Facebook bought the photography service Instagram for about $1 billion. Instagram allows its users to post photos online to several social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. It is one of the fastest growing websites on the Internet.
Instagram is valuable due to its large user base, its intuitive design and its untapped marketing potential. The service started as a smartphone app that allowed users to upload pictures, apply filters to them and share them with their friends. While Instagram was only available on the iPhone and iPad for some time, the service recently released an app for Google Android smart phones.
Features of Instagram
Instagram users appreciate the service’s aesthetically pleasing photography filters, which are easy to use. Instagram photos often recreate the look of old photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, and the service has built a reputation as a hip, fun way to share photographs across several social networks.
Some celebrities, musicians and businesses began using Instagram as a promotional tool over the past year with varying results. From a marketing standpoint, Instagram promotes interaction and a good click-through rate. Instagram is a large, mainly untapped market and has good viral marketing potential because it works across several social networks. If you understand the service’s basic functions, you can effectively promote your products and services by setting up a well-designed campaign.
Creating a Successful Instagram Campaign
To market on Instagram effectively, businesses usually set up accounts on the service and promote competitions or photo shares on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram’s own social network. To set up a successful campaign, keep these tips in mind:
Invite interaction. Ask your audience to submit pictures and share some of the best pictures that you receive. Try to design a campaign that gives your audience a creative challenge. Give them some room to experiment and come up with interesting photographs when creating your call for content. For example, asking users to send in a picture of something green might inspire more submissions than a call for pictures of plants.
Use rewards. When you receive photo submissions, have a reward system in place. Give the best photographers discounts or free products and services. Think of rewards that people will actually want and make sure to send them out at regular intervals. Otherwise, you’ll have trouble spreading the word about your Instagram campaign.
Keep your account interesting. Post regularly and vary your posts. Make an Instagram account that your users will want to revisit for updates. Invite your users to share your account and use other services like Facebook and Twittter to spread your campaign.
Explore the network. You can create effective campaigns by learning about Instagram’s community and taking specific actions to reach your target audience, but you will need to spend a lot of time on the website in order to do so.
Takeaway
As with all social networks, you will need to experiment to find the right marketing techniques for your business. If you don’t have the time to explore Instagram, consider developing your campaigns with the help of a third-party service. Using Instagram can be a rewarding experience!
About the author: Jennifer Carrigan wrote this article on behalf of a San Diego SEO company, where they can help with SEO, design, email, and social media.
