The key to marketing on social media platforms is knowing your audience and where they spend their time. For example, Pinterest has a mostly female demographic, and Twitter leans more toward men. For today, were going to talk all about Instagram.

Instagram launched in October of 2010 and was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It was quickly acquired by Facebook in April of 2012 for 1 billion dollars, back when the platform only had 100 million active users. Recorded December of this year, Instagram has over 300 million active users. 

Instagram set itself apart, initially, with its polaroid picture model. Pictures that users take are square like a polaroid picture, which is unique since mobile devices take pictures in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Along with this unique aspect, crowds flock to Instagram for the filters. Users can snap, edit and create their own unique photo and feel like professional photographers with just a couple touches. Now, Instagram has expanded its capabilities to video, as well. 

So, who and what is on Instagram? The Instagram demographic is approximately two-thirds women and one-third men, and sources say that most of them are under 35. Popular uses of Instagram include food photography and travel photography, but of course, it is great for anyone who loves taking and creating unique photos.

If you’re just getting started on Instagram, there is no need to fret. 

One great thing about Instagram is that you can upload photos, along with taking them in Instagram. You can put an Instagram spin on any photo! 

When you’re marketing on Instagram, the key to efficiency and relevancy is in the tools that you use. Luckily, there is an extremely selection for all of your needs, either at low cost or free. 

Tools like PicMonkey and Canva help you create your picture masterpieces and add text overlaying to communicate a message. To measure your photo and video success, you’ll need an analytics platform, such as iconosquare.com, which also has a variety of other capabilities for Instagram. When it comes to discovering what images and hashtags are popular for your audience, you can use a tool like quickagram.com to find recently posted and popular photos, based on hashtags, and then head over to Tagboard to claim ownership of your hashtag. If you’re unfamiliar with hashtags, they can be used to describe an event, interest, brand, fad or another descriptor.

One of the most underutilized capabilities of Instagram is video. Experts say videos will be utilized in 2015 to catch the short attention span and fit a long message in a short amount of time. There are also free tools that speed up videos to squeeze even more into that short period.

If you’re interested in utilizing video for Instagram, contact MJR Visuals to head up your video project today!