By Donna Hedge Burns, Expert Access
Instagram isn’t just for celebrities anymore. With 200 million active monthly users, it can also help you build your brand and grow your business, says Jason Miles, author of Instagram Power: Build Your Brand and Reach More Customers with the Power of Pictures.
Source: Thinkstock/iStock/nito100
Instagram: It’s Not a Passing Fad
Instagram is the first social media app designed specifically for mobile devices. “Recent statistics suggest that there are close to one billion smartphone users now and a total of six billion mobile phones in the world,” said Miles.
People are getting better access to internet content over their phones and tablets. “Three-and-a-half, four years ago, internet usage over a tablet or smartphone was like three percent of all traffic—now, it’s somewhere around 20 percent, and growing every month.
“These new platforms, Pinterest and Instagram, are really, in my view, a wave of user migration toward visual social media.”
Should I Use Instagram? The 5-10-20 Test
Miles has a test for determining if your business should try Instagram.
The 5-10-20 rule goes like this:
If you need more than five customers, are going to launch more than 10 products in the near term and a 20 percent+ positive price point swing can occur by engaging with customers and raving fans, then Instagram could be an effective tool for you.
You also have to ask:
- Is your tribe or group of prospective customers on the site?
- Do you have the bandwidth?
- Do you have the visual content?
The good news is, Instagram is easy to use. According to Miles, “Instagram is conversation light. The primary engagement tool on Instagram is liking something or just a very quick response. The primary engagement tool on Facebook, for example, mostly is commenting,which is labor intensive.”
Instagram Is Still a B2C-Dominant Platform
It’s true that this medium lends itself more toward business-to-consumer-oriented businesses.
“Different social media platforms work better for different contexts. At least the early adopters in terms of the marketing work seem to be B2C companies and product companies, but it can also work very effectively for service companies—for people who are the creatives; the artistic kind of folks out there. It’s harder to come up with uses for it, for a B2B context, again, unless you have a lot of products that are coming out for your business customers.”
The Use of #Hashtags
Like Twitter and Facebook, Instagram allows for the use of hashtags—a single word or group of words after the # symbol that connects you to all content using that same hashtag.
“When you create a hashtag, you’re creating something that’s wild and free, so it’s a double-edged sword. Most marketers that have dabbled with this stuff have figured out that you can really set yourself up for success and engagement with customers. You can also set yourself up for real disaster with hashtags,” said Miles.
One positive example of the use of hashtags is Dakota Mechanic Studios, a one-person small business that upcycles old airplane parts as functional art. The owner takes parts out of airplanes and makes them into clocks and other items.
“He works at an airport, takes pictures everyday of airplanes and started using the hashtags associated with aviation. There’s a whole set of them, and he figured them out. He started getting all of these followers who are obviously airplane enthusiasts—guys from the military and that kind of thing.
“When he would release a new product, he would immediately put it on Instagram, and the guys would just go nuts over the stuff. He used the hashtags to identify a collection of prospects, gave them what they wanted (which was beautiful airplane pictures) and then when he had his product out and ready to go, it was a natural fit. He doesn’t even promote his stuff much anymore because people email him and ask him for custom projects constantly. It’s a very effective kind of engagement method when you weave to get powerful pictures in a niche, topic or industry and find those people on Instagram through the hashtag system.”
An Instagram Hack
Do the photos on Instagram sometimes appear more professional than amateur? Well, that’s because they are.
“A lot of the pictures that you see on people’s Instagram page are actually images of their website. You can just navigate in your browser on your smartphone to your website, look at your images that are maybe professionally edited and then take a screen shot on an iPhone. Holding down the power button and the little navigation button at the same time, it takes a screen shot of what’s on your screen. Then you can immediately publish that to Instagram.”
The difference between Instagram and Pinterest
“The basic difference is that Instagram has this element of real-time sharing. It’s the day in the life of your company. Pinterest has more of a library-type aspect. It’s more of a curated collection of timeless content. Both are being consumed on smartphones and tablets enormously, but Pinterest was built for websites. Instagram was originally built for the phones.”
Miles offers this last bit of advice: “If your Chief Executive Officer or boss says, ‘There’s a massive user shift to mobile devices, what are we doing?’ you can easily say, ‘We’re learning our lessons with Instagram, the number-one mobile app out there, and the social media platform, and we’re learning how to do traditional marketing in a mobile context with Instagram’—that’s a completely legitimate answer.”
About Jason Miles
Jason G. Miles is the co-founder of Liberty Jane Clothing, a Seattle-based e-commerce company that he started with his wife in 2008. He also teaches both online and traditional marketing at Northwest University as an adjunct professor in the School of Business Management. He is the author of Instagram Power: Build Your Brand and Reach More Customers with the Power of Pictures.
This article is edited from the transcript of Jason Miles’ appearance on Expert Access Radio. You can listen to his full interview below.
Donna Hedge Burns is the managing editor of Expert Access. Google
