Instagram — Here to stay?

ALL EYES ON INSTAGRAM

With more than 1 billion people using Instagram, it’s more than obvious this Social Network is here to stay. Let’s analyze Instagram from our perspective!

Have you noticed that the main Instagram theme is spreading love and positivity?

Even the statistics show that the number of times ❤ was used in comments is 14 billion.

Can you imagine people all around the world “hearting” every post or comment?

Speaking of hearts, the Heart Eyes Filter appeared in the most stories.

Is it a sign of true self-love or we are obsessed with ourselves too much?

Now everyone is doing it.

If you go to a cafe and order a cup of coffee, you don’t look at the coffee and ask yourself, ‘How does it taste like?’ — you are too busy looking for your smartphone, taking a picture of the coffee, finding the great light balance and filter, posting it on Instagram and then checking your account every two minutes to see how many likes you got.

Even writing by hand became so old school.

You can write cool captions under the photo or video that you’ve posted recently on your Instagram account.

Younger generations find it boring — why would they even want to write when there is everything online that they can actually read.

Therefore, it is considered that hipsters and hubsters to write journals and go to calligraphy courses.

The main reason is that writing became a vintage craft like knitting or sewing.

The new motto says: ‘If you experience something — record it. If you record something — upload it. If you upload something — share it.’ (Homo Deus: The Brief History of tomorrow)

Let’s have a quick roundup from the analytical side.

Instagram is a platform that has shaken the world.

From the early beginnings of this app, it was obvious that it would become a great platform with huge potential.

A lot of people recognized that and used it for monetization of their services.

Nowadays, you can even shop directly from Instagram.

You can express yourself and write or post about your beliefs and perspective of the world around you.

The great thing is that people can directly engage with others in the personalized story behind any brand.

1 billion people use Instagram

If you do not have an Instagram account, you are maybe waiting for some other social network to become viral and to jump in (like Tik Tok), but Instagram will remain a really strong platform with over 1 billion people using it.

Women more than men using Instagram

The gap has slightly decreased, but women are still more likely to use this app more than men do.

They are usually less attracted by all the emotions and stuff like that. They want to keep it real.

59% of users are under 30

It’s an interesting fact that almost 70% of Instagrammers are using this app for educational purposes all the while expecting from the accounts that they follow a daily dose of valuable content.

And most of them are millennials and generations X, Y, Z.

72% of teens use Instagram, every day

Digital kids are ruling the Insta. EOF.

That girl next door has already opened and monetized a YouTube channel while you are driving to your 9–5 job. And she earns more than you.

95 million posts per day

Have you posted anything today?

Do you feel guilty even a bit if you didn’t?

500 million Stories a day

Stories work for personal profiles, as well as for brands.

If you are too lazy to write a caption, you can easily share something that you personally like with your friends or audience.

It’s like a coffee-to-go.

You drink it quickly and it makes you happy.

You shuffle through stories and you are aware that your friends are doing good.

80% increase, year-by-year, for videos

Videos are everywhere.

We bet that you’ve watched and saved at least one Tasty video on how to prepare an interesting meal.

And we think that your New Year’s resolutions on how to be in shape and fit again come from those videos.

More businesses use Instagram

We could agree that at least every second or third business profile wants to sell products or services on the Instagram platform.

Believe it or not, marketing is all around the Instagram feed.

From promoted posts to travel offers, concerts or product placements, we are constantly being introduced to the new methods of people trying to catch our attention.

The main reason is that people are busy looking at their smartphones.

They don’t see a lot of stuff in the “offline” world. They have started living in a digital reality.

The probability rate that your customer has seen your offer or discount on the web is higher than the one that your customer has seen it walking by the storefront.

Even if he or she passes by your shop every day.

Sad but true.

2 million monthly advertisers on Instagram

Now, you have no boundaries as you had them before the age of digital transformation.

Every person on the planet Earth can be reached if they have Internet access.

Therefore, finding your ideal customer through targeting becomes so easy if you know what is your focus and who you want to reach.

Advertising has never been so easy, right?

We mean, if you know how to use it well and in a right, logical way.

80% of users follow at least one business

People want to follow people.

I see a human, I like it.

I see a pet, oh, I like it, too.

I see food — ooh, food, tasty, like!

I see a product — Hmm. Oh well, cute caption, nice product placement, next.

Oh my, a puppy!

What we want to emphasize is the fact that a majority of people interact with posts that trigger their emotions to flow through their bodies.

Let’s be honest, you are likely to be overwhelmed with positive emotions when you see a puppy or a kitten more than when you see a hand cream placed on the table.

It is obvious that brands are outsourcing or hiring more digital marketing agencies in order to invest their money and time into their Instagram marketing game.

They want that viral post.

They want to offer more creative options for their consumers when it comes to deciding why would they want to follow them.

So it’s not only about the quality content, but about the true story that people can recognize and connect the dots when it comes to a specific brand.

Therefore, it’s a bit tricky when it comes to brands. W

hy would people follow your brand?

Maybe if they get some value from it, they will follow it on Instagram. But if they start to feel pressured to buy, use or do something, they might just leave your business behind.

60% of users discover products on Instagram

I see the product.

I like it.

I buy it.

And we can also DM that business and send them delivery info. Boom, done.

70% more likely to buy via mobile

Every third purchase is believed to be made online via smartphone.

What are businesses even waiting for?

Post your products, sell them and don’t say that we haven’t told you to do that. J

90% of the top 100 brands are on Instagram

Engage on Instagram, please!

Coke does that.

Nike doses that.

Apple does that.

Every big brand does that.

And they’re doing pretty good in life, aren’t they?

A certain brand can have the most beautiful Instagram feed with the most perfect copy, but if it doesn’t engage with its customers — it will soon fail.

The charm is in showing raw content and real people using those products or services.

The word of mouth evaluated to the — I saw that person speaking about this and that.

Therefore, we have a “story” effect going on. You may hear two best friends talking about the new product for face care.

Some Instagram influencer posted about that product and those girls also want to buy it.

It’s called a mirroring effect.

I want to have what they have and reverse.

We can even say that — If you buy, you exist.

If you don’t buy, you don’t exist in the real world.

If you post on social networks, you are alive and breathing.

If you stop posting, it’s like you are dead and people want to consume some other content.

The problem with our society is the one that we consume more than we produce.

Although we have so many possibilities to make our dream lives, instead of focusing on our work, we would rather spend our time scrolling through the Instagram feed.

Then, we might see something that will catch our attention and minutes turn to hours and we are exhausted of consuming all that stuff.

Our procrastination leads to unsolved problems and obligations.

All those material things shown on Instagram are temporary.

We should focus on long term goals and Instagram should be like a sugar — quick treat to inspire and motivate us to move on through another day.

You’ve probably noticed that at this age, it’s very important for us when someone wants to hear our thoughts and actually values them. We shuffle through different stories, but once we reach a story that contains some interesting text, we are eager to learn something new from that person.

Therefore, Instagram introduced Type mode in stories.

If you wanted different styles for your Instagram story text, you got it

If you wanted to amp up the colors to match your aesthetic, you got it.

You can choose between a typewriter, neon, strong and modern text options to draw your followers’ attention.

Beside Instagram Stories, sharing an opinion is way easier with Instagram Live.

Let’s say you see someone you know is Live Streaming on Insta and you think “Hey! I wanna join this stream!”

Instagram lets you request to join a Live Stream straight from your Insta account.

When you finish, you don’t need to be afraid that all that data is going to be lost, because Instagram introduced the ability to archive posts and share them later if you changed your mind.

Long captions will surely attract your community to engage with your content. Everybody craves for some value in a sea of material content.

Okay, you see a picture of a cup of tea, you like it and continue to scroll down.

But when the first few words catch your attention and you tap on to see more, it feels like you are entering other dimensions and realms of creative expression through words.

Even if you do that for your personal profile of your brand, do it from the heart.

That pure energy that is transferred from your best intentions that come from the heart will surely attract like-minded people that will help you to grow and motivate you to become better every day.

Instead of procrastinating and writing random captions, use it as an opportunity to show your community of how you want to be recognized and what is your true vibe that you are sending them through your written words.

Although rumors were a pretty hot topic around the recent time period, Instagram’s algorithm hasn’t changed as it was speculated that it was only showing content to about 7% of any profile’s followers.

Therefore, a lot of marketers started using engagement-oriented campaigns in order to keep those metrics in balance.

According to the latest news, Instagram confirmed that the algorithm is still based on factors that include relevance, the frequency of posting and the real people that are following you.

Even if every 6th or 7th person on this planet has at least one Instagram account, as long as you create high-quality content, engagement-oriented content will help your personal profile or company’s brand grow, as it is supposed to be.

Instagram’s official tweet on this topic was:

What shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as other contributing factors such as the timeliness of posts, how often you use Instagram, how many people you follow, etc.

3:23 PM — 22 Jan 2019

So no, Instagram is not limiting the reach of your posts to only 7%. Full stop.

But, when it comes to engagement…

If you like a bunch of posts from the certain Instagram account, that will lead you to see more of their content in your feed.

Who you engage with is going to determine what posts will be shown to you more frequently.

By liking and commenting, the algorithm is able to recognize your preferences.

Therefore, it will show you more of it.

The next time that this account posts about something or shares a story, it will appear quickly in the first few posts on your feed.

“Instagram relies on machine learning based on your past behavior to create a unique feed for everyone.”

Even if you share similar followers or followings with someone else, you will get a personalized feed based on your interactions.

A ton of new stickers were introduced to the community on this social platform.

Therefore, people were able to make more catchy stories including interesting stickers, gifs or sliders.

It is generally really important because we could show our opinion about something or even answer a question.

Trying to keep up with all live comments during live video could be overwhelming, but influencers try to connect with their audience as much as possible.

Countdown, music, polls, questions, gifs…

All those options offer us a variety of possibilities to promote events, the latest vlog on our YouTube channel or maybe to promote our side hustle business.

Well, social media is all about establishing communities and relationships.

But what happens behind those shiny lights?

After almost 9 years of its presence in people’s lives all around the world, Instagram finally hit the 1 billion monthly active users. And it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

If you don’t want to be trapped, you should only consume the content that affects you in a good way.

It’s a part of your mental hygiene.

It’s like when you have a clean diet, you should start using this app as a tool to help you reach to certain people and maybe find inspiration, learn something new.

Because that is its main purpose.

Not the other one that we made it look like envy or hate.

During these years, many things have changed.

From a social media platform, it evolved into a sales channel and solid ground for implementing new cultural waves and directions.

We mean, a picture of an egg hit more likes than a picture of Kylie Jenner’s baby.

There is a whole compilation of the In My Feelings Challenge video, which was the biggest viral dance challenge.

The simpler — the greater.

“Could something as universal and simple as an egg be great enough to beat that record?”

Oh well, an egg?! But why an egg?

An egg has no gender, race or religion. An egg is an egg, it’s universal. And it has more than 52 million likes!

Okay, we understand the importance of protein intake and shutter stock pictures, but this little guy has something more to tell us.

This egg shares a story about how going viral has affected its mental health.

“The pressure of social media is getting to me,” the egg discloses in the commercial, after introducing itself.

“If you’re struggling, too, talk to someone.”

And it cracks.

So do we.

For example, you are a woman and you see another woman on Instagram.

You look at her feed and what do you see?

The 5 entities that are crucial for setting standards if a woman is pretty.

Those are moisturized skin, strong nails, nice haircut, red lips, and a bright smile.

Let’s move even further to our subconscious mind.

That woman intends to move forward in a hierarchy.

She is educated, she has a cool apartment, great job, nice career…

And she is a part of somebody’s targeted audience, even though she doesn’t know that.

This woman is followed by a certain number of people and she influences some of them both in a positive or negative way.

The Instagram algorithm learns her behavior and shows her more content that she might like.

And it’s a never-ending game.

She is also a superwoman.

Considering the fact that a woman needs 38 hours per day to be THE superwoman, we might ask ourselves if our expectations with Instagram went too far.

The 24 hours are not enough for educational purposes, work, hitting the gym, cleaning the house, preparing the meals and going out on fancy dinners and cool parties.

If we stop for a second and stop drowning in content, we will see that whether you’re a male or a female, you should stop and ask yourself what is your life purpose and prevent your app consumption starting consuming you and your privacy.

Scrolling through Instagram feed is like overeating.

If you eat too much food, you’ll get sick.

But if you consume poisonous food, you may get food poisoning.

There is no difference in consuming bad content or Instagram — it will shift your mindset in a second if you do this repeatedly.

And suddenly, you want a revolution.

You want to embed new changes in your life in order to transform it completely.

People would stop scrolling and start writing new resolutions in order to become even more superior and stronger.

But do you know yourself?

Like truly?

Or algorithms collected so many pieces of information that they know your preferences better than your friends or family?

Let’s take a look.

A recent study has indicated that already today the Instagram algorithm is a better judge of human personalities and dispositions.

Even more than people’s friends, parents, and spouses.

Technological progress has a very different agenda.

It doesn’t want to listen to our inner voices.

It wants to control them.

Once we understand the biochemical system producing all these voices, we can play with the switches, turn up the volume here, lower it there, and make life much more easy and comfortable.

Beside voice message feature in DM, more tools for sponsored content in general, Instagram tools for shopping,

Instagram has many more things to offer us.

The platform and people using it crave authentic raw content that actually gives some value instead of a bunch of posts that could only be recycled.

The app has come a long way from its early days of being an exclusively image-sharing platform, and we’ve seen huge shifts in the past two years to make it more useful for businesses and users alike and to increase its potential in areas like selling, marketing, and brand building.

If you continue focusing more on building a brand, creating content and making real connections on Instagram, this platform will surely become a go-to option if you want to place a new creative strategy.

Originally published at sargon.media on February 26, 2019.