Melissa Cowser, keynote speaker, presented “Using Instagram to Promote Your Business” at #DFWRocks2014. A few of the highlights of her presentation are listed below.
Instagram for Business
Before you start using Instagram you need to do some research on your market.
- Test it out with a personal account
- business.instagram.com – always posting interesting things
- Determine the “voice” of your brand
Telling Your Story on Instagram
- Who, Where, What is your brand?
- What kind of products do you sell?
- What type of lifestyle can you showcase?
- Action shots – people using your product
- New uses for your product
- “Behind the scenes” look at your office or company culture
Hashtags Gone Wrong on Instagram
- #thathashtagiswaytoolong
- Wrong #hashtag for the subject
- #too #many #hashtags #that #dont #make #sense
Hashtag Hijacking
- Trolls – post repeatedly to trending topics
- #Hashtag takeover – #MCDStories (people were supposed to post happy times at McDonald’s but not all the posts were happy posts)
- #Hashtag stuffing
Instagram Company Case Studies:
Starbucks
- 27 million followers
- Signature #hashtag #starbucks
- What are they selling? PRODUCTS
- What emotions come to mind when looking at their profile?
Takeaways
- You CAN sell your product in a tasteful “non-sell-y” way
- Signature hashtag wins again
eBay
- 44k Followers
- Focus on community
- What are they selling?
Takeaways
- Get your followers involved
Warby Parker
- 118k followers
- What are they selling? BEHIND THE SCENES – GIVING BACK
- Real people, down to earth marketing
- What emotions come to mind when looking at their profile?
Takeaways
- Where are the #hashtags? (They don’t use them)
- Sharing milestones is a great way to connect
- All around – great Instagram marketing
Instagram Contests and Giveaways:
Choose prize and entry method
- Photo entry contest – remind entrants to set photos to ‘public’
- Like and comment contest
- Follow contest
Read more about social media contests and how to run one effectively.
Post ALL of the details
- How to enter, how winner is chosen, rules and regulations
- Market your contest!
- Attention grabbing title
- Promote across networks
- Get involved
- Give it time
- Track and Measure
Instagram Tool Recommendations
Followgram
- Simple interface
- Save inspiring photos to private photo albums in the app
- See follower and engagement statistics at a glance
Iconosquare (formerly Statigram)
- More comprehensive stats
Instagram Must Do’s
- Post regularly (3 to 5 times per week)
- Be authentic – show why you are different
- Use appropriate #hashtags
- Be thankful
- Be engaging – respond using “@” to tag a person
- Get your followers involved
- Track and measure contests and giveaways
Instagram Don’ts
- NO SPAMMING – more than 3 to 4 posts per day is too much (Quality vs. Quantity)
- DO NOT go commenting on your followers photos with your latest product, adding #hashtags or anything that would annoy them
Advertising on Instagram
- “Sponsored” photos and videos promoting brands the user does not already follow
- Consumers will be able to provide feedback – “I don’t want to see this”
- Goal is for ads to be as normal / natural as possible in the feed
- Instagram WILL NOT sell your photos
Question: Can you edit the comment on a photo?
Answer: Just swipe over the picture and it will let you trash the comment so that you can start over.
Question: How effective is it for local marketing?
Answer: Local businesses are hesitant to use Instagram, however it can be very effective for local marketing.
Question: Where can I go to learn about #hashtags? (I have a local business)
Answer: You can search to see if people are using certain #hashtags to find you (ex: Are people using ‘Plano TX’, or just ‘Plano’?). With the search button you can search brands or #hashtags to find more information about your local market. You can use Tagstogram, but it may be a little trial and error to start.
Question: I have a video production company, and I take lots of pictures and usually post them. Should I just pick out the best ones or…?
Answer: You could pick out the best ones, or keep all of them, and create a collage of the different pictures, and put them together. There is Pic Stitch which will let you put the pictures altogether in a collage.
Question: What are the trends of people joining Instagram?
Answer: The older demographics are starting to join Instagram which is why more and more businesses are getting on Instagram. Also potential customers will use #hashtags more on Instagram than on Facebook.
Question: Also you were saying that Instagram has less “noise” than Facebook?
Answer: You don’t have to post as much on Instagram as you would on Facebook to get as much of an impact.
Question: How do you know what gets pushed out?
Answer: You have to look at what you are doing on Facebook to see if you would push it also to Instagram (and vice versa).
Question: If you are doing Instagram to Facebook how should you set that up?
Answer: When you push from Instagram to Facebook then there usually a link. You can’t do Facebook to Instagram though. ClipStitch is a good app to use as well.
