Guide to Using Instagram for Brands
Jan 23, 2016
Top 7 Tips for Instagram
I was talking to Jane Leung, who has to be my favourite Canadian digital marketer in Singapore. She inspired me to think more about what brands can best do on Instagram, to attract talent. In today’s startup economy, one of the deal breakers of success is assembling a talented team that has great chemistry. Instagram, not LinkedIn, has to be the place where this “back stage pass” occurs.
#SkillsGap, describes how professionals are building their skills this year.
It’s my hope that those startups and brands that have yet to adopt Instagram, in 2016 will. This article is to help with that and act as a guide as to what kind of content makes the most sense.
Instagram is one of the fastest growing networks and more importantly, still has organic reach. This will not last forever, so adoption by brands is critical. Instagram and Pinterest are key visual channels that need to be optimized in 2016.
Your company Instagram, is a significant landing page. With native hashtag targeting of up to 30 per post, it’s also a highly targetable network especially relevant to B2C for digital natives. Though in 2016, even B2B marketing will take place on this easy to navigate and attractive channel.
Instagram is a goldmine if you know how to do branding well. It’s one of the easiest channels to understand a brand in under 10 seconds, it’s micro impression management at its most luxurious, grandiose and glamorous.
IG represents the beauty-myth of social networks. Looks matter in the real world, and if your IG is ugly, you will be penalized.
Grow your Account — the Numbers game matters
1- Post Frequently. This is the biggest mistake most brands make on a channel like Instagram, they assume quality means not posting every day. This is a mistake, because the best IG accounts will have high volume and simple delete the posts that weren’t quality later on! Since IG is glance content, if you have quality photography, you could post three times a day, because only those people online at that exact time will even notice.
Celebrate your Culture
2- This is not sales. This is company culture exhibition, this is, how to be authentic and demonstrate your transparency as a company. So, focus on your employees, group photos with active linked accounts of employees. Show them being positive, having fun, being together. This illustrates that your company has work-life balance and you value their health, leisure and psych-social comfort.
Engage with Community
3- Make a list of the top 100 #hashtags related to your brand and engage with the community that posts related to those. Instagram, like any network is not just a broadcasting channel but a social platform for outreach, PR, community building and relationship optimization. If you appreciate others, they will appreciate you, the age old rule of reciprocity is strongly imprinted on IG.
Learn Seduction
4- In Glace content you are competing with tens of millions of images, photographs, sexy seductive tricks of the trade of viral marketers. So take photographs, but also take cheeky and even controversial staging on occasion, use humour, use daring, use your most charismatic employees and partners. So learn to play the game, learn to be seductive in your visual branding. The hot reality of IG is that seduction is part of the branding. Because attention occurs in seconds here.
Cultural Story Telling
5- Tell stories with your photographies, stage them, think of the concept before you implement them. Show your leaders in unusual positions with props and authentic snapshots, try to create unique visual experiencesthat show your true colours as a team, as a collective identity. Storytelling can take many forms, but the best IG brands do this exceedingly well. This taps into the primitive brain where story telling and visuals are part of our tribal neurocortex.
Imitate the Best
6- Do as others your respect do. In society imitation is paramount. Not because you don’t have an identity, but because the collective norms matter. Find on IG the companies you most relate to, that do similar things as your company and do what they do better than them! It’s that simple. For example, I love how unbounce, does collective photos on their IG.
Social Media Participation
7- It’s not enough to have a brand Instagram. Your employees have to growth hack the medium, they have to be onboard with what channels are most important to you company’s growth and identity. If they are not, your reach, amplification and cultural footprint will be several limited. The entire idea of having a brand account is that it’s your community online, it’s not you pretending to be present, it’s a reality of engagement you have to all create. Going back to our example of unbounce, I can click on a group photo, and visit individual employees since they are linked. As a Millennial prospective employee, this gives me the idea that the social bonds of this community are real.
This is not my first time talking about Instagram, and it won’t be my last. People matter, and your brand is at its root a collection of the people intimate to your company. We are primed to be social beings, and this is the best way to allow brand advocates to identify with you. Read Jane’s inspirational post: 10 Steps to Instagram Success for Unsexy Companies.
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