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Unless you have been intentionally living off the grid for the last two decades, there is a good chance you have a social media account. Since the development of MySpace and Friendster, social media platforms have created their own culture both in and outside the United States.
Today, social media has evolved from humble virtual gathering sites to retail platforms and critical marketing tools of the 21st century. Among the social media giants like Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube, Instagram is arguably the most popular platform worldwide.
The statistics reveal that there have been 4.76 billion social media users worldwide since the start of 2023. That equates to about 59% of the world's population. The number of social media platform users has continuously grown over the last 12 months, garnering over 137 million new users.
That essentially equates to a growth of 3% annually or an average rate of more than four new social media users per second.
Instagram is essentially a platform built around pictures and videos and has cemented its popularity using its simple but elegant filter features. These filters impressed many of its users by making even their most mundane photos look like high-quality professional pictures with minimal effort.
Fast forward to today's social media-driven culture, Instagram has become an integral tool for any social media marketing campaign to succeed. However, the platform did not get to where it is now with Sierra and Mayfair filters alone.
The platform has gone through a significant amount of improvements and updates since its creation in 2010. Among these upgrades are the new features that have kept the platform popular today.
As mentioned, Instagram is one of the world’s most well-known social network applications. Over the last decade, the now Facebook-owned application has snowballed and trampled its competitors like Twitter and Snapchat.
Instagram has had over one billion active users every month since 2018. As of December 2022, 25.31% of the world's population have Instagram accounts. Seventy percent of those users are under the age of 34, and their most significant age demographic is people between 25-34 years old. Additionally, 87% of Instagram users reside outside the United States, and 93% of marketers acquire new customers using Instagram.
That begs the question most people barely think about: “Why is Instagram so popular to users and vital to marketers?” Many would argue it is due to the preference of most people to communicate visually using their phones.
That is why most influencers and marketing teams focus their efforts on building followings on the platform. However, there is more to the platform that digs deeper into its viability among users and marketers.
Here are the top three reasons why Instagram is so popular and critical.
Because advancements in smartphone technology and applications are constantly evolving, there are now more smartphone users than desktop users. A study was conducted regarding the number of users on desktop computers versus the number of users on mobile devices.
The study revealed that 46.51% of worldwide web traffic came from desktop devices, 50.48% from mobile devices, and 3% from tablets. These numbers alone indicate statistically more users (and potential customers) on their smartphones than on their computers.
The Instagram application’s design takes full advantage of these facts as it caters more to mobile users than desktop users. There are also more features and functionality in the mobile version over the desktop version. That further incentivizes people to use the mobile application over the desktop application.
Instagram’s sheer number of active users and marketing potential lie in its excellent positioning in the mobile app market. This intelligent positioning is also why it has overtaken other social media applications like Twitter and Snapchat.
Mobile and desktop users may differ in preference, but they can both agree on one fact. Nothing turns a user off more than annoying and intrusive ads plastered over the content they are trying to view.
Instagram is not immune from ads as it is still a significant source of its revenue. Similar to Snapchat, Spotify, and Facebook, Instagram has ads that appear while you watch stories or scroll posts. However, what separates Instagram ads from other social media platforms is that they are less intrusive by comparison.
The typical ads you will find on Facebook and Snapchat will appear right in the middle of any stories or videos of content creators. These ads will interrupt the best parts of these videos or stories in particularly annoying cases.
That can understandably infuriate viewers from continuing to watch the content or turn them off from watching any content entirely. On the other hand, Instagram ads only appear once a user finishes watching all stories from a particular profile. Additionally, these ads are usually attractive or relevant to the user, which makes for a healthy marketing environment.
Initially, Instagram was designed to publish ten-second videos and square-shaped pictures. Its most significant selling point was the filter feature that allowed you to take mundane photos and make them look professional.
The application has come a long way since then by consistently adding new features to keep it fresh for its users. These features include shoppable tags, creator studio, IGTV, Instagram reels, Instagram highlights, story highlights, and many more.
However, the feature that brings the most delight to its users is the ability to add music to their story on Instagram. Instagram’s popularity has exploded since users could jazz up their stories with their favorite songs.
The only drawback is you cannot save those IG stories without the music being removed. However, this article has some tutorials on saving Instagram stories with music.
Pro Tip: Before using Story Saver to download your Instagram stories or Instagram videos, your account needs to be set to public.
For iPhone users, you cannot download third-party apps that help you save Instagram stories to your camera roll. That is why using a Story Saver is your next best alternative.
Here are the steps:
For Android phones, you can download third-party applications. You can use many apps, but the Story Saver app is still the most viable. You can install the app from the Google Play Store or download and install the APK from a web browser like Chrome.
Here are the steps:
Stories with music give a new flavor to your content. As a content creator, you should be able to save your stories with music, whether it is for posterity or your other social media accounts.
Now that you know how to do it, you should probably invest in more storage because you will be saving stories left and right. You can also check out Archive if you need more tips for maximizing marketing efforts using Instagram.
Want to have all your tagged posts in one location where you can organize, download, and share them? Archive is the community marketing solution for you. Contact them today for more info.
15 Seconds.
Instagram has an automated system that saves copyrighted music. Your best alternative is to use royalty-free music if you cannot get permission to use copyrighted music.
If you are using an Instagram business account, you generally will not have access to copyrighted music. That is due to copyright issues.
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