I have just published an Instagram guide for small cultural institutions. So does everyone and everything now need their own Instagram account? No. There are definitely reasons to stay away from it.
Instagram has over one billion users who upload over 100 million photos and videos every day. There are 1.8 billion images for the most popular hashtag #love alone. So as great as the potential is, the competition is gigantic. Of course, there are posts that are so unusual, funny or creative that they go viral – but these are the very fewest. The chance that hardly anyone will be interested in your content is much higher. Good hashtags are just as useless as optimizing the caption or analyzing publication times. Building up followers is particularly difficult for companies that are not a love brand and have already missed out on an early start. With advertising, competitions, giveaways, Insta takeovers, shout-outs, influencer campaigns, interactions with other Instagrammers and, of course, good content, you can gain subscribers, but the road is often long and arduous. And why all the effort?
What does Instagram do for companies?
On Google you can find 6 in no time at all, 10 or also 23 reasons why companies should use social media. However, although statistics are available time and time again, it is difficult to say whether organic, i.e. editorially maintained, social media activities are at all profitable. Consequently, the “return on investment” (ROI) of social media has been debated for years. This is no different for Instagram than it is for Facebook. In my experience, organic social media – depending on the strategic focus – is primarily suitable for
- Image improvement,
- Increased attention and reach,
- Service optimization and
- Employee retention.
Social media between petty cash and tour de force
Aldi Nord still doesn’t have a Facebook page – and hardly anyone bothers. However, the company did not want to miss out on Instagram and therefore created an account in 2018. The company wants to enter into a dialog with customers and “be where the young target group is”, according to the press release . It remains to be seen whether the reasons are convincing. For such a large company, however, it doesn’t matter. In case of doubt, the risk of missing out on the competition through social media abstinence is ultimately much too great in relation to the costs that social media causes. So you just do it.
For small companies with significantly fewer human and financial resources, however, maintaining an Instagram account can quickly become a feat of strength – at least if you do it “right”. In other words, not only dutifully post one or two posts a week, but also create stories, answer inquiries and interact with other Instagrammers. And this raises the question of whether this effort is worthwhile for a baker, a bookshop or a small museum , for example. In many cases, I would say no.
When small businesses should also use Instagram
If the employees or the bosses themselves use Instagram (privately) and enjoy it, i.e. they don’t see maintaining the account as an additional burden but rather enjoy doing it, then of course the company should also have an Instagram channel. After all, what could be better than a baker who likes to photograph his baked goods, a bookseller who likes to present novels and a curator who loves to talk about his exhibits in front of the camera ?! Sometimes “the hunger can come with the food”, as the saying goes , so the passion for Instagram can be discovered during testing. That’s why I would advise everyone to try it out for themselves. In this case, however, maintaining the Instagram channel is no longer a purely entrepreneurial decision , but rather a kind of hobby that can also have a positive impact on the business .
Advertising on Instagram is often the better choice
Advertising is more suitable for promoting and selling targeted products or services, acquiring new customers and drawing the attention of potential employees. This is because social ads can be displayed in a much more targeted manner and independently of the Instagram algorithm. The targeting in the ad manager works very well. You can select the target group according to location, age, gender, language, demographic data, interests and behavior and therefore only have minimal wastage. And above all, you can also reach people who have not yet come into contact with your company.
Conclusion: Organic + Paid = Love
Of course, it is ideal to combine organic and paid social media. After all, a person who follows a company on Instagram is more likely to buy its products or use its services. And since you can also play out advertising exclusively to your own followers, the probability that this target group will pass through the sales funnel completely is many times higher.
Nevertheless, everyone probably knows from their own experience that although advertising can be useful to draw attention to a new fashion brand, spirit or exhibition, for example, it doesn’t make you want to follow the company on Instagram. And precisely because this is the case and because organic social media is also a lot of work, paid is often the better choice compared to organic.
