Instagram for Marketing

It's been over a year since I signed up to Instagram and like every social media platform there has been some changes. From #Instapics, to #Instadaily and now #Instavideo, the limit is endless for marketeers on mobile app Instagram.

Instagram now has over 150 million users all pounding out hash tags to every photo they post. What easier way to find your market! They are hashtag'ing your business. All you need to do is explore the hash tag of the visual you want to post and discover the niche in the community. For example, when I started the Wonderworld nightclub Instagram profile, I would explore the hashtag '#MK', '#MiltonKeynes', '#MKClubbing' and follow the people within my target audience. This built my following immediately.

My Instapics consisted of cross platform promotion to Facebook and Twitter sites, flyers to different club nights, photos of the venue, the crowd, competitions, products and prices. Never forget the 4 P's: Price, product, place & promotion! Photos are a great way to engage consumers and the mobile app allows you to be creative with it, editing & enhancing pics or even creating collages. But when is the best time to post photos to Instagram?

Simplymeasured has a fantastic study into engagement with Instagram and finds the best time to post pictures. As you can see in the diagram 5pm -6pm is the best time for engagement where you will receive most comments.

When posting pictures to Instagram be sure to share them on Twitter and Facebook to reach new users, especially as Facebook photos have a 39% engagement rate. The ultimate recipe for higher engagement!

As spotted from socialbakers Fans significantly prefer pictures to anything else.

Amongst the growth in photo marketing, we have also seen the rise in video marketing. Have you tried Instavideo yet? I tried it for the first time the other day and received more likes and comments than I have done on any of my Instapics! There has definitely been a boom in Instagram videos, Vine & Youtube that there is more of an appetite for videos.

Video's have always been costly but the fact you can do it on your mobile is making it easier than ever to do a 15 minute shoot with editing facilities, as proven recently in some major brand campaigns. For example lets take a look at Red Bull's unremarkable Instavideo which achieved an astonishing 32,557 likes and 445 comments!

It is no surprise there are rumours to add advertising to Instagram. Do you think this will be a success? Would you pay to advertise? Leave your comments and let me know how you think this will work out....

MK College Guerilla Marketing

Busy at work I didn't have much time to read behind it, but I wondered why I kept seeing this one particular person around Milton Keynes. I went to get my lunch in Xscape and he would be there, shopping in The Centre MK and he would be there.

Friends on Facebook started to post about this mysterious person and within a week or so he went viral!

 

He was handing out cards with a date on and a link to a microsite. When you logged on it was a countdown timer.

The people of MK were so captivated by this Guerilla marketing tactic, that news quickly spread. 

All was revealed that the countdown was for MK College and this character was REKO TAO ZION, also known as the time Traveller.  The Time Traveller’s mission was put together by a team lead by the College’s Head of Marketing & Communications, Kate Raclawski.  “The Time Traveller is part of our wider campaign to reach people aged 16-19 and to encourage them to really think about their future,” she says.

MK Citizen reported the microsite had received 200,000 hits three days before his true identity was revealed. 

At a low budget, I'm surprised more companies are not turning to unexpected and unconventional marketing strategies like this one. We will see if any other local businesses take an unusual approach like this one...

FREE popcorn!

It is not often you get a flyer initiating FREE popcorn, so once I heard about it, I quickly paced over to the stand which surprisingly was a black tent with arrows saying 'this way'.

As soon as I got in the tent there was an Australian lady with 2 pots of popcorn. She asked me to choose one pot, in which I did and found it was empty! The lady asked me to think about poverty and how children must feel when they have no food. This definitely made me analyze what just happened.

 

I was given a stamp and a wrist band, which made me think about it for the rest of the day. I also told my friends and got the attention from locals when they asked why I have a stamp.  

This campaign was from World Vision in the fight to end world poverty, in association with Cineworld and MK Xscape.

Marketers are looking for the best price related promotions and as a consumer we look to buy products on offer and although this was a short term gain, I still wanted free popcorn! 

It was very creative of World Vision and I'll be thinking of a similar way to entice passers by and give them something to think about...