Instagram is useless

I would like to hear your opinions on this.

I see Instagram as exclusively for girls and businesses that sell products to girls.

I am trying to come up with a streamlined argument, half A4 paper in size to convince the technology business I work for to avoid Instagram.

Here is my argument:
Instagram is a photo sharing App designed for smartphones with 150 million users. 90% of the users are under the age of 35 and 68% of its users are female.

Instagram first became popular by enabling users to apply photo filters that can make most amateur photos look professional. It was then purchased by Facebook and developed further. Users can now upload their photos to receive likes, comments and popularity by getting their “followers” to share their photos with others.

Instagram is mostly used by girls to post selfies, such as taking a photo in front of the mirror to show their outfits, to show their meals, pets, purchases and friends.

The majority of brands and businesses that use Instagram for advertising, exploit this by displaying photos of girls using their products.

For this reason Instagram is best suited for businesses selling affordable products to girls. Such as fashion, beauty products and home wares.

Example 1:
A scented candle brand does a joint promotion with a hair brand and a clothing brand by uploading a promotional photo. If you share the photo with others you enter the competition to win products or vouchers from each brand. Your followers see you sharing the promotional photo and they can also share the photo to join in the competition. This creates a word-of-mouth chain reaction that generates popularity for both you and the brand.

Example 2:
A girl buys fake tan and takes a picture of herself wearing the fake tan before she goes out to a bar. She uploads it to Instagram and adds search words to the photo called “Hashtags” so that others can find her photo if they search using the hashtag, example: #faketan. The fake tan brand may give the girl a free product or voucher as a reward or can upload her photo onto their profile to show that popular and attractive girls are using their products. All of the girl’s followers see this, generating popularity for both the girl and the fake tan brand.

 

Well, it is because most male didn't really into this "photo thingy". We guys have a lot more "serious time" compared to to "girls". That's why there are a lot of girls user of instagram.

 

I absolutely agree with you ... I personally can't find the reason behind people using Instagram, I mean what purpose does it serves apart from sharing selfie & general pics ?

 

i also agree. even i was find real purpose. Use a far better site, such as Flickr, for your photos. Having "a follow" should be the very last thing on your mind if you actually care about photography, though there is a vast community of photographers on Flickr who will "follow" you if you participate enough .

 

Instagram is a great marketing tool, but it's not for every businesses.

Instagram is all about pretty pictures, so if your business can't relate to those it's probably not worth it.

However, if you are in the fashion industry for example, it's great! 1) Lots of beautiful content to post; 2) Huge female user base.

 

half years ago its great. but now so many guys use software to spam ..

 

half years ago its great. but now so many guys use software to spam ..

 

I'm not surprised that most of the members in Instagram is female and obviously girls is more into physical appearance and that's important to us.
We use this site as a medium to communicate to other network of friends through updated images and with different aspect on it to be understand by other users.
Only related field will benefit on this site.

 

IG and Pinterest are still really good for some niches

 

Thank you for share interesting question all comments are so helpful.

 

Personally, I don't know why a guy would want to be on Instagram. I'm talking about average Joe, not some fancy rich kid, bragging about his new car or watch, bought by his parents.

I see my gf use it all the time and it's just...pictures. Endless stream of pictures. Like I haven't seen enough of those on Facebook or Reddit.

Girls like it, because they can check out outfits, find new brands to be obsessed about, etc. It's useless for guys.

 

Instagram can be very useful if you have a product that appeals to the younger crowd. It's not all that good for promoting internet marketing products though.

 

Yeah, I mean... females under the age of 35 are consumers, too. Depending upon your business, they may be your best customers. I wouldn't exactly write off Instagram. There are a lot of fantastic marketing reasons to use it.

 

Instagram is not useless. It drives high traffic to your site as well. All you need to do is make your Instagram 'shoppable'. Don't just upload your products. Make some tweaks that users will love. Make is Instagram a great place in promoting and announcing your new collection, products, or SALE. You can get a lot of advantage in Instagram if you know how to work it.

 

Agreed!

I'd click 'like' on your post, but I'm one like away from having that privilege...!

 

I am an instagram user and I am a girl hahaha
Here's my opinion, yes instagram is not for all (businesses) but it isn't useless. I actually find it very useful most especially when looking for a certain product (hashtags are really a great help). I've seen a lot of businesses too, and yes, mostly products being sold for girls/women.
Instagram like any other social networking sites does have a certain target users -- mostly the younger generation; it isn't for anybody and it isn't mandatory for everyone (even businesses) to join hahaha Besides, the downside of joining in instagram (for businesses) is you can put a link but it will not be clickable. And the only clickable link you can share to your followers would be the one that is displayed on your profile info.
The thing is, instagram for me is more on personal use. An online and modern album for people who like pictures or selfies or whatever they want and like to share.

 

I think Instagram drives more traffic to my site than Facebook and Twitter combined. At least as a free tool... Facebook is ok, but you have to pay if you really want to get your posts seen these days.

And plenty of guys use Instagram. Maybe it's because I live in Utah, but we have a ton of photographers. I have a tshirt company, so we are able to target people that love the state of Utah by interacting with other people that love to take pictures of Utah. I'd say it's a pretty even mix of guys and girls. Once you show some love to some of the bigger name IGer's in your market - by featuring their photos on your stream or your blog, they will show some love back. We recently got onto the radar of a very established and popular Utah IGer. He promoted us and ran a photo contest. All we had to do was give out one free shirt. It doubled our Instagram followers in 2 days and created a few sales for us.

 

First of all Instagram is GREAT source of traffic. No traffic is bad !
But you need to show them what they WANT TO SEE !
Then it might get viral and this is where da money is.

Of course there's softwares to automate some tasks but keep in mind that they are always hunting them down (like i've never seen before from anyone in fact !) Well anything related to the Facebook family is anyways.

If you have a niche where you got some real interested followers and you don't spam them with crap, it will work out in the long run as you build your account.
Valuable content is the key. Yes, it's yougner people, yes there's more females than males using it so, you got to adapt to this crowd then.

 

That's not only a great story, but a perfect example of how to do social media marketing well.

 

If you want to sell products then facebook.com if you just want traffic like for sites like:likes.com then instagram.com is good to get traffic