Instagram, Social Media Platform Analysis and Review – Part Two

The first in our series of articles looking at Social Media of Today

This is a two-part article, part one covers the launch of Instagram and developments since then. Part two covers user demographics, how people use the platform and how businesses can leverage the product to build their followings and increase sales.

Demographics of Instagram

As of January 2025, there were 35 million users of Instagram in the UK, with 29.7% of these users between 25 and 34 years old - the largest group of users. 18-24 year olds made up the second largest group of users, whilst people over the age of 65 made up the smallest share.

This is in contrast to global statistics, where the largest user base of social media sites is made up of 18-24 year olds. This age group accounts for 31% of Instagram's total user base. At the start of 2025, Instagram had 2 billion active users, with the largest audience of 360 million users in India. The US and Brazil followed next with 169 million users and 134 million users.

Interestingly, the gender split of UK users differs from the global figure, along with the age ranges. In the UK, more women use Instagram than men, with 55% of the share versus 45% of the share globally. As a whole, men make up the majority of Instagram users.  

Social Interaction on Instagram

Interaction on Instagram takes various forms. These include the most common ones:

• A follow, in which one account follows another account, and so sees content from that followed account in their feed
• A like, which is registered by clicking the heart button displayed alongside any post by an account you follow [you can also like posts from accounts you don’t follow as long as their privacy settings are set to ‘public’]
• A comment, which is a text-based response to a post, or a reply to an Instagram ‘story’
• A direct message to a content creator or account holder, which may or may not be in response to a particular post.

In November 2019, there was a change to how likes were displayed. Previously, the number of likes a post had was visible to all users. This system was then changed, with Instagram hiding the figure in a bid to protect its more vulnerable users by removing the social pressure associated with a publicly-visible count of likes. The removal of this figure meant that users could post freely, knowing that others could not judge them based upon the number of likes they had (or had not) received on a given post. Perhaps surprisingly, no such change has been made on Facebook, but the argument made at the time of the change was that Instagram had a greater proportion of younger, more vulnerable, users, who needed protection from the social pressures resulting from measuring themselves against other more popular accounts.

Using Instagram for Business in 2025

With 90% of people on Instagram following at least one business, and 58% of users saying that they have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it on Stories, the appeal for businesses of establishing a presence on Instagram for Business is strong.

What can Instagram for Business be used for?

1. Connecting with audiences

The nature of posting on Instagram allows businesses to build connections and relationships with audiences through conversation and interaction. Feedback is immediate through the option for users to leave comments and replies to posts; and direct messaging can be used when customers require further information or support on a one-to-one basis.

2. Increasing brand awareness

The different ways of posting on Instagram through the use of Stories, posts and carousels, Reels and Live video allow businesses flexible options for telling their brand story in an engaging and exciting way. You can also use hashtags in your posts to boost your discoverability by users who don’t already follow you. In December 2024, Instagram removed the ability for users to follow hashtags, a decision made to combat spam posts making themselves widely visible by the use of irrelevant tagging, but users can still search manually for hashtags whenever they want, so it is still worth thinking about what your target audience may be searching for, and investing some time in selecting suitable hashtags.

3. Building brand reputation

You can use Instagram to showcase and promote your business values and purpose through imagery, video and long-form captions. You can highlight exactly how and what your business is doing to operate with these values in mind, and over time build your reputation with users and followers who have not yet converted to customers.

4. Advertisements and Influencers

If your business is one that sells products and goods, you can make use of the many different types of advertising available on the platform. There is a whole suite available, including image and story ads, carousel ads, video ads, collection ads, ‘explore’ ads and shopping ads. Collectively, these amount to a range of formats that should suit most needs, with the most useful one depending on the goal of your campaign. To enable ads on your Instagram account, you will need to ensure that you have first converted your account to a business profile. You then have three options for how you create your ads:

• Directly from the Instagram app
• From a Facebook page with a linked Instagram professional account
• Within Meta Ads Manager

Once you have chosen where you are going to create your ad, you can then select the content you will use for the promotion, and select options for the destination of your ad (where it will be placed), the audience you want to target, and the budget and duration of your campaign.

You also have the option of using social media influencers to promote your goods or services through Instagram. Influencers are people on the platform who generally have large followings on their accounts and are willing to participate in paid promotions of products and services to their followers in exchange for a fee. While influencers are in a strong position to monetise their large audience bases in this way, they have a free choice of which businesses they wish to work with, and may decline promotions they think will be distasteful to their followers. If considering hiring influencers, carefully research your target market and consider who may be best suited to promoting your products and most in alignment with the tastes of your customers. Think about each candidate influencer’s potential audience and the degree to which it may or may not correlate with your target market. Also look into the engagement levels of their audience. A larger numerical following may look like a desirable audience to target, but if engagement within that audience is low, whether because historically engaged individuals have moved on elsewhere or because the account has large numbers of fake accounts following it, then it may not produce a return on your investment.

Besides, perhaps a smaller, niche audience that is highly engaged and likely to be interested in your commercial offering would be better suited to producing the results you are looking for, and deliver better value-for-money than a larger, more diffuse one would. The logistics of your calculations in this regard will of course be dependent on the aims of your campaign. You will certainly need to consider cost and affordability too. Influencer costs are generally determined by the sizes of their followings and the amount of demand they get from other businesses for their services. A larger audience and greater demand will mean that they can charge a premium for their services. Influencers with smaller audiences are likely to be proportionately less costly, but influencers with very small audiences may be of limited value in boosting your sales, so choose with care.

Conclusion

We can see that Instagram has been on an incredible journey since its launch back in 2010. Continuous development and innovation has meant it has grown in popularity and firmly cemented itself in the popular culture of today - and has not lost the attention of younger viewers, something that tends to happen to social media platforms over time. It shows no signs of taking its foot off the pedal in the battle of social media apps vying for our attention and we’ll be interested to see what the next 15 years holds for the platform, and how it maintains its relevance and market share.

There are many potential benefits of using the platform for business purposes, such as reaching a larger audience and accelerating your growth, but this will of course depend on the nature of your operations. Before diving in, consider why and how you will use the platform to assess its suitability as well as how you might use the platform in the future.

Read part one of this article here.

If you'd like help supercharging your business with an improved digital marketing and social media strategy, get in touch today. We'd be happy to help.

All information is correct as of March 2025.