Answer: It Depends. 

As many of you know, I won’t encourage you to jump on a social media site unless I believe there’s a business reason to do so. Just because it’s the cat’s meow for the year, DOESN’T mean you need to invest precious time and resources.

Data has proven that Instagram has staying power and is competing heavily against the other major social networks.

Take a look at the graphic below – You’ll see the two photo sharing sites (Instagram and Pinterest) had the largest gain among adults. Pinterest is dominated by females, but Instagram is spread evenly among males and females:

This next graphic illustrates some demographic data for those using Instagram. This will give you some idea if your target audience is, in fact, on Instagram:

Of course, another way to gauge if it’s worth your time is to ask your customers if they are using Instagram. If you get some favorable responses, it might be worth putting a strategy together to engage them there.

If you’re still reading, that might mean you’re interested in Instagram, so here are a few things to know about the social media site:

1. It’s owned by Facebook. Facebook kept it as a separate site because it has its own unique following and they did not want to upset Instagram’s tribe. They did make it very easy to share the photos you post on Instagram to Facebook (and other social media sites).

2. You can also share short videos on Instagram.

3. People use hashtags to describe their photos so others can see them. For example, I spoke at the KTM Motorcycle conference last week and took some cool photos of their bikes. I used #KTM and #KTMConference so other KTM fans and attendees could easily see and share the photos.

4. http://web.stagram.com/ – This is a cool resource to monitor keywords on Instagram. So if you did a search for #KTM, you’d see some of my photos.

5. In the world of Instagram, getting your audience to post pictures with your hashtags is the ultimate goal. During my talk at KTM, I suggested having RIDE parties and telling riders to post pics to Instagram with the hashtag MyKTMRIDE.

Your first step is to determine whether or not Instagram might be a place for your business to plant its flag. If the answer is yes, you want plan some strategy meetings to determine exactly HOW to use the site to maximize your results.