Misty Dawn Seidel

One of my favorite social media platforms is Instagram.  I use Instagram personally for my ongoing The Daily CJ series, which is daily candid photos of my daughter.  I also use Instagram to explore my interest in mobile photography or iPhoneography.  Finally, Instagram is also at the top of my list of the networks to focus my attention on when I am able to make a more concentrated effort of marketing my nature photography, iPhoneography, and inspirational art.

The reasons Instagram is at the top of my marketing platform list of course include that Instagram is a photography-based social media platform.  Going even further, it is more specifically focused on mobile photography.  However, even if my marketing wasn't for photography, Instagram would still be at the top of my list.  I'll explain why I think Instagram should be a part of any marketing strategy.

Visual content such as photos and videos result in high engagement, as it captures attention and maintains that attention (Millwood, 2017).  Most recently, Instagram has introduced an album feature which allows a user to create an Instagram post containing multiple (up to ten) photos.  This increases the ability to tell a story within your Instagram posts (Darbyshire, 2017).  As the saying goes, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'; visual storytelling is responsible for the quickly increasing popularity of Instagram, in my opinion.  So, the ability to post multiple photos within one post further enables the ability to tell a story.

Further exploring the storytelling capabilities and attraction of Instagram, let's consider hashtags.  The popular Instagram hashtag serves many beneficial purposes.  First, the hashtag, obviously, helps caption the photo and, thus, helps further tell the story.  Even more, hashtags bring people together and promote further engagement within the social media platform.  This is because clicking on a hashtag within an Instagram post takes you to other posts within Instagram which use that same tag.  This enables users to explore interests and likes and provides a unique ability for users to find others who share a possibly-rare connection.  Also encouraging further engagement, unique hashtags can be created for brands and even specific campaigns, competitions, or promotions.  For example, I have participated in sponsored campaigns wherein specific hashtags were used to enable location of all posts within that campaign.  Likewise, I have also entered contests which used a unique hashtag representing the contest, in conjunction with the sponsoring brand's hashtag, thus creating engagement and marketing for the brand.

For marketing purposes, the Instagram hashtag is extremely powerful.  All in all, the Instagram platform itself provides strong opportunity for marketing and ongoing consumer engagement.  Instagram enables brands to market themselves without the negative connotations of being advertised to; rather, Instagram makes it fun to interact with marketing campaigns and advertisements.

References:

Darbyshire, R. (2017, March 03). What are the implications of Instagram's new album feature for               marketers? Retrieved July 06, 2017, from http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/03/03/what-are-           the-implications-instagram-s-new-album-feature-marketers

Millwood, A. (2017, April 04). 5 Most Significant Instagram Benefits for Business Marketing.                   Retrieved July 06, 2017, from https://www.yotpo.com/blog/instagram-pics-better/