The Pros of Instagram:
Instagram is the fastest growing social network.
In just the last four years, Instagram expanded to over 200 million monthly active users. There are over 30 billion shared photos, with 70 million photos on average uploaded daily. And there are 25 billion likes on content per day.
And just as importantly, Instagram has also been shown that, relatively speaking, Instagram has the most engaged users compared to other social media platforms. Instagram users are 15 times more engaged than Facebook users, and 20 times more engaged than Twitter users.
Instagram makes it very easy to post pictures and video from your smartphone.
Posts of images on Instagram remain there forever as long as the user does not remove them.
Instagram is a great for those who love taking pictures and uploading them right away for others to see. When you take the picture, upload it, you could have Instagram pre-configured to automatically post the same picture on your Facebook account, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Instagram is great for visually promoting your brand or products. When combined with the description field, your posts can be powerful in creating your brand and building an interactive following.
When used properly, hashtags can be a powerful way to increase the visibility of your posts. You can use a lot more hashtags in Instagram posts compare to Twitter, and still be free of penalties like that of Twitter.
The Cons Of Instagram:
The main advantage of Instagram can also be its biggest disadvantage: it relies on images. That means you need to be very mindful of the images you post because it is the image that will attract followers. Poor pictures will have people that follow you skip past you in their feed and not read the message in your description.
Instagram pictures need to be square to be most effective. Loading non-square images will cause parts of the image to now show in the feed. That means your message or branding can look sloppy because not all the words, etc may be shown.
Instagram is only an iPhone and Android app. If you have Windows mobile, Blackberry, or Linux it won’t work. That means you won’t be reaching all your target audience.
While the direct messaging (DM’s) are better in my opinion than Twitter, they fall short of what Facebook offers for messaging.
Instagram is more difficult to target local markets compared to Facebook or Twitter. It is better suited for marketing to niches worldwide.