Instagram has become well-known here mainly by the purchase of Facebook in the spring of 2012. The figures were impressive, one billion dollars (about 760 million euros) was the purchase price, at which time Instagram had 12 employees and 30 million users. These users and the underlying growth have probably pushed the price up. In September 2012 the limit of 100 million users was reached.
The basic principle
The first basic principle of Instagram is the functional reduction on the recording of images. Text plays only a subordinate role, visual and emotions are the main focus. For this purpose, optical means such as, for example, the square images in the lists and overviews help.
Social Network
The second basic principle is the concentration on apps for recording the images. Instagram was started with the iPhone, Android has been supported for a long time. The website itself only points to the download of the two apps. The minimum requirement is currently iOS 4.3 and Android 2.2. However, there are so-called web profiles since November 2012 that allow users to publish their images on their own site. However, the setting of pictures still works over the app. Very interesting for a weaving view is the Instagram-own blog, on which also highlights are shown.
Companies at Instagram
A login is required to use Instagram. It can only be created via the apps. The app itself is extremely simple. In addition to the own profile, there is the camera for taking photos and behind an asterisk the area where you can search for pictures. When taking photographs, there is also a success secret from Instagram: the filters. There's nothing spectacular about it, but certain effects, such as "old" photos, have been very successful in Instagram's history. Basically, Instagram provides a very simple form of image processing at no additional cost and virtually a mouse click.
Campaigns
The service is beneficial, that the use is so simple and every smartphone has a reasonable camera installed. Instagram has a certain preference because of the purchase of Facebook and the concentration on apps. Nevertheless, the range of functions is, of course, comparable with other image-oriented services such as Tumblr and Pinterest. Both services, however, are much more web-oriented. Tumblr is an image blog and Pinterest is the focus of the pinnacle, ie, the memorizing of images on the own wallboard, whereas Instagram focuses on the recording and tagging of images.
Instagram also works basically with its own social network functions, without being an independent network. It is not a Facebook or Google + competitor, but rather a social service with some network functions. The most important is that there are users and their profiles. Users are identified by an @ sign in the Instagram universe.
These users can, in turn, have followers, followers of German, and even follow other users. If you follow someone, you get the pictures of the corresponding user in your own stream. So the base is the principle already well known from Twitter.
The second social element, which is reminiscent of Twitter, is the hashtag. Hashtags are keywords, they have been in the blog world for a long time. Each post, that is, every image that a user picks up and publishes, can contain one or more hashtags identified with the hash character # (also called double cross or diamond). The connection to the outside world is then done by sharing the pictures in other social networks. First of all, of course, here is Facebook. The user can simply connect his account to the Facebook account and then choose whether the photo is visible to friends (default) or to everyone. This is, of course, the starting point for marketing campaigns, because the other channels are just beginning to be much stronger at brands and companies, and they need to "help" the visitors of the Instagram channel.
In contrast to Facebook, companies do not have any special pages, but normal profiles. They are searchable as users in the Instagram app. The list of currently highly successful companies is headed by American brands. Instagram is of course popular in visual industries. The first successful brands in Instagram come from fashion, lifestyle and other emotional industries. The best are the usual suspects like Starbucks and Burberry, but even smaller brands have been able to build up a loyal fan base over the past months and years.
Instagram is similar in the basic functions with Twitter, but a difference should be observed in any case: Instagram is not quite so fast, since the main content are pictures. For example, if you want to post more than one picture, you should do this in a timely manner so as not to overwhelm the stream of your followers. The second important point is to post as authentically as possible and not just to place product images in the foreground. Photos should also be as creative and sophisticated as possible.
An interesting reference for this is Starbucks, which for the most part use high-quality photos from different perspectives and partly with artistic requirements. Here, like Facebook marketing, it is recommended to plan in the long term where content, ie pictures, should come from and who should post them when. However, most companies do not have large amounts of self-posted photos, but a photo per week up to a maximum of one per day.
A marketing project in Instagram can take different forms. In general, the goal is to gain followers at the beginning and thus increase their own range. Here, of course, the quality of the posted content plays a role. It is also helpful in Instagram to promote interactivity and to use viral effects. However, the path is quite far away when you start from zero. You should definitely use other channels, be it Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. The Hashtag is meanwhile the main hanger for Mitmach campaigns. For example, a hashtag is included in youtube videos that contains the prompt to post to this hashtag on Instagram.
For the posting itself one needs an emotional hanger. For example, the ice cream brand Ben & Jerrys, with the Hashtag # captureeuphoria, called an image contest for emotional photos. The core element of such a competition is the incentive that it creates for users. In the case of Ben & Jerrys, this was the local attention that the users came to know when they found themselves on billboards and other advertisements. Of course, "simple" prices are a possible approach. In general, this is about which incentives are particularly interesting for the respective target group. A similar call started the jeweler Tiffany with #TrueLovePictures. In addition to the image call on Instagram, a complete microsite was created here.
Interesting services
Instagram was here only part of the entire campaign. The Instagram information, in turn, was read from the Instagram API, the programming interface, and integrated on the Microsite. Under the keyword Love Is Everywhere, geographical love messages were transcribed to a Google map and recommended for romantic occasions in the area of The Art of Romance.
A particularly important role in the Instagram universe is played by the API for programming access. Here, for example, you get all the pictures to a particular user or hashtag. In addition, additional information, such as geographic data, is also available. You will find the detailed documentation at http://instagram.com/developer/. The basic step is to register the application. You need an Instagram account and you have to answer a few questions. Access is then made via the HTTPS-accessible subdomain.
Legal
The desired information is identified by URL as directories, so it is a REST web service. Basic information for a user can be accessed via / users / user-id, and / users / user-id / media / recent to get the latest user images. The return is via a JSON object. If an authentication is necessary for an application, for example if you want to provide an Instagram login or require user-specific data, this is done with OAuth 2.0 as a security protocol. Unlike Facebook, there are some limitations in the Instagram API.
For the login with Instagram, there are no prefabricated fragments as with Facebook and generally Instagram prohibits the posting of images via a programming interface. That is, the API is mainly suitable for data queries. Caution must also be exercised when conducting mass surveys. Instagram allows access to up to 30 images per click, and caching is only allowed as a caching for performance problems for a short time.
On the basis of the Instagram API, not only campaign microsites, but also various instagram support sites have established themselves on the web. The best known is presumably Statigram, which provides statistics as well as the usual Instagram functions like sequences and likenesses. Statigram also provides value-added services for marketing its own Instagram account. In this case, the Instagram user can create a freely available URL, a widget with an image gallery for integration into their website, and a Facebook tab.
Conclusion
From a legal point of view, as a company in the social network, they sometimes move in the gray zone as far as copyright is concerned. It is therefore important to be absolutely clean in the case of pictures which you post yourself, that is, to use only your own picture material or material with clarified rights. And even for competitions, legal issues are not without problems. If, for example, you leave Instagram on your own website without using filter images directly from the API, you leave the area of Instagram's responsibility and can be held responsible for inappropriate content. An intermediate filter can be used here.
Instagram itself has not necessarily helped to remove the legal concerns. At the end of 2012, data protection was revised so that information on users and devices could also be shared with Facebook. Although this was justified by the integration, since many usage and exploitation rights were transferred to Instagram's images, a protest movement developed, which ultimately led to Instagram having to give in.
Instagram is extremely successful in America. Many international brands use Instagram already to build their own followers and for different kinds of picture contests. Slowly but surely this trend also spills over to the United States. The secret of both users and company marketing is certainly the simplicity: the apps are very user-friendly. For companies, profiles and campaigns are easy to set up and even querying data works with a simple REST interface.
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