Two-thirds of marketers say that Instagram is either extremely important (30%) or very important (35%) to their overall social media marketing strategy, as a majority of marketers plan to increase their organic activity on the platform this year. Instagram isn’t a passing fad either, as according to a recent report [download page] from SEMrush and Social Media Today, 72% of social media marketers surveyed believe that Instagram will very likely be an essential platform for their business in the future.
Taking advantage of Instagram’s standing as the third most used social media platform for US adults and its increasing popularity with young people, 9 in 10 of the more than 800 digital marketers surveyed say they are already using Instagram as part of their social media marketing strategy. Of those respondents using Instagram, 81% are using Instagram Stories as part of their marketing. Slightly more than half (52%) say they use ads while half (50%) are using the highlights feature. Far fewer respondents are currently taking advantage of Instagram TV (IGTV) (17%), shoppable posts (13%) and IG Live (10%) features for their marketing.
So, what sort of Instagram content is working for marketers? Two-thirds (64%) of respondents say that still-image posts have produced the best results for their business. While more ad dollars are being poured into Stories and prior data has touted the effectiveness of Stories, this current survey found that about half (52%) of respondents said that Stories produced the best results. The same percentage of respondents also said that videos were producing good results.
Although Stories are currently producing the best results for a little more than half of the respondents, their future looks even more promising to marketers. In fact, 3 in 5 (61%) respondents say they think Instagram Stories has the most potential for their business. This is compared to the considerably lower number of respondents who see potential in other Instagram tools such as shopping tags (37%), Instagram Live (30%), checkout (30%) and IGTV (26%).
For more about marketer’s views on Instagram, find the report here.
About the Data: The report is comprised of findings from a survey of 854 digital markers. Half (50%) of the respondents work for a B2C organization and 36% are employed by a B2B organization with the remainder selecting ‘other’ as their business type. The survey was conducted in April 2019.
