Last week Instagram announced it had officially reached the 500 million users mark, just 8 months after the social media platform celebrated its fifth birthday. Since they were bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1bn (£677m) Instagram has seen rapid growth, managing  to double their online community membership in just 2 years. In addition to this, 300 million of the Instagram community are daily users – double the amount of Twitter’s daily users.

Many credit its success to its adoption by high-profile celebrities and sports stars but the app has not be immune to controversy.  In 2012, users worried that the new terms of service would result in the company selling users’ pictures to advertisers – the changes were rolled back and blame placed on failure of communication.  More recently the announcement that feeds would be ordered by an algorithm rather than chronological order was heavily slated. But despite these criticisms, the app has only increased in popularity, especially abroad with now 80% of users outside the US.  

“It’s a big milestone for us because we set to create a community, not just a photo-sharing app,” Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom said recently in a TIME interview. “One of the things we said early on is that everyone can create a photo-sharing app, but not everyone can build a community that lasts. And [these 500 million users] are not in silos. They are all interacting with each other. It’s a global community…”

With the addition of ads on Instagram, brands are increasing their presence on the image-centric platform and as with all social media, it requires a well thought out strategy to achieve the right results.  Skywire’s social media strategy keeps both your business goals and your customers in mind, to develop a plan that is in line with your overall content and maintains the integrity and consistency of your brand. Get in touch with us to learn more about Instagram and the social media strategy right for your brand and follow Skywire on Instagram to keep up with our work, team, clients and events.