<Editor’s Note> I’m very excited to have Stephanie Trinh aka @stef_funny on my team here at Marketing Melodie. She’s an ambitious Business Marketing Student at SDSU, is filled with positive energy and is even a fellow marketing nerd! I’ll let Stephanie take it from here. HIT IT STEPHANIE! </Editor’s Note>

With all the hype going on about Instagram, I’ve decided to write a little bit about this mobile app. Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows users to take photos, apply a digital filter to the photos, and then share the photos with friends and followers. This app was originally available only for the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch when it launched. Two years later, in April 2012, it became available on Android. There were over a million downloads of the Instagram app when it was finally released on the Android system. A few days after that, Facebook acquired Instagram and its 13 employees for $1 billion in cash and stock. Amazing how quickly things change in the digital world, wouldn’t you agree?

Being that Instagram launched in October 2010, now has over 25 million users and is known as one of the most popular mobile-only social networks, why would businesses not consider playing a role on Instagram? You can post fun altered photos of your products and begin a hashtag trend for your followers. Starbucks has already jumped on the wagon and has over 400,000 followers. The point of Instagram is to share photos, so as a business you can share photos of things that relate to your brand personality or just great mobile photos of your products – be creative! Another awesome thing about Instagram is that you are also able to share your photos on Facebook and Twitter. The more social networks the better!

Here are 3 main reasons why your business should join Instagram:

1. Most people are very visual- Instagram is great because it gives us the opportunity to share fun photos of our daily lives. How interesting would it be to your fans to follow unique photos of your business’s life? You can show how much fun you have in the workplace and even take little “sneak peek” photos and have your followers figure out what the photo is. Keep them engaged, that’s why they’re following you! Just remember to keep in mind that Instagrammers don’t want to see product photography, but more artistic photography that’s been filtered.

2. There are millions of users using this app- The digital world is making changes all the time, just make sure you are caught up with the newest fad and stay in the loop. After Instagram became available on the Android, there were millions of downloads through the Android system, that pretty much means that Instagram is sort of a big deal.

3. You can create fun contests- With the usage of hashtags, it makes it easy to track and create contests. Have your fans post a creative photo with a certain hashtag that represents your products or services and give out fun prizes. The more interactive your consumers are, the more they begin to feel like “family” to your brand.

You can connect with Stephanie on Twitter, Google+ and check out her blog, Marketing Nerd!