Thinking about using Instagram but not quite sure if it’s right for you and your business?  It isn’t just for kids and cool hipsters.  It’s actually a fab resource for businesses too. So keep reading to find out why I love it and why I think it’s a marketing must-have for your business.

What’s Instagram all about then?

Basically, it’s a social media/networking platform for sharing your photos and videos with your followers.  All you have to do is take a snap or a video with your phone and add it to your profile.

What sort of images do you post on Instagram?

You can post images and memes that relate to your brand/business or appeal to your ideal client.  You can also add text in, too, but keep it brief, because Instagram is all about great imagery, not words.

Why is Instagram a marketing must-do for my business?

1. It’s free advertising! We all like ‘free’ don’t we?!

2. Unlike Facebook, there are no filters. So everyone who follows you will see everything you post.

3. You can raise a smile with your pictures. And online marketing is all about building up the know, like and trust factor, isn’t it?

4. It’s quick and easy to post. So even if you’re only just able to peep out from your to-do list, adding a simple image from your phone will only take seconds, and stop any ‘I haven’t posted today’ guilt trips.

5. It’s easy to get started – just download the app, create your account and add your profile pic. You can do it all in seconds.

6. You can use images that you’ve already shared on other social media platforms and vice versa. So you don’t have to keep coming up with content ideas for each different social media platform.

7. People love images and the brain processes them much quicker than words. That’s probably why Instagram recently crossed the

8. 500M users mark. You can produce branded memes and images and show off your creative skills.

9. You can get your brand noticed and built up quickly on Instagram. And in fact, people are catching on to this, because according to Hootsuite, 48.8% of brands use Instagram and this ‘number is expected to rise to

10. 70.7% by 2017’. Instagram can be fun. Life is serious enough and everyone seems to be hustling these days.  So go have fun instead, sprinkle some of your awesome personality into your visuals and get noticed.

11. Instagram users tend to favour Instagram over other social media platforms, so this may be the only place you’d ever be able to connect with them.

12. You can use funky filters to manipulate your images and really make them stand out.

13. Your Instagram quickly becomes your own brand art gallery and it’s fab to take a wander through it now and again when you need reminding of how amazing you are.

14. You can use hashtags and get your images found in search engines.

15. You can share your Instagram photos instantly on other platforms too such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Posterous, Tumblr and FourSquare.

So, what do you reckon? Are you going to try Instagram and see what all the fuss is about?  Experiment with it for a while, see if it sits comfortably with you and that you pull in the people who count.  If it does, then give it your 100% focus. If it’s not for you then at least you’ve given it a try.