Instagram gives you the opportunity to learn more about your audience and reach them very easily.
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Imagery, whether pictures or videos, always travel further online especially through social networks than the written word as images offer visual stimulation and capture the imagination of people more than text. Coupling that with hashtags included in the accompanying caption categorises the post and allows it to travel further, past just followers to be found by other users searching for particular images. Through Instagram, you can also see at a glance what your audience are interested in through a quick scan of their profiles instead of having to read through wordy status updates on Facebook and Twitter.
New audiences are easier to reach
Hashtags categorise your posts so people searching for a certain topic will find your posts among them. An example would be a Sheffield fashion brand hashtagging their pictures with #sheffield and #fashion so people searching either topic will find their pictures/content there.
Also, location tagging is a good way to reach more people, tagging your store within all your pictures gives people the opportunity to find you but it also gives you the opportunity to see pictures others have taken and tagged at your store. You can then engage with these users through commenting, liking or sharing their images and pushing up your engagement levels and audience reach even further.