likes, shares, comments, and any other direct interaction between you, your content, and the users.
It is clear that reach and engagement are not the same and that success in expanding the reach, for example, does not have to have any impact on engagement and vice versa.
Therefore you need to pay attention to increasing both individually.
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Why Would A Business Or Nonprofit Want To Start Using Instagram
Instagram gives you the perfect opportunity to show customers a personal side of your business and tell your businesss story. As with most social media networks, using Instagram isnt just about selling your product, its about connecting with the people who matter most to your business.
When you showcase your personality and what goes on behind the scenes, it helps build a level of trust and familiarity that allows people to connect with your business. This is one of the best ways to build long-lasting relationships for your business.
Ads And Feed Changes Contributing To The Engagement Drop
Digital marketers think that the reason for this decrease is ads and that theyâre driving people away.
Influencers have also experienced reduced reach, the stats showed, where fashion influencerâs engagement rate went from 4.3% to 2.4% .
Another reason could be Instagramâs change in the way the feed worked back in 2016.
To improve user experience, they came up with a new algorithm that showed relevant content on the userâs feed.
What used to be a chronological feed became a series of posts the algorithm thought were relevant to the user and that the user would like.
Naturally, this resulted in an engagement drop. Which makes sense, because organic posts were no longer guaranteed to be seen by everyone.
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Instagram Trends For 2021
If you run an Instagram page for a business, the fact that Instagram reach is on a decline isnât the best news of 2021, but thereâs still hope.
You donât need to be discouraged because there are a lot of ways to keep your Instagram business profile very successful.
Here are some Instagram trends for 2021 that will help you get more engagement and reach despite the algorithm changes:
- Quality before quantity
- More natural filters and the no-edit trend
- User-generated content â sharing images of clients and followers
- In-app shopping
How To Increase Instagram Reach
There are ways to help you increase Instagram reach legally and efficiently. This requires effort and time in planning and creating content.
Ways to increase reach are:
- Creating a posting schedule
- Content exclusively for Instagram
Creating a posting schedule
Although the algorithm has not worked properly for years and displays the posts by the time they are posted, you still need to have a clear posting schedule.
If you are posting at the wrong time or very irregularly, you will significantly reduce your reach.
Instagram Insights can help you create a schedule so you can see which days and at what time of a day your posts have the greatest reach. This will mainly be influenced by the different time zones of your followers and so on.
Once you have that information, it will be much easier to make a schedule, and then when you stick to it, you will notice an increase in reach.
Of course, it is essential that you have high-quality posts, not just that they are always published at the same time.
Find out about content types
You have to educate and inform yourself about new and different content types constantly.
Just think what kind of content was popular when you first created an Instagram account, then 5 years ago, and today. It will be immediately clear that the types of content that are popular are constantly changing.
Testing out new types of content is crucial.
Savable and shareable content
Hashtags
Itâs important to know how to use them properly.
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Will Tiktok Beat Instagram
TikTok emerged as a prominent social media network in a short span of time because of the prevalence of trends, such as dance challenges, lip syncing videos, and other personalized short videos. But TikTok had a major setback following allegations, controversies and privacy violations by the US government which branded the famous video sharing app as a potential national security risk. So, its highly unlikely TikTok will ever beat Instagram.
Can Someone Who Is Not A Follower See My Instagram
Can non-followers see your Instagram story? A person can see your story or not, it totally depends upon your account privacy settings. If your account is set to private then only your approved followers can see your story. While, if your account is set to public, then anyone on Instagram can see your profile and story.
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Difference Between Reach And Engagement
Today we will mention reach and engagement many times. It is necessary to understand and analyze them to conclude the real situation is in terms of Instagram popularity in 2021 and beyond.
But first, we want to talk about the difference between reach and engagement since a lot of people donât understand it completely.
How Go Get Free Instagram Followers
How to get more Instagram followers for free
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Difference Between Linkedin And Instagram
Social media is ever-growing and keeps on changing from time to time. It keeps on offering newer ways of showcasing life online. Trendy features and always-on-point gestures make the social media an interesting yet complex place to be in.
With several social networking sites already available and new ones popping up each day, a person becomes confused about what to choose. Although social media has the advantage of making communication possible with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Another great blessing of social media ought to be its business feature. One can start a business and make it work through social media alone. Its even more convenient than the manual ways. It is less time-consuming and helps in building communication networks with the customers real soon.
Two such social media sites are and Instagram. They put in great efforts to help survive a business as well as personal life . With several other competitors in the world of social networking, these two have managed to keep their individuality upright.