Dive Brief:

• Instagram has been rolling out business accounts for the platform, and is now working to promote the new tools available to brands.
• With business pages, customers will have easy access to contact information for the company, while on the brand side, marketers will get access to data on visitors and followers to help refine their marketing campaigns on Instagram.
• Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, has been moving both brands and publishers to a pay-to-play approach rather than prioritizing organic outreach. Instagram is now moving toward that model as well.

Dive Insight:

One of the challenges marketers have faced with social media—and definitely with platforms that appeal to younger demographics like Instagram and Snapchat—is how to achieve a meaningful presence. Organic marketing is “free” if you don’t count the time spent curating the entire experience, but advertising can help boost the social media presence of many brands. Instagram has been moving toward Facebook’s model for some time, going as far as sharing an ad tech platform with the parent company, but business accounts are an entirely new step.

“With the new tools, companies of any size can be recognized with a business profile, get insights about followers and posts, and promote posts to drive business objectives—all within the Instagram mobile app," an Instagram blog post explained. "That means customers can see valuable information in your profile—like your business address or contact info. And you can get actionable information about which posts perform best, which days of the week and times are best to post and the demographic breakdown of your followers. You can also promote any posts you’ve shared, and include a button like Learn More, to reach new customers in your target audience.”