With all the buzz on the newest social media platform, Pinterest, internet marketers everywhere should be paying close attention to which sites are grabbing the most attention and bringing in the biggest ROI. So which picture-sharing addicting platform is in the closest running against Pinterest? The answer is not necessarily in a platform, but a mobile app, Instagram. Not available to Android users, Instagram has still managed to quickly become the most-popular mobile image-sharing application available. At more than 15 million users with 500 million photos uploaded since its launch on October 6, 2010, Instagram could be your next in to get consumers attention.
Although Pinterest can help your brand in many ways (see earlier blog post) Instagram is a place internet advertising companies can actually create content and share photos. Here are a few ways in which your company can be taking advantage of the image-sharing app:
Show Your Brand’s Personality – Once you get used to how Instagram works, you will notice how easy it is to share perfectly edited images of your brand’s product. Rather than just posting photos of your products, mix in images that really showcase your brand’s personality by posting photos of real consumers with your brand, for example.
Link To Twitter/Facebook – Instagram is savvy enough to give you the option of uploading your images via Twitter and/or Facebook with every share. Be sure to connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts to your Instagram account in order to drive the most traffic with your images.
Consistent Posting – Since many users of Instagram will spend quite a bit of their time in the app, it’s usually in large increments 2-3 times a day. They may not be scrolling through their entire feed of images therefore you want to keep up with regular posting at niche times of the day: morning commute, lunch hour, and evening commute.
“Like” Your Fans – Since Instagram integrates a similar function like the Facebook “like” button, be a friend of your fans and like their photos that you see as representation of your brand. This will cause them to be more apt to pay more attention to the images you post and share with their friends. Also, be sure to utilize the ease of the comment section for each image and reply back to any user comments.
Keep Up With Trending – Brands can use social media platforms to let consumers know that they want them to share photos revolving around a designated topic (for example: #March). When users then upload images, they can attach that hashtag or even your Instagram username (for example: @InternetMktgInc) to get their photos into the entry pool. This is a great way to drive traffic because users will be more inclined to hashtag your brand if they see many other users doing the same. And you can always follow the submissions by pointing an RSS reader to: http://instagr.am/tags/[hashtag name]/feed/recent.rss (no “#” before the hashtag name).
Now that we all know how to utilize Pinterest and Instagram, which image-uploading platform will your brand try to conquer? Share with us your thoughts and opinions in the comment section.