Instagram is a visual social network owned by Meta platforms. The name Instagram was coined by combining the terms Instant Telegram, which translates to instant mail. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. Within the first week, the network had a hundred thousand users and within two months it had over a million. In 2012, Instagram was bought out by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), a company led by Mark Zuckerberg, for $1 billion.

The original prototype of the Instagram app was intended to be used to allow people to tag themselves in places they visited. However, investors found this type of app similar to other social networks, so the creators decided to change the meaning of the app to a visual gallery. They removed everything from the previous app except for uploading photos, commenting and liking.

Basic Instagram features

The social network Instagram is primarily focused on posting content in various forms. Whether you’re posting photos, searching for your friends, favourite celebrities or businesses, you can also shop and build your own profile on Instagram. The most important Instagram features are:

Home

The main channel where you can browse photos and videos posted by the profiles you follow. To avoid sponsored content or suggestions from Instagram to follow similar profiles, Instagram has created a favourites section that shows you posts only from the profiles you favourite.

Searching and exploring

A magnifying glass icon will redirect you to the Explore page, where you can search and browse the content of accounts that you don’t follow and might be of interest to you. There, you’ll find posts from industries that the algorithm rates as the most followed from your Instagram feed, or the ones you like the most.

Reels

This tab contains a section of short videos (up to 90 seconds) that you can watch. The inspiration came from the social network TikTok, which works on this principle. You can scroll to the next video by smoothly moving your finger from the bottom of the screen to the top.

Shop

This tab features products that you can purchase through Instagram. Any user can advertise, and product views also depend on your activity on Instagram. For example, if you like cars and like posts about cars, you’ll probably find car-related products in the shop.

Profile of

When you click on the icon in the bottom left corner, Instagram will redirect you to your Instagram profile. You can edit your name, your profile photo or the field for information about you, otherwise known as your bio. It’s also where you can access the app’s settings. On the screen below you can see your posts, redirect to your Reels section or posts in which your profile has been tagged.

News

Instagram has an online chat system. You’ll find it at the top right of the screen and clicking on the icon will take you to your chat window. Like other social networks, Instagram is what you make it. For most people, creating an Instagram profile is a work of self-expression. For entrepreneurs such as business owners, brands and influencers, Instagram is an indispensable marketing tool with unparalleled customer reach.

Edit, edit and add photos on Instagram

To share a photo or video on Instagram, tap the + button (located in the top right corner of the screen). From here, you can select the photos or videos from the gallery that you want to publish. You can apply a filter to each post. When you select a filter and then tap it again, you can also use the slider to adjust how much intensity you want to use.
Once the post is to your liking and ready to publish, there are a few more choices you can make before hitting the share button:

Add description

A photo or video description is always a good idea. You can use words, emoticons or hashtags. As well as in comments, you can mention friends by typing @ before their username. Don’t forget that you can edit the captions or delete posts at any time.

Mark people

Instagram allows you to tag another Instagram user in your photos. When you tag someone, they get an alert in their activity feed.

Add location

Location tagging allows others to see where your photo was taken. Clicking on a location marker will take you to that location’s channel where you can view other public posts.

Share on other social networks

Instagram also gives you the option to publish a post on other social accounts at the same time. By linking accounts, you can cross-post to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Marketing on Instagram

Instagram marketing is using Instagram to increase your brand awareness, viewership, leads and sales. Instagram is the social media platform of choice for people aged 16-34 and is a highly effective marketing platform for brands, entrepreneurs and creatives.

Instagram marketing strategies include:

• Organic content (stories: photos, videos or reels).
• Paid content (instagram ads, including ads in stories, shopping ads, etc.).
• Influencer marketing (promoting products through posts, stories, reels, livestreams).
• Card shop, brand and product catalog, shopping ads.

What is influencer marketing?

It is an active marketing tactic where a marketer identifies, seeks out and recruits a market influencer (a so-called influencer) to support their business objective.

Influencer marketing is essentially a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. Its key essence is to place the face of a well-known Instagram personality in the content of the campaign, which will bring the attributes of authenticity, originality and believability. This means that a face who is interested in your field will use their influence to help you sell the product or service you offer.

What type of influencers do we know?

Influencers are divided into two groups. By how wide their reach is, i.e. by the number of followers and the platform on which they operate. Based on the number of followers we divide them into:

• Nano influencer (from 500 – 1000 followers)
• Micro influencer (from 1 000 – 10 000 followers
• Macro influencer (from 10 000 – 100 000 followers)
• Mega influencer (100 000 or more followers)

The second category focuses on the platform on which influencers operate and is related to the type of influencer. In addition to knowing how many people follow a given influencer, it’s important to know what type of content they create. For example, you can be a youtuber, blogger or podcast creator. Based on what platform the influencer primarily operates on, it is important to decide whether it makes sense to reach the desired target audience via that platform.

How to set up a business profile on Instagram

If you’re just starting out, we’ve got the lowdown on what you need to do to set up your Instagram business account. Compared to a traditional account, you’ll see how your posts are doing in terms of impressions and reach. More detailed statistics on the demographics of the followers of your posts.

1. Create an Instagram account

After downloading Instagram, you need to create a classic personal account. You need to fill in your email, phone number, choose a username and password.

2. Switch your Instagram account settings to business

Go to your profile and open the menu. At the bottom of the settings, you will find an item to switch to a professional account. Select Business as your account type and follow the instructions to change your account.

3. Try advertising on Instagram

There are two ways to promote your Instagram posts. The first way is to promote posts directly through Instagram via the boost post button on the bottom right when you open your post. You don’t even need an Instagram business account to do it this way. After clicking this button, simply choose your budget and target audience to create a promoted post.

The second option is to run a full-fledged Instagram campaign through Meta Business Suite. The difference is marked especially in the details of the settings.

You can target:

• Recommended Audience (Meta analyzes what interests and demographics your followers have).
• The people you choose (you create your own audience from the ground up, including location, demographics, interests, etc.).
• People you have reached in the past (retargeting your previous customers or site visitors).

Once you’ve targeted your campaign, you choose your budget. The algorithm calculates the expected reach, you set the interval from when until when you want your ad to appear and your ad is up.

What is Meta Business Suite?

Formerly known as Facebook Business Suite, it’s a free tool that allows you to manage everything related to your business’s presence on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.

The features of Meta Business Suite are:

• Manage company profiles on social networks Facebook and Instagram.
• Create new posts and stories for Facebook and Instagram and plan their publication in advance.
• You get up-to-date information on all relevant activity for your Facebook and Instagram pages, including who’s liking and engaging with your posts.
• Read and respond to messages and comments on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram from one unified inbox.
• Create and save automated answers to frequently asked questions.
• Create, publish and monitor Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns.
• Grant access, define roles and manage permissions for your employees.

Instagram is now a necessary tool for promoting your business or the business you own. Influencer marketing is a part of modern marketing. If you’re interested in taking your brand to the next level, Instagram is a great tool. In the current period, it has a certain more attention among young people than, for example, Facebook. By posting regularly and creating a Content Plan, your progress will build awareness with potential customers.