Using Instagram for Your Brand: Insider Tips and Useful Examples
If you’ve somehow evaded Instagram up until this point, firstly I applaud you, and secondly, let me provide you with a brief intro. Instagram is that photo app that makes your pictures look all arty and attractive. It’s had enormous popularity since it exploded onto our mobile screens three years ago, notching up over 100 million active monthly users.
As with almost all social media trends, brands were quick to adopt Instagram as another marketing platform. It’s a great way to connect with a younger, more tech-savvy audience and the visual nature of the app increases the likelihood of content being shared. So with that in mind, here are some tips from and examples of brands using Instagram well:
1.) Use in Conjunction with Other Social Media Channels
Your Instagram account is only as powerful as you make it. Not all your fans will have access to the app, so you have to make sure you are grafting hard and spreading those pictures round like nobody’s business. Post the snaps to your Twitter and Facebook pages, use relevant hashtags and attention-grabbing captions.
Ford are a great example of a brand balancing two social media channels. The car manufacturers encouraged users to upload pictures to their Facebook page with the tag ‘#fiestagram’. The best photos were shown on live digital billboards across Europe, as well as in online galleries, and the very best won prizes including a brand new Ford Fiesta as the top prize. More than 16,000 photos were submitted to the contest and Ford’s Facebook community gained 120,000 new fans during the six-week campaign, with hundreds of thousands of visitors viewing the gallery of competition entries. It’s a great example of a brand utilising Facebook and Instagram successfully.
2.) Be Audience-Centric
The best thing about any social media channel is that it offers brands the chance to interact with their target audience, to put a persona behind an otherwise faceless name. By simply interacting with users and followers, you can do wonders for your customer service ratings as well as encourage more traffic to your site. As the product is all about the consumer, having them at the heart of your social media strategy is undoubtedly a crucial factor to it’s success.
Clothing brand Free People are very Instagram-heavy in their web presence. The company uses the app to ask customers to model the clothes and post photos of their favorite Free People fashion. These are added to the website, so that customers can see how the product looks in real life in a variety of styles.
3.) Have a Photo Series
Ah the storytelling arc! A long-term favorite of advertising heavyweights (remember the Nescafe couple? Or the BT Broadband family? Exactly) that can easily be adapted for photo sharing. With clever captions and photos that depict an engaging tale, this is a potentially powerful approach that could really help boost your brand’s visibility, particularly if you can come up with a brilliantly absorbing story. This method can take a while to kick off however – you need to give a bit of time for people to become embroiled in your tale.
4.) Be Inspirational
Keeping the content you post informative and inspirational is a great way to connect with a potential audience. If the things you post resonate with your audience, they will be more likely to follow, not wanting to miss out on the content.
Whole Foods Market post representative photos to promote healthy, wholesome food products, store events, sustainability and their active community of customers and employees. They also include delicious meal tips and recipes.
5.)Be Interactive and Have Fun
Ultimately, social media channels are forms of communication and entertainment. Keep it light and fun, and don’t forget to engage with your client! Starbucks’ Instagram page is a great example of a brand showing off their creative, engaging side. The ubiquitous coffee shop use the call to action ‘Tag your coffee photos with #Starbucks!’ to encourage users to take pictures showing how Starbucks fits into their daily lives, generating a vast photo record of fans’ interaction with the brand.
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