As emerging social media trends start to take hold and appeal to consumers, so too do they begin to complement the overall integrated marketing communications of a business. When Facebook first debuted, it would have been pure speculation to envision the type of platform is has become today in terms of how businesses use it to interact and engage with their customers. Now the emergence of other lesser known platforms like Pinterest and Instagram has brought newer ways for companies to engage with their consumers.
Instagram is a picture (and now video clip) sharing application that was founded in 2010 and sold to Facebook in 2012 for whopping $1 billion. It has since grown to 150 million active monthly users and allows those users to share pictures that can be taken with different filters, giving it a creative look and appeal. Companies like Starbucks and Mercedes-Benz have taken advantage of one of the newest trends in social media and have applied it to their overall integrated marketing communications.
Ways in which businesses can engage consumers on Instagram include:
- Take creative and visually epic photos- Since Instagram is all about photos and short videos, it's incumbent upon you as company to take pictures that people can “ooo and ahh” about. Make people like your photos and comment on them due to their sheer awesomeness.
- Hashtag properly- If you were to look at your typical post on Instagram, you would notice a different use of hashtags than what is being used on Twitter. Instagram users pile them on in mass—just to bet certain that every fine detail of the delicious meal they just cooked is covered. Engage your customers with a variety of different hashtags.
- Use Instagram appropriately for your industry- There are different ways that businesses in different industries should be using Instagram. The aforementioned examples of Starbuck and Mercedes offer good insight into this. If you’re a restaurant, take a lot of pictures of food. If you sell computers, take some sweet, filtered shots of some of the computers you’re selling.
There is a lot more that goes into owning a successful Instagram presence—most notably the practice of staying active. Jump on the latest bandwagon and snap some cool shots of your own!
