By Rachel Peck

While many B2B businesses disregarded Instagram as being an irrelevant social media channel years ago, times have changed – as well as audience preferences. Starting an Instagram account might not have been applicable a few years ago, but data now shows B2Bs should consider leveraging the benefits of this social media platform. 

In 2020, more than 70 percent of businesses will use Instagram as a marketing tool and 200 million users will visit at least one business profile each day. With one billion people using the platform daily, it’s pretty easy to see why you shouldn’t wait. Here are a few reasons why B2Bs should start an Instagram account:

The opportunity to reach a new audience
By only subscribing to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as your business’ only outlets, you could be alienating an entirely new, interested audience. While Instagram’s demographics can still skew younger, it’s starting to become more popular amongst social media users of all ages. Additionally, almost 90 percent of users are located outside of the United States. This is an important statistic to many companies with international clientele. B2Bs should view Instagram as a challenge to discover a new audience and new methods to engage with them. As the app is experimenting with hiding like counts, there is more emphasis than ever on creating engaging, thoughtful content that will inspire an audience to care about your business, its mission and story. 

It will lend to your brand’s authenticity
Part of establishing your brand includes positioning yourself as an expert in your field – which is especially important for B2Bs. Businesses can use Instagram to help achieve this by utilizing more infographics and other visuals. For example, you can repurpose an existing white paper content by taking key facts, and visually representing the information for Instagram. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment with videos, as visual search continues to grow. B2Bs can take advantage of this by showing versus telling client stories and testimonials. A brief 30-second video detailing your product specifics, or recording live from a tradeshow, are great for all social media platforms, but are ideal for Instagram. 

You can share your story
500 million people use Instagram stories every day and 62 percent of users say they become more interested in a brand after viewing their stories. If you’re unfamiliar with the stories feature, it’s very simple – which is one of the reasons for its popularity. Stories are images, videos, quizzes and other interactive content that lives on your Instagram account for only 24 hours. With millions of people posting and viewing stories every day, it’s one of the best tools for engagement that marketers have to utilize. Stories can be informal, featuring employee advocacy and stories. B2Bs can share behind the scenes footage, or invite client, partner or employee takeovers. Hubspot does a great job of turning their Instagram stories over daily to remote employees, who in turn, advocate for their workplace. 

If you’re on the fence about starting an Instagram for your business, we encourage you to conduct plenty of research and take these tips into consideration when making your decision. Instagram might not be right for all businesses, but its opportunities for elevating your brand and broadcasting your story are undeniable and it should be considered. Try some new marketing tactics in 2020 – make Instagram one of them.