If You Are Targeting Teens, Target Instagram
There are myriad social sharing sites and more launched every day. But for those trying to reach a large teen audience, one in particular is attracting this fickle audience.
If you are after teens, you need to be on Instagram. Research distributor eMarketers estimates that by 2019, more than 75% of 12 to 17 year olds will be active on Instagram. Today, nearly 60% of teens ages 15 to 17 are active on Instagram.
Instagram is an online, mobile photo- and video-sharing social networking service. It is ideal for mobile because it confines photos to a square photo ratio as opposed to the 4:3 aspect ratio used by most cameras and photo-sharing sites. And it was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and has been growing ever since.
One of the other advantages of Instagram is that the highest penetration is from households of $75,000 or more (Facebook teens are more likely to be from households with incomes of less than $50,000).
Time to get your photo sharing on if you are interested in teens, because there will be nearly 16 million reasons this year alone.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.