If you are looking for more traffic to your websites and, especially, to your offers, Instagram can bring a lot of visitors and can prime them for taking action. To help you use Instagram as well as possible, Luke Maguire has created Instamate. This is cloud-­based software that finds the most viral content online, schedules it to be loaded straight to your Instagram pages, and monetizes it. It lets you quickly set up Instagram posts and schedule them for many weeks ahead, and automates this process, so that you can do all this in just a few minutes. Instamate will soon be available only for... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “Instagram started letting people post videos in June 2013. In October 2014, it rolled out its first video ads. But even now — nearly three years since the first videos were uploaded to the Facebook-owned app — video is still a new format for brands on Instagram, one that’s growing in interest but limited in adoption. On average, brands posted 50 percent more organic videos per day in January 2016 than they did in January 2015, according to data collected by video ad-tech firm Pixability. The company analyzed 50 Instagram accounts run by brands including Mercedes-Benz,... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “2015 was a big year for Instagram’s advertising business. It rolled out new ad formats that could contain links, expanded the length of its video ads and, most importantly, made it easier for advertisers of any size — and increasingly anywhere — to buy its ads and target those ads. Seemingly as a result of all those moves, Instagram now claims more than 200,000 active advertisers as of February 2016, the Facebook-owned photo-and-video-sharing service announced on Wednesday. That number may pale in comparison to Instagram’s parent company — Facebook claims more... [...]

Margarita Hakobyan says, “Instagram isn’t the first platform you probably think of when it comes to social selling. Facebook is the obvious number one, maybe Pinterest, and Twitter if you’re generating leads through direct product or sales announcements. But Instagram? It doesn’t even let you hyperlink in descriptions. Actually, it is starting to gain a pretty solid lead for sales these days. The fact that it is a visual site already makes it prime for marketing (as many brands have discovered). Now it can act as a kind of social portal to your storefront. You just have... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “You might already know that Instagram is a growing channel that lets individuals and businesses alike expand their brand. For businesses especially, it’s a way to humanize your brand, recruit future employees, showcase your product and company culture, delight customers, and generate new business. But here’s the deal: Unless you’re famous, it’s really hard to amass a huge following on Instagram without some hard work. For the average person or business, growing your following takes time and attention on a daily basis. Luckily, there are a few... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “Instagram built its billion-dollar business largely on the back of photos, but since adding support for video in 2013 the Facebook-owned app has, by virtue of its massive user base, become one of the most popular video-sharing services in the world. And its video appeal could grow for brands thanks to a change that will make it easy to track the popularity of videos. On Thursday, responding to feedback from users, Instagram announced that it will be adding view counts underneath videos. Previously, Instagram displayed Likes, an important metric but one that is limited... [...]

Greg Finn says, “In the nearly three years since video debuted on Instagram, one thing has been missing: view counts. Unlike YouTube/Facebook/Vine, Instagram hasn’t displayed the number of times a video has been played, until now. Instagram will soon be counting anyone who watched at least three seconds of a video as a view, just like Facebook. Over the “coming weeks,” Instagram will show view counts, along with the standard “like” and “comment” counts. This will be a major improvement for brands, as they’ll now be able to see their most popular content”. View Counts... [...]

Carly Okyle says, “While most social-media platforms emphasize their commitment to brevity — Vine’s six-second videos, Twitter’s 140-character per tweet limit and Snapchat’s vanishing messages — one company is hoping to extend attention spans. Instagram is rolling out a new feature for advertisers today: an option for minute-long ads. Previously, advertisers had a maximum time limit of 30 seconds to convey their messages, which is double the 15-second limit users have for their videos. Already two companies — T-Mobile and Warner Bros. — have taken advantage... [...]

Greg Finn says, “A new study from Brand Networks paints quite the rosy picture for Instagram’s ad platform. Instagram’s ad API opened up in August of 2015 and  saw an influx of ad volume and interest in the platform. Brand Networks analyzed 1.6 billion Instagram ad impressions over the last six months for this study and uncovered some interesting facts. One of the biggest areas of growth that was discovered was the rise of video. From September to November, a five-fold spike occurred, shooting monthly video impressions served to 250 million. All in all, video made up 22.52 percent... [...]

Jess Ekstorm says, “At my company, Instagram is the social media platform that results in the most engagement — despite the fact that we actually have fewer followers on Instagram than we do on Facebook. On Instagram, we have more of our audience liking our pictures, commenting, tagging their friends and posting pictures of themselves — including pictures of them wearing our company’s headbands. That kind of promotion is what Instagram can offer. Here are five simple ways you can grow your own Instagram following: 1. Put your handle on your packaging and marketing... [...]