Tokenizing Your Selfies to Take Your Instagram to the Next Level
In the winter of 2017, BANKEX successfully tokenized the first Instagram account. We celebrated the milestone and wanted to share the results of our efforts until we suddenly realized that people might not really know what “tokenizing an Instagram account” means. Maybe even you don’t quite grasp the concept. Don’t worry, not only will we explain what exactly that means, we’ll also show you just how impactful tokenizing your Instagram account can be at driving profits (that is, as long as you have at least 5,000 subscribers).
What does Tokenizing an Instagram Account Mean?
800 million Instagrammers as of 2017 upload photos and videos on a regular basis. This means that these Instagrammers are regularly making digital assets. Further, the content they upload can be liked and commented on. All of this, in combination with other evaluations of the Instagram account, can be amalgamated to produce a picture of the account’s monetary value. This value can then be converted to individual units, called tokens, which can be bought and sold. Each token is specific to the Instagrammer who created it, so this means that by purchasing these tokens, fans and supporters of the Instagram account can provide the content creator with the funds he or she needs to grow. Not only that, but with tokenization, the purchaser of the tokens can ultimately share in the profits once the account flourishes. This growth is ultimately the aim of MediaToken.
But Why Instagram?
First of all, it was a simple platform on which we could test the tokenization of digital assets. Instagram accounts have relatively clear and manageable data that can be easily used in tokenization. Think of it as a brief trial run for our future plans, which involve tokenizing things that are vastly more complex — businesses, for example. Eagle-eyed readers might be wondering why we chose specifically Instagram and not Facebook, for example, and this leads to the second point: the Instagram influencer sphere is growing with remarkable speed. In 2017, the total influencer market size was 1.06 billion dollars. In 2019, the size is projected to balloon to 2.38 billion. Influencers on Instagram have successfully made posting photos into careers, some even earning into the millions of dollars with some celebrities earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for individual posts. Therefore, this platform was a fertile one to look into. However, the Instagrammers who managed to achieve this magnitude of success were those who had massive numbers of subscribers and could demand the prices your dad would read in some article online and scoff at, saying, “These kids are being paid millions just to take pictures of themselves!” For the non-gargantuan accounts, a trend of stagnation was observed. This was something we were interested in solving.
BANKEX Experience
For the account we chose to cooperate with, stagnation seemed to be occurring at around the 120,000 subscriber mark. This account was also chosen because the content creator had the exact issue we had aimed MediaToken at fixing: the Instagrammer wanted to develop his account but couldn’t afford the equipment that would upgrade his content, bring in the views, and make him more attractive to more advertisers. He even had a specific plan for how to progress. So BANKEX inaugurated its MediaToken in partnership with this Instagrammer and the results speak for themselves.
The Results
From an initial subscriber count of around 120,000 pre-tokenization at the beginning of March, the number jumped to nearly 145,000 at the beginning of June. Likes and comments also both increased exponentially — likes from around 10,000 to around 25,000 and comments from nearly zero to almost 7,500. But the numbers themselves only tell a part of the story.
Not Just More People, More Engagement
Importantly, the engagement rate spiked post tokenization, with one post achieving a nearly 10% engagement rate, which is significant when compared to the average engagement rate of 3%. This statistic makes sense when one considers that the audience credibility rating of the account — i.e. the rating of how human the account’s audience is — was 99.6%. This meant that the newly found audience wasn’t made of bots, but was instead comprised of real people legitimately interested. These engagement statistics might also be numbers, but they express that not only were more people reached, they say that more people were actively involved in the content, an elusive value that is hard to directly influence.
Final Thoughts
Looking back on this first Instagram tokenization, we’re proud of the results. We are now looking forward to further prospects in tokenization, a concept we hope you now understand (with regards to Instagram at least). And who knows, maybe even you, dear reader, will be the next MediaToken success story.
But what do you think? Do you want to be the next tokenized Instagram star? Join the discussion and let us know your thoughts!
