SEE ALL SLIDES
BEGIN SLIDESHOW
PHOTOGRAPHED BY BETH SACCA. Whether you operate Instagram to make money — and you may make a variety of cash — or to have interaction along with your internal circle, the stop goals are equal: You want to publish images to spark communication, pride your followers, and, simply perhaps, incite a tiny bit of envy. Instagram Stories are getting an increasingly crucial area to post. While your feed publishes might get lost at the mercy of the non-chronological algorithm, your Stories are just a tap away for a person clicking through their tray. Still, standing out is not clean: Everyone uses the equipment Instagram has furnished, from Gif stickers and emoji polls to new fonts and Boomerangs, to the factor where the whole lot you notice can begin to appear a piece one-word.
Fortunately, several 0.33 party apps provide extra variety with lively textual content, extra typefaces, and augmented fact results. Create your Story submit in one of these, then right away proportion it from the app to Stories. One caveat is that at the same time, as a lot of those apps are free, you may need to pay a minimal rate to dispose of watermarks and get admission to top-class designs and effects. Ahead, have a look at six of our favorite apps for taking Stories up a notch on the creativity scale.
The Rise of Instagram.
Why?
Since 2010, Instagram has proved itself to be the fastest-growing social media platform around! It has a user base of around 300 million, and that is set to rise further. So why is this seemingly simple app growing so quickly? Well, it all comes down to creativity really; Instagram has found new ways of sharing content across its platform and making users’ experiences more seamless. For example, Instagram stories were launched to rival snapshots, allowing users to provide disappearing pictures or videos.
Sounds simple right? Well, that’s because it is. Instagram now has more sway over all its users who may have been using Snapchat in tandem with its own app, reducing the need to use both and streamlining these users to its own services. This aggressive tactic has paid off as Instagram has surpassed Snapchat in users. Instagram stories also encourage more scontent sharing and give it a chat element to its app, competing with other direct messaging platforms. Innovation like this is the reason for Instagram’s sudden growth.
What’s all the fuss about?
Instagram is the perfect app to share content via visual imagery. Its audience is young, educated and very into shopping. This makes content creative, exciting, and fast-moving. It has a different feel to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, focusing on visuals rather than words. However, studies have shown that it is used daily; this makes for a loyal and highly active user base.
This ability to capture a younger, more creative audience sounds the alarm bells of major companies looking to advertise on social media. With high usage, there will surely be increased interest in advertising on the app. However, competition will be ripe, and businesses will have to find creative ways to out-compete their rivals in the visual world of social media.
How can You use it for Marketing?
Of course, if you wish to use this to market your company or a product, then one must consider how. This is a visual platform, and thus products are, in general, easier to market than services. But services are not impossible to promote on the app; finding exciting ways to bring to life your service will catch the eye of the Instagram user. Hashtags are frequently used on Instagram, and getting in on trends or even starting your own is a sure way to engage an audience, similar to Twitter. However, one must be careful to match the hashtag to the visual content you provide, so it isn’t as simple as other apps that use this technique.
Instagram is predominately a mobile app, so the content must be easy to read and continuously updated for a mobile data, hungry demographic. Only new and fresh content will attract attention. Finally, Instagram stories are a great way to engage your audience, lasting only 24 hours personally. Stories should keep potential customers updated daily on your business and reveal behind-the-scenes content to make the user feel like they are part of the company. Instagram can be used to market almost anything; with a creative mind and a committed team, you can create quite the buzz around your brand!
The Future
With a young, educated audience using the app on their mobiles daily, one can only predict sustained growth and loyalty from its users. There will be increasing opportunities to use this app for business purposes, and this writer’s advice is to get in while it’s hot! It will only get bigger to get into the marketplace before it gets even more crowded. Daryl Lawson has been involved in social media marketing and online business training for well over 10 years. He is passionate about all areas of online and offline marketing. He is constantly writing articles about the respective subject and encourages people to continue to follow him and to read his articles –
