If so, any particular niches that it works well with?
You can use instagram for any niche, if you have collection of pics, videos then you can promote any of your niche.
I think the OP is asking for personal experience of using Instagram, not just general replies.
Hi
I use instagram but I don’t have advertising experience however whenever I upload a picture related to my business I place a link back to my website. So, I think this does help a bit 
Thank-you for the answers. Yes, I was asking for personal experience, or if you are on Instagram, do you have any ideas which niche might be best advertised there? Since there are so many social media sites out there now, I’m noticing a bit of a new trend for people to steer clear of using ALL of them. They choose the ones they feel best suited for that niche. I’m quite thankful to see the shift occurring because, frankly, it has been getting a little cluttered looking at people’s blogs/sites. If you don’t have experience with actually marketing using this medium, could you please let me know which niches you THINK would benefit from marketing there? I’m not an Instagram user right now, this is why I ask. I know it’s visual with photos/videos. And I know it’s used with a younger crowd than FB, although I’m pretty sure that FB owns it if I remember correctly. I also know that from the beginning, many people have taken photos of food & posted them there, so foodie niches are probably obvious, but any others that I’m missing or that might not be obvious?
These days Instagram become a best business marketing channel than other social media networking sites. As per recent survey, Instagram is the most popular social media site than Facebook. Read the survey report here http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kids-social-media-survey-instagram-twitter-facebook/
Yes I have been using Instagram for advertising. If you can provide yourself good images for your niche, you’ll be awesome on Instagram, while doing it you should also include Pinterest. 
Hey @Angelina786, I don’t link website links on Instagram image descriptions are clickable so the impact of doing this might be very minimal.
You can consider doing this hack that Mashable did on Instagram. Basically, they will update the website section in their profile with a link that is relevant to their latest photo. At the end of every new Instagram photo, they will mention something along the line of “Check it out by clicking on the link in our profile.”
Mashable uses a bitly pro account that allows them to quickly swap out the links but I’m sure it’s optional if the URL that you are trying to promote is short and neat.
Maybe you can try this out? 
I have not used Instagram for marketing but I’m quite active on it recently. Here are the 5 types of photos that I see doing well:
- Food photos. Restaurants, chefs, food stalls, recipe websites all do well on Instagram. Nice looking food is hard to resist. In fact, the type of food doesn’t really matter, what matters is how well they look.
- Travel photos. The more stunning the view is, the better.
- Fitness training photos. For motivation, nuff’ said.
- Good looking self-portraits. Where #selfie comes from.
- Fashion. #ootd (outfit of the day).
Personally, I think any photos that tie back to style tends to get a lot of likes. Of course, anything that can wow a user will do well. Making your photos look artsy will score you some likes immediately if you are tagging them appropriately.
If you want to see how brands from different industries are marketing on Instagram, TOTEMS List is a good place to go. You can go to TagsforLikes if you want to know the hashtags that your target audience might be using or following.
1 Like
I know a lot of people who use Instagram for advertising and specifically for driving sales.
What I’ve seen is that Instagram is one of the few large completely open networks that are left (before a new player appears) and if you’re business lends itself to social attention than you can definitely get some great growth out of it.
Tips I have:
- Make sure you use hashtags that are specific to your niche and your photo
- As suggested above, use the website field in your bio to link to your website and relate that to your latest post (new article announced in an image)
- Be active, Instagram is a social network that needs 2-5 posts per day, spread out and relevant to what you are doing.
- Like other peoples posts and create a social hook: A social hook would be sharing your product after purchase and tagging your page or hashtag within their post. Often incentive is needed at the beginning but if it is a great product it should quickly lend itself to these actions.
- Go through competitor lists and like or follow users that follow your competitors. This is an easy way to get targeted users
- Respond to comments: Talk to people, Instagram is personal and by interacting with them you increase your chances of getting a good follower.
There are a lot of other factors, but a lot of businesses do Instagram well. The way it works best is by attaching emotion and culture to your posts. Quality of photos also makes a huge difference.
One way I have had major success is by sharing my fans photos when they use my #.
Hope this helps,
Josh Mackow
SitePoint Marketing Manager.
4 Likes
I agree! It is way easier to reach out to your local audience using Instagram compared to twitter and facebook.
i have tried instagram marketing yes the pricing is low as compared to Google but the problem is that in my market few people use instagram so the sales leads where negligible. i rather now use facebook and google adwords which are very popular in africa
What do you mean by “pricing”?
As far as I know, advertising on Instagram is not self-serve at the moment and only brands who are working directly with the Instagram team gets to advertise there.
Are you referring to paying Instagram influencers to promote your product / service? If so, it would be great if you can share your experience here.