Instagram Marketing Strategy Video Lecture | Instagram for Marketing by Andrew Macarthy

in order to get the most benefit out of
Instagram for your business as possible
it helps to understand the culture of
Instagram and what differentiates it
from other social networks it's an
understanding that a lot of the big
brands on Instagram have perfected and
it's reflected in the content that they
share so let's take a closer look the
top 10 brands on Instagram have tens of
millions of followers and hashtag
mentions between them brands like Nike
starbucks and adidas consistently ranked
at the top of the Instagram analytics
charts by nitro gram and you can see
this chart here and apart from the fact
that they were already huge brands
before Instagram launched their
continued success on the platform comes
from knowing the mentality and culture
of Instagram users the types of people
who provide the platform and mirror this
in their own content so let's look at
some examples Starbucks is one of the
biggest brands on Instagram and in all
of its content it expertly and
consistently reflects instagrams
creative earthy RT culture and it
targets Young and upwardly mobile
customers in his photos as you can see
from the photos on this page the
majority of them weren't photos that
were just taken off the cuff it's
noticeable that quite a lot of time has
been taken to compose the shots adjust
the lighting and make the photos as nice
as they can be with editing before the
photos published to Instagram like
millions of users on Instagram starbucks
takes the time to post photos that it is
proud of photos that its fans photos
that don't just promote the brand but
are also aesthetically impressive and
pleasing to the eye
if this is the kind of attitude that
lots of Instagram users have Starbucks
is very clever to emulate it now I'm not
saying that this approach will work for
every type of brand that is on Instagram
I'm sure there's an audience for almost
any brand on the platform but in general
terms it's these types of audiences that
the biggest brands on Instagram tend to
focus on in research by pew internet
they found that in households earning
over seventy five thousand dollars these
people and their peers were the types
who are most likely to use Instagram and
away from reflecting the mentality and
values of many Instagram users starbucks
also pics photos from its fans to repost
on its own Instagram account so in this
example you can see that this user ad
posted this photo of his Starbucks drink
with a Christmas tree background and
Starbucks reached out to him to see if
they could use it as their facebook
cover image and of course he was
overjoyed and said yes and in another
example they reposted a photo of one of
their drinks from a different user and
this is something that Starbucks does
from time to time now and again and as
well as that creative earthy RT side to
Instagram users it also appeals to their
vanity of course people don't like to
admit that their vain but if there's
anything that Instagram and other social
media has taught us it's that
consciously or not people love to post
content that is going to be popular and
shared a lot with others so you can
imagine how these people felt when a big
brand like Starbucks shared their
content and in addition using starbucks
as another example it taps into the
popularity of some of their biggest
names on its degrom to bolster its own
content so in this example this user
called Color Me creative who at a time
and almost a million followers on
Instagram
decorated this starbucks coffee cup and
asked her fans to let starbucks know
about it and see if they would repost it
and of course starbucks did repost it as
well as tagging the users in it this is
the colony creative count on this CEO
personal account and you can imagine the
goodwill that that rubbed off on the
artist and all of the artists friends
and the fans of starbucks starbucks
despite being a multinational massive
company positions itself as just one of
the gang one of the ordinary instagram
users posting interesting RT and
creative photos and of course after all
of this a couple of months later down
the line the same user color me creative
posted another starbucks cup artwork and
so the cycle continues and to help you
understand the types of photos that get
posted to Instagram compared to other
social networks and really hammer that
point home take a look at this post from
like women that was published on
Instagram and it advertises these new
kaleidoscopic tights and here is the
same post advertising the same tights on
Facebook and Twitter and last up it's
the same types but this time on
pinterest you can see that the Instagram
one is kind of RT got this two-tone
color between the wall and the pavement
and it's composed in a nice RT way with
these straight lines the facebook one
and the twitter one are different shots
that work better on those networks nice
and colorful door catch people's eyes in
the news feed and in this portrait style
which suits Facebook's newsfeed the
Twitter one horizontal so it fits the
Twitter newsfeed better and Pinterest
especially a site where click throughs
are massive business it has this more
mood body simple white background
advertising a product that people can
click through to buy kind of style to it
and Nike especially does this a lot you
can see the conscious effort that
they've made between this post for the
same product as this this and this so as
i mentioned instagram has broadly a
different kind of vibe to other social
networks and it's a good idea to
research the kind of photos taken by the
top brands on instagram in you'll feel
the business to see the type of content
that they're sharing and try to reflect
this culture in your own photos once
again it's not going to totally suit
every type of business but broadly this
is the culture of Instagram