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Make Selfie Obsessed Instagram Your Best Business Buddy

Monday 11 August 2014

8 minute read

By Sarah Burns

Instagram. If you're "of a certain age" you may not have any positive feelings towards this platform, the concept of selfies or anything else of its kind.

However, you should be embracing it - Instagram can do wonders for brand awareness.

Despite your niece or best friend - whichever applies, one of them will be doing this - spending 3 hours "in hair and make up" just to take 79 photos from slightly different angles, to apply varying filters over just one photo for a "selfie"... it does have benefits.

Companies and brands are quickly jumping on the bandwagon of visual self-expression.

Instagram, the social media platform allowing users to share images with followers and strangers alike via hashtags [#], is free to use and rapidly becoming a sure fire way to get their name "out there".

As a growing platform with over 200 million users at the end of March, 2014, with 75 million as daily Instagrammers, it is rapidly taking over Facebook as "the business go-to platform".

Instagram is also a huge advocate of sharing, allowing users to automatically post their images onto Facebook and Twitter. 

As the mobile culture continually expands, people's obsession with their smart phones means that photo snapping and sharing as never been more popular or easier.

#InstagramAdvantages

It's true that you can't really structure marketing messages with Instagram in a clear as day way like with LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter et al, but you can subliminally build awareness and trust, like never before.

Our favourite reasons for joining Instagram and utilising the platform for your business are:

  1. Make a more personable, likeable business - introduce employees, the personality of your business shining through will make potential customers warm to you
  2. Direct potential leads to other social networks (Twitter, Facebook...)
  3. "Behind the scenes" feel - invite them into see exactly how things work in your office
  4. Window shopping - sell products, rather than services? A perfect way to advertise and entice, would be using Instagram at its most optimised
  5. Test products - offering an insight to how products work with short video clips [also available on Instagram] ensures people will trust you more
  6. "Live" feel - sharing "right now" visuals [team meetings, in the office, events, days out, holidays] offers not only an insight but a higher level of trust, you want customers there with you at every step of the company journey

Your guide to Instagram... 

Instagram is a little different to how we usually market on social media, unless you're a seasoned user of Instagram, Pinterest, Vine or YouTube you may need a little guide to help you get started. 

Guess what?

We've produced exactly that...

01. Make your account "you"

Always remembering brand guidelines and corporate consistency, it should be clearly identifiable as 

  1. A company account - i.e. have your company name and logo as the account name and profile picture
  2. Don't put rude, offensive images on that will harm your reputation. Yes, the team might have got incredibly drunk, but your clients shouldn't find that sort of material!

02. Balancing your posts

As with all social media accounts, the amount and variety of posts you create have a crucial impact on how you're received by your audience.

Don't upload all of your photos in one go - particularly if there are lots of them - and be aware that the Instagram news feed leaves previous posts that are up to 15 hours old live.

You don't have to post daily or multiple times daily (that would err on the side of bad, rather than good). 

The top 100 brands on Instagram typically post an average of 5.5 times a week.

In line with Rule #1, be aware that yes it's good business to post business / office-related photography, but the team at a meal or at a local evening looking relaxed is also good material!  Just don't take that "relaxed attitude" too far!

03. Follower ratios

Yes, we go on about this a lot in relation to Twitter, but similar rules apply. Don't follow everybody who follows you - it is not a game. Equally, don't wait for followers to come to you. Decide - using your own common sense, other profiles, clients, acquaintances and the helpful "People You May Know"-like tool to decide who has similar ideas and content that you should be connected to.

Top tip: Don't like their content? You'll see it clogging up your news feed each time, if you're only following for the sake of garnering more followers.

If you're looking to embark on a website build project, whether it's completely from scratch or a site refresh, our ebook will give you the knowledge to make your project as stress-free as possible.

The Website Design Handbook for Businesses

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