Instagram isn’t just for hip Millenials anymore; it’s for small and medium-sized business owners too!
According to AdWeek, the photo-based social media app is now launching a series of features meant to help businesses understand what their fans, aka “followers” love. The good news? Its launch will begin in Australia and New Zealand, along with the United States.
With the launch, Instagram will now have a business dashboard built into the app, where brands and advertisers alike, along with business owners, can see impressions, reach, engagement and the time users saw their posts.
What’s great about all of those new features is that entrepreneurs can compare those accumulated stats to prior weeks.
Instagram decided to implement these new features to help small and medium-sized business owners, get organic insights, as well as encouraging them to advertise on the platform.
According to Jim Squires, Director of Market Operations for Instagram, the new business analytics tool will be for free, but will serve as a primer for paid ads.
Squires said, “The way I envision this is there are a lot of businesses on the platform that may be new to advertising, or not advertising yet, and this is a straightforward, easy way to start advertising on the platform.”
With the new Instagram tools, businesses can transform their so-called “organic posts” into full-fledged ads. The feature also allows companies to hand-pick their audience or if they want, allow Instagram to do the picking for them.
In addition, the social media app will now also allow brands to mark their profiles as “businesses,” wherein it can offer an extended business description, along with information on how potential customers can contact them.
According to recent data, there are about 200,000 brands using Instagram as a marketing tool, and about half of individual users follow one brand or several. Moreover, about 60 percent of users said that they’ve heard about brand products on Instagram.
Since its introduction over six years ago, Instagram has been consistently adding tools for businesses. Just this month, the social media app introduced Carousel ads, followed shortly by letting retailers target users with ads based on items in their online shopping carts.
So if you’re a small business looking to widen its social media reach, Instagram is primed to help you grown.
