Instagram – what springs to mind? 
Gym bunnies posting filtered shots of near impossible yoga poses and their amazing #eatclean lunches? Definitely. Beyonce and the Kardashians endless airbrushed selfies? Yep. Brands producing bespoke, targeted content? Not so much.
In terms of business marketing, Instagram has until recently been the preserve of brands lending themselves to imagery – particularly fashion, food and travel. Oscar de la Renta’s account @oscarprgirl has previewed collections and backstage insider snaps with huge success, and other fashion houses have followed suit. Airbnb is a brand built for Instagram and has used paid adverts as part of their multi platform ‘Never A Stranger’ campaign.
However, for less image- led brands, Instagram is often seen as a marketer’s nightmare. You can’t have clickable links within posts, which means ROI is pretty tricky to measure, and if you don’t have pretty pictures, what exactly is it for? So it comes as a surprise that New York researcher eMarketer has found that 32% of companies with 100 employees or more are using Instagram today, with a huge 71% saying they are planning to use the platform by 2017. This may mean it will be a more popular marketing tool than Twitter within the next two years.
So how do you innovate on Instagram?
User Generated Content
Successful insta-brands aren’t afraid to involve their audience. From Mercedes Benz to Starbucks and H&M, brands are getting their advocates in on the act. By giving their users hashtags, brands can then repost the best pictures to their own pages, offering prizes and incentives for submitting them. H&M had their followers take photos with giant David Beckham statues; the majority of pictures on the Starbucks feed have been submitted by their customers. Mashable have gone one step further and have arranged ‘Instameets’ and ‘Mashmeets’…inviting their followers to join them at a set time and place to take and share photos.
National Geographic is the most engaged brand on Instagram, according to Shareablee, and this is due to its global network of photographers. For example, three different photographers in different locations took pictures of the recent 'blood moon', resulting in the most social actions of the whole year. Such posts are gaining National Geographic followers at the impressive rate of 82,000 a day.
Cross Platform Campaigns
The brands that are doing it right are using Instagram as part of a wider campaign, but making sure the content is bespoke. Advertising behemoths John Lewis have a mere 45,000 Instagram followers – because the content they share are stills from advertising campaigns and TV adverts that can be seen elsewhere. ASOS, on the other hand, may run a TV campaign, while sharing shots of the models on their lunch break on their Instagram account. Cohesive but bespoke to the platform – and they have 3.5 million followers.
Video Content
Since Instagram launched videos in 2013, brands have been hesitant to get in on the act, with most just rehashing content designed for other platforms. It needs to be bespoke. The BBC have started creating ‘Instafaxes’ – short, subtitled news items especially for Instagram. Ford, Converse and Red Bull have also created some great video content in keeping with their Instagram strategy – and it is paying dividends in terms of mentions and followers.
As with all social media platforms, where the big brands find success, the smaller brands will follow. There is success to be found marketing on Instagram, but as with all social media platforms, it’s not an easy win. The same piece of content does not fit all, and you need to have a defined strategy. So for the 71% of brands planning to be marketing via Instagram – ensure it has a place in your marketing strategy and it’s not a case of hopping on that bandwagon before you start.