The visual social network Instagram has gained more than 100 million users and more than 40% of leading brands in about 2 years. Instagram is attractive to businesses as it gives them access to a large and engaged mobile user base through visual content.
Instagram recently surpassed Twitter in having a higher number of daily active mobile users. Where Instagram had 7.3 million users, Twitter was slightly behind with 6.9 million. This stat is more significant because Twitter has over 555 million users, reflecting the high levels of user engagement on Instagram. If your business isn’t on Instagram yet, you may be missing out on all these engaged users.
You could benefit from being on Instagram if you are an online retail business and have great photos of your products. Instagram audience would provide feedback on your products with comments, which is more effective than Pinterest where users tend to like and pin more and comment less. Photos on Instagram are often less traditional, because creative photos are likely to draw more attention.
Instagram might be right for you if you have an interesting story to tell. Instagram is more intimate, which is why celebrities post their photos and can connect with fans on Instagram right away. Photos of your company events, employees, and their achievements connect with the public on a level where they see what’s going on behind the scenes. Such photos would not be appropriate to post on Pinterest.
In addition, it is very easy to share images from Instagram to your Twitter, Facebook or Flickr pages.
interest
Pinterest is the fastest growing website providing a brilliant visual social platform for any business to capture and engage an audience. Pinterest is different from Instagram in that it doesn’t require users to sign up for an individual account to browse and view pins. Although Pinterest has only 12 million registered users compared to Instagram’s 100 million users, the significant number of users without accounts and unique visitors account for more than 104 million visits in a month for Pinterest. Pinterest has provided more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn combined.
Pinterest is a suitable platform for your business if you have an online business with videos or photos of your products that fall under a few categories on Pinterest. Your popular and relevant pins could be visible to users interested in these categories and one click will take them to the corresponding page on your website.
Pinterest would be good for your business if you create great content, like infographics, blog posts, or company news. Boost your content on Pinterest just like you do on other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The conclusion
Both Instagram and Pinterest offer distinctive ways to connect and engage with audiences online, so the best tool for your business should be Pinstagram. Since your audience members can be on any of these sites, you may miss out on opportunities if you’re not on any of them.
For more information on social media, always check with a reputable social media company or website design company.