Instagram is one of the most popular photo sharing applications today. It was primarily designed for smartphones and tablets. With Instagram, you can choose to share videos or photos on the social site only or you can share them also on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or Tumblr. When you post a picture or video on Instagram, the people who follow your account will be able to see it and interact with you either by liking your photo or video or by leaving a comment underneath it.
Instagram is available on Android, IOS and Windows devices. One can also access it via the web, although the web interface is less interactive and limited. This social network is the fastest growing in recent times. The reason why it has gained so much popularity is the fact that it has several unique features as compared to other social network sites. These features include
- Availability of filters to transform your ordinary picture into a masterpiece
- The choice to upload either a video or a photo
- The choice to upload photos or videos to other social media sites via Instagram
- The ability to add a location on posts
- The ability to tag friends on posts
Data from the Pew research center shows that among social networks, Instagram has surpassed Twitter in popularity among adults in the United States. Instagram also counts for a total of three hundred million monthly users and an average of seventy million pictures are shared every day on the social site. Business executives at Instagram predict that it will have one billion active monthly users very soon. Taking this into consideration, we can now see how important it has become in such a short while.
Such statistics are bound to catch the eye of marketing executives as well as garner attention from the key players in the news and entertainment industry. Whereas Instagram was designed to be majorly a social tool, it has now evolved into a marketing tool as well as a news sharing platform.
The main aim of Instagram is to garner as many followers as possible. This has been made easier by the emergence of sites such as instamacro.com, which provide for services to increase the number of followers one has and thereby the number of likes.
Marketing departments have seen a complete turnaround in the way they operate when it comes to social media marketing since the emergence of Instagram. These days we see corporates approaching popular Instagram individuals to advertise their goods or services. They use these individuals to spike interest in their products or services through the use of their large Instagram audience.
News stations have not been left behind in the race for Instagram popularity. All the major news networks have opened and are running Instagram accounts as a way to reach thousands of followers who have quicker access to Instagram as compared to waiting for prime time news.
Like it or not, Instagram is here to stay and its popularity is steadily growing day by day. If you have not jumped on the bandwagon, the only question is “what are you waiting for?” It is a fun, interactive and informative space that will enrich your life in terms of general knowledge, entertainment and news information.
via Lindsey Brown
Lindsey Brown is a social media guru who works at instamarco.com. She is also the social media manager of several businesses and has been working in this field for close to five years.
