Instagram has been well established for many years now and its appeal to marketers and businesses are continually growing. One appeal the site has is the ease of uploading content to share to hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are devoted active users uploading and engaging in content daily.

Astonishingly over half of Instagram's users who frequently engage in the short video and picture sharing site follows brands and businesses! Making this an ideal platform for promoting your business. Instagram a truly visual concept which drives businesses and marketers by using the combination of text to support the message to link, aiding in a way that a search engine responds to key words. The sense of creativity and the ability to think outside the box appeals to a lot of business owners and potential customers respond well to.

Ways to market your content with Instagram.

Photos

By far the most popular and widely used way of Instagram marketing is the photo advertisements. Once you have set your Instagram business to the business profile" By easily tapping on the photo (existing or new) you would like to promote, (promote button) opens an array of options. This will allow you to have an insight into the parameters when launching your campaign.

These parameters include:

• The audience you are looking to connect to
• The duration you want the promotion to run
• The maximum budget that you are looking to spend

After selecting the parameters for your campaign by simply tapping on the "promote" Button. Instagram will hold your campaign under a brief review for due diligence. Note that the review will usually take around 30 - 60 minutes. Once approved you will instantly be notified and your campaign will be live and ready.

Video

A very catching trend particularly among celebrities and large brands is the ability to upload your own video to promote your brand. The length of the video is around 60 seconds (which has moved from 30 secs) in duration. Much more than photo ads video can make a connection with potentially new customers by appealing to many of their wants and needs.

Eye catching graphics, a familiar musical tune, a review of a product, or simply a happy customer, the possibilities are endless, and Instagram's feature allows users to get creative with their advertising to reach new levels of brand awareness resulting in higher levels of new business.

Carousel

Carousel ads allow the user to place a series of pictures or videos together to promote your content in a story board style format of Instagram marketing. These adverts allow the user to click so they can have access to all the features promoted in a single advert. This works very well for a showcase or selection of items such as clothing from a catalogue, toys, car forecourts etc. Carousel ads are highly effective when a single image or video will not be sufficient to get your message across. Users can experience far more interaction with your brand allowing an ease of browsing products and or services they may not have anticipated beforehand.

Story

Finally, the story feature of Instagram marketing is also effective when promoting your content. When users swipe through the stories of the pages/people and businesses they follow, your ad content can be shown amongst the story content! The story aspect means posted content of a page within the last twenty-four hours which users can view together at once to form the 'story' of that page from the last twenty-four hours.

Estimates of over two-hundred-million people view stories daily (and growing), which only further highlights this extremely robust method to reach people with your ads and content. Stories are also amongst the most popular for new beginners/new businesses to Instagram. A great way to introduce your brand and create a brand awareness from the get go and reach people fast and effectively.

All of the above are valuable and effective in their own way, as a business you may find several beneficial, depending on your demographic / audience and other factors it is important to experiment to find what campaigns works best and highlight reasons for that being so. Instagram like any social media site is constantly evolving and it is important to keep an eye on changes so that you are in the best possible position to make the most of them.