Using Instagram For Mobile Marketing

Instagram’s meteoric rise to popular use has been clearly evident for some time now, and when Facebook showed an interest in the app that adds a vintage look to your mobile photo uploads, it already confirmed how powerful a marketing tool it can be. Instagram has over 50 million users worldwide, and this clearly interested Facebook in their takeover of the photo-sharing business. Whilst, Instagram still remains a fun way to share photos with friends and family and highlight via other social media channels such as Twitter, it can also be used effectively by companies and organisations for mobile marketing.

Often brands will focus heavily on the hashtag element with Instagram, and by carefully selecting the right hash-tag the belief is there that this will then drive more traffic to their Instagram and other social media channels. Unfortunately, this tactic isn’t as effective especially when using popular hash-tags, as photos published by others will quickly replace yours and you’ll find the engagement rates when using these kinds of hash-tags just aren’t there. So what should you do? It’s far better to create your own unique hash-tags, and allow people to easily copy and paste the hash-tags into their own captions. This has several advantages as it easily lets people search for hash-tags relating to your brand, and easily allows you to determine who your fans are beyond the users that like and follow your photos.

Another tip for using Instagram for mobile marketing is not to rely just on Instagram to increase brand exposure and engagement. Instead, use your other branded social media channels in conjuction. Twitter is often used to increase your audience and engagement. But, it’s also worth adapting the content on other channels such as Pinterest, Facebook, Google+ etc. and getting more coverage. For example adding the Instagram photos to your album photos or de-instragmifying the photos for the other channels. The more creative you are with your approach, the more effecting your marketing strategy will be.

Finally, it’s highly recommended you utilize the geo-tagging feature on Instagram photos which also enables you to transfer to the photos you send to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Foursquare at the same time. This can be used to great effect before conferences or events and even integrated into scavanger-hunt geo-tagging for contests and promotions. Beyond this, retailers, restaurants and brands can promote their products and services via the geo-tagging feature which can let users know their exact location and adds another dimension to the provided customer service.

Guest post by Dragonfly a corporate video production in London