There’s a lot of chatter recently about advertising on Instagram, after their newly announced intentions to begin monetizing their network. Bringing advertising to their platform will certainly be an enormous opportunity for companies to expand their brands’ reaches; over 150 million users are reported in the Instagram community, which is up 15% in the last two months alone. In addition, over 60% of those users are located outside of the US, which creates a valuable advertising avenue for many companies. The issue at hand is how Instagram will integrate advertisements without turning their users off; the network has not even made a cent thus far, and the backlash of implementing any degree of advertising on Instagram is a reality to consider. However, once the brains behind the operation come up with a way to make advertising something that doesn’t leave a bad taste in users’ mouths, this will be a very profitable tool for companies worldwide. But how can advertising on Instagram help your business NOW, before paid ads becomes an option? There are many companies that already run great viral campaigns on Instagram that cost them literally nothing! Here are some of the features that Instagram has to offer that are useful to companies:
- You can now generate an embed code for any Instagram video or photo when you’re viewing them on a desktop browser, which allows you to share that content on any website. This means you can embed your posts to Instagram straight to your company’s blog, to integrate your organic content with your social media presence.
- Social videos are all the rage at present, and Instagram took the feature a step further in an effort to outdo their competition. Instagram’s video feature allows up to 15 seconds of footage, and allows you to select the clip that serves as the cover still that shows up on your account’s feed. You can also upload a video from your camera roll, which means you can build 15 second video ads and post them directly to Instagram for FREE!
- Instagram’s expansion to Android is a plus for companies whose customers are primarily Android users. This has made the target audience significantly wider, now that it’s not limited strictly to iOS users.
- The implementation of photo maps, which came about after Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, allows businesses to connect with their customers by showcasing user-generated content that goes on at their locations. You can use the user ability to geo-tag photos/videos posted to Instagram to your advantage, by offering incentives to people who share content from your place of business to get your name further out there.
We think that Instagram is an exciting social media platform, and we’re anxious to see how it continues to expand. Share your feelings on advertising on Instagram with us in the comments, or tweet to us at @FatGuyMedia!
