Why Instagram Is Such A Brilliant Customer Experience Platform

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Written By

builtmighty

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Instagram is the social media king right now. It’s popular, diverse, and provides a variety of benefits for brands wishing to reach and engage their customers.

So while you should create a social presence across a range of platforms, Instagram should be your #1 priority for your customer experience strategy. Here’s why.

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It’s All About Community

As a social platform, Instagram is exactly that — social. Consequently, it is about community, about sparking connections and having conversations on a global platform. Naturally, every social media network is about community, but Instagram takes it one step further.

Instagram’s hashtag feature is a fine example of this. While most platforms use hashtags in some form, Instagram leans heavily on hashtags as a means of connecting consumers with accounts, topics, and content they love.

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So when you get your hashtag game right, you can get in on this and provide a customer experience that connects your customers with your brand in a wider context. You can use hashtags to place your content into a wider narrative, making it part of a broad conversation that shows customers that your brand is not standalone — it is part of something bigger.

This encourages your followers to perceive your brand not as a flat business, but as an active participant in your wider industry. It gives your brand depth, and creates an experience that rewards both your customer and yourself.

It’s Popular and Diverse

Instagram is easily one of the biggest social platforms around today. Currently boasting one billion monthly active users, the platform has a huge user base — and it’s growing. That figure is up from 800 million reported 10 months prior, making it one of the fastest growing social platforms out there too.

And Instagram’s users aren’t homogeneous — they form a diverse cross-section of the market. While it’s naturally the platform of choice for 72% of 13-17 year-olds, a substantial portion of 30-49 year-olds also regularly use Instagram.

Such a huge and diverse user base makes Instagram the ideal platform for customer experience. It caters to a wide range of demographics, letting you provide a stellar experience to all your customers, rather than a select few.

It’s Big on Visuals

Visual content is hugely popular with consumers right now. They increase conversions and engage customers, and marketers continually point to visuals as the top form of content for their strategy.

And as you might have guessed, visuals are hot on Instagram. As well as snaps and selfies, the platform also plays host to short clips, live video, and dynamic Stories (more on that later). Consequently, there are a plethora of visual formats that your business can use to create a powerful customer experience.

This makes Instagram ideal for delivering a diverse customer experience. Take advantage of these visual formats to create content that engages customers, that encourages them to linger and interact.

A strong customer experience is one that invites interaction. Create content that encourages participation, asking your audience to share their thoughts. For example, next time you share a snap of your latest summer apparel collection, ask your followers what their favorite item is and why. Ramp this up with the offer of a prize for the best answer, and respond to the comments in a genuine way.

Such an approach creates a two-way customer conversation that is active, rather than passive. It’s an intimate, personal customer experience facilitated by Instagram’s visual variety.

Stories are Engaging AF

On Instagram, Stories are the best way of creating an engaging customer experience. Ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours is hugely popular with customers, and Instagram offers a range of features that let you make the most of your Story.

Instagram provides a variety of Story stickers that you can – and should — use to craft a dynamic customer experience. As well as more passive stickers such as location, music, and date, there are other stickers that you can use to encourage deeper participation from your followers.

Polls and questions are the most common way that brands create a customer experience-led Story. These invite interaction from your followers on a range of topics, from functional topics such as opinion on a new product, or more irreverent things like their favorite Christmas film.

But a great customer experience really comes answering to your followers’ input. Collect the best responses and share them on your Story, tagging the follower too. This shows your audience that you value them and their opinions, enhancing the perception of your brand as a result.

Instagram is hot topic right now, and with good reason. It’s one of the fastest-growing social platforms around and has a wide range of features that make it easy to engage your customers on a platform where they are active most. Follow the tips above and create a stellar customer experience strategy with Instagram at its core.