Why create a company Instagram account?

Creating an Instagram account is a no-brainer for certain industries like retailers, photographers, and restaurants. But what about software companies and other primarily office-based businesses? Does it make sense to create and maintain an Instagram account, and if so, when?

Target audience

Before deciding whether to create an account, you should think about who you want your posts to reach. Your target audience is going to have a great impact on your goals for the account, and your expectations for how it’ll benefit your company. One of our primary audiences is potential candidates. We wanted to be able to highlight our company culture and make our potential candidates even more eager to join the team! We also wanted to show our potential candidates what it would be like to work in our office since one of our main company values is transparency.

When we first created our account, some of the initial followers were friends and family of our team members. We wanted them to be able to see what our team was up to periodically. Our friends and families have enjoyed seeing the growth our company has made through Instagram!

If your company hosts events, another target audience could be event attendees. We recently hosted a freeCodeCamp event and we were able to promote it through our account. Through our Instagram, the attendees had the opportunity to see what our company had to offer in terms of space for the event. After the event, we were also able to highlight moments from the event for people who were not able to attend.

Create goals

Once your target audience is established, you can start listing some specific goals and expectations for how an Instagram account could benefit your company. Is one of your target audiences friends and family of team members? If so, your account could keep them updated on what is periodically happening around the office. If you’re targeting event attendees, one of your goals could be to increase attendance for your events by spreading awareness and making attending an event more desirable. Are you wanting your target audience to be your customers? The purpose of your content could be to focus on highlighting any updates to your products or services.

For our company, one of our primary audiences was potential candidates. With that in mind, we wanted to show off the good times we have on team outings as well as the many perks we offer to our team members. Another one of our audiences was event attendees, so we wanted to not only announce the details of any events that we would be hosting but also build excitement about the event space and the people they would build community with.

Why a company may not want an Instagram

After considering your target audience and goals, the next step is deciding whether an Instagram account would be the right choice for your company. Social media can take up a lot of time and effort if you don’t have the resources for it. There needs to be someone in the office that is able to dedicate some of their time to come up with content ideas, take pictures of events, and publish posts in a timely manner. It also might not work as well for companies that don’t hold many events or activities because it may be difficult to create content at times.

For younger companies, you may find that you’re still in the early stages of building your team culture. If you’re still trying to decide what kind of perks, activities, or events you would like to introduce to your team, it might be more beneficial to wait before creating an Instagram account. This will give you time to lay the foundation for, and refine a strong company culture before sharing it publicly.

Wrapping up

Creating an Instagram account might not work for every office-based company, but for some, it can be very beneficial. If you’re thinking about creating one for your company, make sure you think about all the advantages it may provide along with any disadvantages. If it is the right choice, we wish you the best of luck with your new social media presence!

If you’d like to keep up with the Sparksuite team and see how we continue to grow and refine our Instagram, give us a follow @sparksuitehq. See you there!