Figure 16.1 Your photo map visually represents the geotag data. You can choose to name a location as well. I frequently choose Tapps Island Golf Course as the named location, since it’s near the dock where I like to take pictures.
Strengthening local marketing efforts via social media is a hot topic. And the good news is that the tools and techniques for integrating rich media into your local marketing efforts have never been better. In this chapter, we’ll look at how local businesses and nonprofits can leverage the power of Instagram to make a deeper impact within their communities.
Isn’t it about time the Web 2.0 revolution focused on local business? When the World Wide Web came out, it provided the opportunity for you to connect with people who shared similar interests with you but who might be separated by a vast distance. These affinity-based sites and communities changed our lives. But are you any closer to interesting people in your local community?
The period of affinity-based social media was really from 2004 to 2010. The large-scale platforms that connected people according to their similarities were the “killer apps” of the Web 2.0 movement. Myspace was the first commercial hit focused primarily on music. It started in August 2003. Facebook was started in February 2004, and although it seemed to be a runner-up for the first few years, it eventually caught and surpassed Myspace. YouTube launched in February 2005. Twitter launched in March 2006. Each of these sites was affinity or function based, without deliberate emphasis on strengthening local connections. They weren’t bad for local marketers, but they weren’t designed for them either.
But the emphasis began to shift in 2010 with the breakout success of the Foursquare app, the social network that promised to connect people with businesses. It technically started in March 2009, but as with most things, people didn’t understand the gravity of the shift in thinking that it represented until sometime in 2010.
The current emphasis is to connect people by geography as well as affinity. Instagram plays in this space brilliantly, working to connect people by interests and by locations. Local businesses have an opportunity to enhance their interaction with their community in a new and exciting way using Instagram. Let’s look at the ways local businesses can leverage the local nature of Instagram.
At a very high level, there are just two tools for which you can use Instagram to engage locally. First, you can use location-based information, which is a function of a smartphone’s GPS technology. Or you can use hashtags, which don’t technically relate to a location, but they can relate to anything you want, including an event or special location.
The two tools—location-based information and hashtags—provide an opportunity for countless engagement tactics for the creative marketer. Let’s look at six tactics that are commonly used today.
Instagram was updated in 2012 to include location-centric information so that each of your pictures can be plotted on a map (see Figure 16.1). The geographic information can be shared by users, if they wish, by toggling the Photo Map function on or off on their Home tab. If the Photo Map feature is enabled, then Instagrammers can add their business locations to their image information as they are finalizing their pictures.
Figure 16.1 Your photo map visually represents the geotag data. You can choose to name a location as well. I frequently choose Tapps Island Golf Course as the named location, since it’s near the dock where I like to take pictures.
To ensure that your business address and name are properly displayed on Instagram in the Name This Location section, you need to tag your business as you’re uploading an image onto Instagram and see what information is presented. If you don’t like the way the information is presented, then you can update it. All the business and location information that is displayed in the search results on Instagram comes from the Foursquare location database. To modify it, you must join Foursquare, go to the Check-In tab, search for the place you want, and then tap Add This Place.
We are just in the very early days of utilizing geotags for local marketing. The initial effort is simply to have prospective customers share with their friends about their interactions with your business. And the Foursquare app gives you additional functionality to engage with customers. Instagram leveraged the Foursquare location database, and it won’t be long until future apps and social media sites are built to take further advantage of the data.
A photo walk is just what you might imagine—people joining together to walk and take pictures. You meet up, walk around, take pictures, and have a good time with other photographers. You can find out more details about photo walks in your area by searching on http://worldwide photowalk.com/locations/.
Once you experience a photo walk, you can plan to organize one for your area, if it makes sense for your business. Most photo walks are best done in an area that is tourist focused, say, downtown in a big city or in a getaway or vacation spot. If you’re running a business in one of those spots, then you can coordinate photo walks that start and stop at your establishment. It’s an easy way to meet new prospective customers.
Any time you conduct an activity like a special event, fund-raiser, summer picnic, or even just a regular Sunday church service, you have the opportunity to include participants in the event by having them share images using a hashtag. Simply announce the hashtag in your promotional materials and let the crowd do the rest.
Do you need to mobilize a special event like a rally, sporting event, or concert? A special hashtag will allow all the participants to tag their photos so they can be shared by all. Your job is to simply create the hashtag.
Lots of photo contests can be done online in various formats. But there isn’t any reason why a contest cannot be done locally, too. The elements are the same, including:
Launching your contest with a specific call to action.
Having a clear set of rules and guidelines posted online, including a clear start date and end date.
Driving user behavior toward a goal that helps share your brand’s story and promotes your work.
Making the activity fun and engaging.
Making entering easy, for example, “To enter, simply include the hashtag #Contest1234.”
Having an amazing prize. People will do an incredible amount of work for a prize that they highly covet. Think through how your prizes can be unique and exciting for people who like your brand.
We’ve mentioned our dislike of discounts in a previous chapter, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use Instagram to promote special offers. If you’re a local business, give away a free item on a certain day and time. See how powerful your Instagram advertising can get. Learn to use Instagram for this type of direct marketing and integrate it into your business calendar. Launching a new product? Give away a secondary item for free at the same time to draw a large crowd. Staying open later in the summer? Give away a special gift for people who visit in the last hour of your new schedule each day for the first week.
When the owners of Comodo, a new restaurant in New York City, noticed that many of their patrons were taking Instagram photos of their meals, the creative owners decided to make it even easier for customers to use Instagram in the restaurant. They created the hashtag #Comodomenu and shared it at the bottom of the physical menu. That simple action strengthened and guided the behavior of their customers.
Now when guests sit down to order a meal, they can search quickly on Instagram for that hashtag and see a picture of the food from a prior guest’s perspective. The menu not only lets customers see what they are going to get, but also allows them to pass on the tradition by sharing a picture of their menu items when they arrive at the table. Of course, all those guests’ Instagram followers also see it and are influenced to visit Comodo, too.
United Generation is the high school and college program at Puyallup Foursquare Church. It is a small-town church making a really big impact. Don’t be confused by the name; it has nothing to do with the Foursquare app discussed previously in this chapter. The church had over 8,000 people in attendance last Easter and integrates social media into its work in several ways. As you can see from Figure 16.2, the youth ministry uses Instagram.
Figure 16.2 United Generation Youth Ministry is a ministry of Puyallup Foursquare Church. No, it is not associated with the Foursquare app mentioned previously in this chapter.
I asked Erika Blanco, United Generation’s social media team leader, how she became familiar with Instagram. She said:
Like many people with an interest in technology, I frequently find myself investigating new platforms and testing their usability. Who wants to be left behind when the next big thing comes along? Most stay on my phone and get deleted after about six months, but Instagram was much different. It instantly became my favorite social media platform because of its simplicity and visual strength. As a new mom, it was my digital photo album. My son’s first smile, first steps, and all else were easily snapped, shared, and seen by our family and friends.
Erika’s personal use of Instagram led to the church team adopting it for its work with local teens as well. The team regularly ministers to over 1,000 teenagers a week. When I asked her how that came about, she told me:
When we love something in our personal lives, we are eager to integrate it into our church communications strategy. Our youth (high school and college) ministries were the first to use Instagram. This audience is more resilient to change and also more technologically literate. The value was instantly clear—visual imagery. In our communications department, we are constantly editing what we are doing by “cutting the words in half, and then in half again.” Our audience is familiar with media and marketing by mainstream companies who spend billions every year to create the perfect image. To compete with an attention span that is conditioned to viewing images and quick messages, we are constantly trying to show rather than explain our message. Instagram is perfect for that strategy.
The United Generation team members have a solid set of action steps to accomplish their Instagram work. Here is how they describe it:
We have a photography team, a social media team, and a graphics team that all partner together. This team is constantly expanding and giving creative people an outlet. Multiple people managing one account has been the most successful strategy for us.
In an effort to improve our quality of pictures as well as promote the creative community, we have a rotation of volunteer photographers that shoot our services, events, and meetings. They send us their best edits and we post. The photographers have included Daniel Dillard, Jeff Marsh, Phu Nguyen, Caroline Lindsley, Nicole Gibbons, and many others.
I asked Erika what advice she’d have for new Instagram users, if she could boil down the United Generation Youth Ministry’s experiences, and she suggested the following:
1. With every post keep in mind: if I were reading this without any context, would I . . .
a. Know what’s going on?
b. Feel involved or included?
c. Be compelled to join?
2. Be mindful to engage beyond your post. Just because you posted it doesn’t mean that everyone knows about it!
3. Don’t assume people know what you are posting. We have found that a post with little context is worse than posting nothing at all.
4. Keep it clear.
5. Keep it consistent.
6. Leave them wanting more.