Time and energy required. How much time does it take to maintain a solid presence on the site?People frequently say that social media is not the place to make sales. They say that social media sites are more about PR and goodwill than closing and selling. People say that your followers on social media will not accept your marketing tactics. I think the people making these comments fall into four categories:
1. Social media consultants who want to be paid to consult on the topic of social media marketing, but who don’t want the pressure of being held accountable for revenue-related outcomes.
2. Business writers who have never run a business and have a general impression about how things really work, but no specific profit and loss experience.
3. People who are in a business category that does not lend itself to social media. They assume that all businesses are like theirs.
4. People who are in a business that could generate sales via social media, but who haven’t learned how to do it, and so assume it cannot be done.
The truth is that most types of businesses can benefit from a social media plan and use social media as a key part of their sales cycle. If you’re a businessperson and social media doesn’t provide a way of making sales, then you shouldn’t be doing it. It is too labor intensive, too time consuming, and too challenging to not have direct benefits. But for many businesses, social media is the perfect place to sell—if you know how to do it.
How can you determine if using Instagram is a productive use of your time? We can even extend this question to include other forms of social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter. Is using social media a productive use of your time? It really does depend on the niche you’re in and your position in the market. I would propose the “5-10-20 test.” It is a concept I developed to help people evaluate whether social media is right for them.
Does your business engage with more than five customers? Can you service more than that and grow as they are added? Some businesses only have one customer, such as the federal government, and therefore a social media presence is unnecessary. But even a business such as a custom homebuilder that works with one customer at a time will likely need a pipeline of prospective customers. The number of customers you will work with over the short term is one factor to consider.
Do you plan to launch more than 10 products in the short term? Even if you only have one customer, if you are launching products this frequently, then chances are you would benefit from a social presence and from fans or followers who appreciate what you do. If you’re in an industry that is this product-centric, then chances are you have the opportunity to have a fan base that either loves your specific work or loves the industry or niche. Connecting with those people will likely add real business value.
Is a premium price point possible? If your brand is well known in your niche, would having a solid set of raving fans help add a pricing premium of 20 percent or more? That might be hard for you to predict, but you probably know if you’re in a price-sensitive market niche. You probably also know where your pricing falls on the spectrum of possible prices. If you can position your product as an ultrapremium option in your market, then having a social media presence is a wise choice. Social proof is a significant factor in determining price, and social media is a simple way to acquire social proof.
Instagram is a unique platform unlike any other social media site, but there are similarities, particularly to Twitter and Pinterest, that help us understand how selling can work. The biggest question in your mind should be, Why would I use Instagram as part of my social media marketing strategy?
The simplest answer to this question might be so that you have an effective mobile marketing strategy. In the past when someone said, “You should have a mobile phone strategy,” people thought that meant having a texting or SMS (short message service) strategy, which required you to collect people’s phone numbers. People are not too excited to give away their phone numbers—have you noticed? But if you’re going to do marketing with the singular goal of engaging with people when they are on their smartphones, then an Instagram marketing campaign might be the easiest approach. So when your CEO says, “What’s our mobile marketing approach?” you say, “We’re really excited about mobile marketing—Instagram has been a fantastic tool for us. We are aggressively growing in that space, and our brand is very well positioned.”
Before we discuss the marketing campaign, let’s discuss how Instagram compares with other social media sites. For the sake of brevity, I am only going to compare Instagram with the top social networks. To make the comparisons consistent, I’ll use four factors:
Time and energy required. How much time does it take to maintain a solid presence on the site?
Follower expectations. What do people expect you to do on the site in terms of good social etiquette?
Half-life of the content. How long do followers engage with your content?
Virality. How easy is it for your fans or followers to share your content across social media platforms?
Because Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012, it is a good bet that Facebook will continue to offer integration and support options to boost the Instagram platform, so that’s great. But when it comes to comparing them for marketing purposes, a few key differences emerge when we look at our factors:
Time and energy required. Instagram is much less labor intensive than Facebook. Facebook is conversation intensive, while Instagram infrequently includes conversations. Facebook is a general social media tool, while Instagram is much more targeted, which in my view allows for much more targeted marketing efforts. That being said, if there is one social media platform everyone should be on, it is Facebook.
Follower expectations. Followers on Instagram expect you to publish a few pictures a day—that’s it. They appreciate it when you like their photo, and they are blown away when you leave a comment. Facebook followers, on the other hand, expect you to show up, say something, and be generally conversational with them. They expect real-time participation.
Half-life of the content. Instagram images have a longer life expectancy than a status update on Facebook. They also have a better chance of attracting follower engagement than photos added on Facebook.
Virality. Both Instagram and Facebook are based on the idea of publishing to prompt action. You publish something, and people like it, comment on it, or share it. This happens equally on both sites.
Instagram is more similar to YouTube than it is to Facebook. Your artistic endeavor has long-term value whether it is a video on YouTube or an image on Instagram. There is a real-time sharing element to Instagram that is not as prominent on YouTube, but overall, they are very similar. The key concept to remember is that picture taking is much more popular than video making. Reflect for a moment on your phone or PC hard drive. How many pictures do you have saved versus videos saved? The volume of images we take is enormous. As a marketer, that suggests to me that people may ultimately be engaged with Instagram much more frequently and for longer periods of time than with YouTube. I’m sure as the site develops, researchers will validate whether this theory is correct or not. When it comes to comparing them for marketing purposes, a few key differences emerge when we look at our factors:
Time and energy required. In terms of influencing your followers, Instagram’s image-based sharing is not nearly as powerful as video messages. Then again, it is much simpler to take a nice product shot than it is to shoot and edit a video. Many marketers simply will not be comfortable with creating videos, but if you ask them to take a picture, they’ll be happy to comply.
Follower expectations. On both Instagram and YouTube, followers have lower expectations of participation than on other social media sites. There is no expectation of timely or ongoing conversations.
Half-life of the content. Instagram and YouTube both have a very nice aspect of social sharing related to the half-life of the content. The items you share are engaged with for a long time. YouTube probably has the advantage in this category because it is less focused on real-time sharing.
Virality. Because YouTube has more functionality related to embedding and sharing content outside of YouTube, it probably has an advantage over Instagram when it comes to overall virality. That being said, the simplicity of liking an Instagram image allows it to be socially shared very quickly and very broadly within the Instagram platform. In that regard, Instagram gets the nod. Instagram also allows for easy sharing onto Facebook. It is not unrealistic to think that it will also develop easy image sharing with Pinterest in the future. In 2012, Instagram and Twitter started to have a feud that has impacted sharing functionality between the two. This is likely a long-term situation, as both companies realize that they are in an intense competition for users.
Instagram and Pinterest were the two breakout stars of 2012. While the sites are similar in many ways, the biggest difference is that Instagram was built as a photo editing and sharing app, while Pinterest was built as a traditional website to “share the things you love.” Instagram features images almost exclusively, whereas Pinterest features infographics, memes, how-to graphics, videos, audio clips, and even slide shows.
The other primary difference is the referral link system inherent in Pinterest. In my previous book, Pinterest Power, we chronicled the amazing power of Pinterest to generate referral links. While Instagram doesn’t have this type of system, it does have one huge advantage. It is built for mobile use. When it comes to comparing them for marketing purposes, a few key differences emerge:
Time and energy required. Both can be very efficiently managed and yet can consume a huge amount of time if you let them. There is no reason you cannot see good success by spending 10 to 20 minutes on each site daily.
Follower expectations. Both sites are social media “lite” and don’t require as much social interaction as Facebook or Twitter. The primary social engagement on Instagram is to like an image, with the secondary social engagement being to leave a comment. On Pinterest, the primary social engagement is to repin the item, with the secondary social engagement being the like. Each of these behaviors is accomplished very quickly on both sites.
Half-life of the content. Content on both sites has a fairly long useful existence. The nod probably goes to Pinterest in this category, as the pinboard methodology serves as a helpful way to keep and share things for a very long time.
Virality. It is common to share an item on Instagram and have it receive dozens of likes in a few moments. It is very rare for that to occur on Pinterest. However, the content on Pinterest continues to be liked and commented on for weeks and even months, so over time the amount of engagement on items is probably similar.
Instagram and Twitter appear to be in a bitter feud, and they want users to decide between them. In late 2012, Instagram blocked its images from working inside the Twitter timeline, and Twitter launched its own photo filter functionality to compete directly with what users can do on Instagram. The feud has only been aggravated by the fact that in August 2012, less than two years after being founded, Instagram surpassed Twitter in terms of daily active users.
Of all the social networks, these two seem to be the most similar in terms of the core user behavior. We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 5. The primary reason they behave so similarly is that the primary user behavior on both of them is to follow people.
When it comes to comparing them for marketing purposes, a few key differences emerge when we look at our factors:
Time and energy required. Social sharing on Instagram is as simple as snapping a picture and uploading it. Sure, you can add a message and other details to make it more meaningful, but you don’t have to. The Instagram model is not based on real-time sharing as much as the Twitter model, but it is part of the social norm. Because Twitter comes with the expectation of participating in conversations and conducting real-time sharing, and Instagram doesn’t have those features as part of its social norm, the nod goes to Instagram.
Follower expectations. The primary social action on both Twitter and Instagram is to follow someone. That is the method of voting and showing your support for someone’s work. Twitter followers expect real-time sharing, comments, and responses. Instagram followers expect you to post pictures, which is simpler than having conversations. So the advantage clearly goes to Instagram in this case.
Half-life of the content. A tweet has a social half-life of just a few minutes. A picture shared on Instagram has a much longer useful life. This becomes even more true when you consider the website version of Instagram profiles and how images are displayed for easy viewing.
Virality. Retweeting does occur, but I don’t think most people would consider it common for the average user, with the exception of celebrities or gurus. It is incredibly uncommon for a tweet to go viral. Social sharing on Instagram occurs when an image is liked, and this can frequently occur thousands of times within a few minutes.
There are lots of tactics to advance your cause within Instagram, but if you don’t have a basic marketing strategy outlined, you run the risk of aimlessly going from activity to activity without a clear direction. The following marketing strategy is the one we are using at Liberty Jane Clothing. It works well for physical product sellers, digital product sellers, service providers, and even nonprofits.
We first pioneered this marketing plan when we launched our Pinterest account. The marketing strategy is easy to follow and allows your account to grow rapidly. When we launched this strategy on Pinterest, it allowed us to get over 5,000 followers in our first year on the site. It is proving to be just as effective on Instagram. The steps are as follows.
The first step in a solid marketing plan on Instagram has to be a well-crafted profile. A profile that has authority and credibility is important. Your profile lets existing customers as well as prospective customers know what you’re using Instagram for and what they can expect.
The most basic choice is whether to use a corporate or brand name for your profile or whether to use your personal name. In our case at Liberty Jane Clothing, we decided using our brand name was appropriate. In some situations, a company will have a spokesperson who will use his or her personal profile to represent the company. Whatever you decide, it is important to make it clear to current and prospective customers.
The written description and profile picture are your tools for building a strong profile. The profile description allows for 150 characters. That’s a very short space to clarify who you are. Ideally, a powerful profile will have the following attributes:
A professional headshot or nicely formatted corporate logo
A welcoming greeting
A clear statement about your role in the company
A clear statement about what the company does
A credibility indicator, if you have one you can briefly share
A description of the types of images you’ll share
A call to action, such as “Follow along!”
A link to your most appropriate website
Your absolute best launch strategy is having your existing customers find and follow you on Instagram. Why? They will find and follow their friends when they create an Instagram account, and then they will find and follow you. When they like your images, their friends will be exposed to your brand.
Instagram reportedly has over 100 million users. But even with that number of existing users, there will undoubtedly be a huge number of your current customers that have not heard about the app or not taken the time to download it and set up an account. You want to be the one to invite them to try out the app and begin following you.
Your image strategy is a vital part of your success. If there is one strategic issue to resolve when creating an Instagram marketing plan it is, What is our image-sharing strategy? You want to become a visual curator for your followers, sharing things that you think they will appreciate. Your image strategy, if well conceived, will allow you to develop consistent behavior over time, which instills confidence in your followers. Conventional wisdom says that you should take a quality-over-quantity approach to your image sharing on Instagram. But you’ll have to decide what that means for your situation and whether it is the right approach for your followers. What defines quality photography in your niche or industry? You’ll want to consider:
How frequently should you share images?
What types of images are you going to focus on?
What times of the day or night are you going to share images?
Are there quality or editorial standards you are going to impose on your work?
Who gets to post images, who approves them, and who implements the overall long-term plan?
There is likely a reason your Instagram followers will start following you. To point out the obvious—they saw something in your profile that they liked, and they want to see more of it. Do you know what it is? It might be one of the following concepts:
An insider’s view of your company. Showing your followers a behind-the-scenes look at how you do things is sometimes very appealing.
A view of your private life. If your followers idolize you, then they will likely appreciate seeing you living an exciting life.
A preview of upcoming products or projects. A sneak peek is an easy way to engage mentally and emotionally with your customers.
Now that we have identified a basic marketing strategy for Instagram, we can begin to focus on how best to position your brand on Instagram; then we will focus on a collection of specific monetization strategies.