Remington BeggThink Christmas morning: you see all the presents under the tree and the anticipation is unbearable. The big moment finally comes and the shiny must-have gift isn’t there. It’s a soul-crushing sadness but you do your best to move on and love what you did get.
For us good-looking marketers (yes, all of us are attractive), third party Instagram scheduling and posting was that must-have gift. Every year, there were rumors. Sometimes the whispers grew louder around a special keynote speech by Instagram/Facebook. But time after time, the ability to use a service like HubSpot, Buffer or HootSuite to schedule posts to Instagram, came without a mention.
Sure, a few applications tried to sell their ability to schedule posts for Instagram, but it was a poor excuse that behaved like a notification gimmick that simply reminded you to post to Instagram at a certain time. No thanks.
This dreamed about feature remained a mirage. Like the Northwest Passage or trip to Mars, it remained just out of reach. Then, came the announcement.
Attractive Marketers Nerd Out Everywhere
Instagram’s API has been closed since its birth. This means it can’t be accessed by or connected to third party tools. So, if you wanted to post anything to Instagram, you had to pick up your phone, open up the app, find a photo, write your message and hit post.
That’s all you could do. You couldn’t schedule anything. You couldn’t even post using your desktop computer.
NO MORE!!!!!!
Instagram has now (February 2018), for the first time, opened up it’s API to allow other services to post.
For marketers around the world, this took the manual labor of posting just to Instagram out of the equation. People can now connect HootSuite, HubSpot, and Buffer (Buffer is coming soon at the time of this writing) to Instagram. Now, when we use these tools to schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks, we can now do this for Instagram.
This might not sound like a titanic shift in tectonic plates, but we marketers thrive on efficiency, speed, and accuracy. Having to stop everything a few times a day to post to a social network was a solid pain in the hindquarters.
Why This Matters for Business
As of 12/24/17, Instagram had 800 million monthly active users. Do you think your target audience is part of that number? Chances are good that YES is the answer. As a business, you and your brand want to be where your customers are.
Instagram Demographics
- 68% of Instagram users are females
- 80% of Instagram users come from outside of the U.S.
- 77.6 million Instagram users are from US.
- Instagram is used by 31% of American women and 24% of men
- 32% of all internet users are on Instagram
- 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 use Instagram and 33% of internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 use Instagram
- 38% of female internet users use Instagram and 26% of male internet users use Instagram
- 17% of teens say Instagram is the most important social media site (up from 12% in 2012)
Other Fun Facts that Make Instagram Rock for Business
- 200 million Instagrammers actively visit the profile of a business every day
- Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement
- When Instagram introduced videos, 5 million videos were uploaded in the first 24 hours
- Instagram videos get two times the engagement of photos that any other social media platform
- The most popular hashtags on Instagram are #Love, #Instagood, #Me, #Cute, and #Follow
- Instagram influencers are charging up to $100,000 for a sponsored post
How We Do It
Here at Impulse Creative, we use all types of tools to drive awareness, leads and customers for our clients. Instagram is a tool we use if the target audience fits. And as masters of the marketing universe, we are experts of all things that can help drive leads for our clients.
As a HubSpot Platinum Partner, we were early beta testers of the new HubSpot Instagram integration. This let us test out the new tool, and analyze how it works for our clients best.
As someone who uses social media on a daily basis to drive results, I was super pumped for the early test adoption. Now, it’s open to all HubSpot users.
If Instagram is a big part of your business or think it might be, give our team at Impulse Creative a shout. We can conduct an in-depth audit of your social media, marketing strategies and business development process– helping you get the most out of your online marketing efforts. Cheers!
