This document discusses how visual social media marketing, specifically on Instagram, can be used to grow brands online. It provides examples of companies successfully using Instagram to engage customers through hashtag contests, behind-the-scenes photos, geotagging, and crowdsourced content. Ford's "Fiestagram" campaign is highlighted as an example of how they used Instagram hashtags over six weeks to attract new fans and photo entries that helped promote their Fiesta models.

1. Visual Social Media
Marketing
Harnessing Images on Instagram to Grow Your Brand Online

2. Agenda
 Why Visual Social Media Marketing?
 Who are doing it?
 Where is it being done - The Networks?
 Performance Analytics – the tools.
 How it is done ?
 Content and geotagging
 The primacy of hashtags
 Ford’s Fiestagram

3. A picture’s worth a 1000 words
 Social media fatigue has set in.
 Pictures build emotional bonds with your audience and creates
intimacy at a level that text is rarely capable of.
 Being innovative with hash tags and well-timed promotions (e.g.
monthly contests, giveaways) has never been more intuitive.
 Instant image sharing from the convenience of a mobile phone is
a marketing gateway.
 Whether targeting a new microniche or reclaiming followers in a
competitive market, your image can instantly present your digital
collage on screens worldwide.
 Most visual social networks currently support Apps on major
platforms like Apple iOS and Google Android.

4. 40% of brands are on Instagram

5. Ten most followed companies on
Instagram
1. Nike – 1301569
2. MTV – 1288159
3. Starbucks – 1201537
4. Burberry – 759282
5. Gucci – 556425
6. Tifanny& Co. – 541883
7. Audi – 397269
8. Hermes – 142722
9. GE – 138329
10. Mc Donald’s - 38141
youth and lifestyle are natural to
this medium but the presence of
GE shows that it can effectively
extend into more conventional
industries.

6. General Electric

7. Visual Social Networks.
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter
Flickr

8. Tools to manage and amplify.
 Social media analytics:
 Nitrogram - http://nitrogr.am - to measure, benchmark and
boost your presence on Instagram.
 Statigram - http://statigr.am/
 Olapic - http://www.olapic.com/ - a tool to manage and
curate customer created pictures.
 Chute - http://www.getchute.comhelps publishers and
brands incorporate photos and other media (sometimes
submitted directly by users, sometimes aggregated from
social networking sites) onto their own websites.

9. Nitrogr.am
 Understand Your Community Many Instagrammers share
about brands and events without following the official
accounts.
 Find influencers engaging with your photos who are not
following you yet.
 Find Instagrammers using Hashtags relevant to you
 Locate fans in the World map and see clusters of high activity
 Benchmark your brand against your competitors’
 Get Closer to Your Audience: Access valuable information
about the activity surrounding your Instagram account at a
glance.
 Find your influential followers and see where they are.
 See your most engaging photos

10. Statigr.am
 PROMOTE yourinstagram account outside Instagram
 MANAGE your community on a user-friendly platform
 ANALYSE your activity through professional statistics
 ENGAGE your community with photo contests

12. How You Should Use VSMM.
 Show off your products in beautiful environmentsif your product is
mundane—or maybe you sell an intangible service or Mustang
parts—you can still use good placement and take a careful shot.
 Perhaps you can pose some of your more photogenic employees
with it, or take a photo of your product on a beach or a windy cliff.
 If all else fails, you can try putting it on your cat!!
General Electric shows off
a locomotive engine test cell in Grove
City, PA, using a nice color filter and
vignette effect.

13. Give a behind-the-scenes look at your
business.
 It might seem strange to have a photo of your employees goofing off
on your company website, but you don't need to have the same
reservations with Instagram.
 Social media is a great way to connect with your audience and
show your human side without seeming too unprofessional.
 Show your visitors how your product is produced (GE is good at this),
or perhaps walk them through a day in the life of someone at your
company.
 You could profile your employees, or just show them hard at work.
 Instagram is a great platform for highlighting what is unique or special
about your company—like show-and-tell for grownups.

14. Haveyour fans participate
 Participation is what social media is made of and tools like Instagram is a great
place to crowdsource photos.
 You'll probably need to wait until you have a large enough following before you
try this; but, when you do, you can invite your fans to share their photographs by
using a specific hashtag.
 This approach is perfect for conferences and events, or for getting your fans to
show off how they use
yourproduct.

15. Starbucks also uses this technique, instructing its Instagram
visitors, "Tag your coffee photos with #Starbucks!“

16. Engaging participation.
 Hold a contest - A contest is a great way to encourage people to
use your hashtag.
 Offer a free product or service to a random person, or reward a
particularly good shot.
 Build anticipation for upcoming launches or announcements.
 Build the buzz by occasionally snapping a sneak peek or a shot of
the product in production.
 Use a hashtag to link the photos together thematically.

17. Threadless – most photos are
crowdsourced.

18. Mercedes Benz

19. Take advantage of geotagging
 Instagram allows geotagging—i.e., attaching geographical information
to media.
 Geotaggingis of particular use to companies tied in some way to
physical locations.
 You could use geotagging together with a contest to get visitors to your
restaurant or store.
 Food trucks have used Instagramgeotagging very successfully to show
what and where they are serving at a specific time; often, their
customers also snap shots of their food to share, tagged with the
location.
 Even if you are not tied to a geographic location, you can share images
from a conference or industry event, and become a part of that
conversation.

20. Create Brand Content to engage
 Share authentic content, it should look real, be of real things and people
and should take a unique look at your brand or company.
 Build a calendar around content streams and could include behind the
scenes images, events and great angles with close ups of your product.
 Some content will be 'in the moment' and other images should be planned
ahead but ensure content is interesting, attractive, engaging, emotional
and memorable.
 Post often and remember consistently great content will build strong word
of mouth about your brand and keep your followers engaged.

21. Relationships &Hashtags:
 Relationship building:
 Search for, engage with and thank users sharing positive images
associated with your brand.
 Share their positive content on your brand's owned media channels.
 Hashtags:
 Use a unique hashtag for your brand and in time, users may start to use
this hashtag in their own content related to your brand.
 The more users you can encourage to use the hashtag, the better.
 Customer Service and Negative Feedback:
 Engage users who are sharing negative images about your brand.

22. #Hashtag Usage
Singer-songwriter Jason
Mrazwants Instagram
users to translate his new
song, “I Won’t Give Up,”
into one image. The
contest asked fans to tag
their photograph with
#IWONTGIVEUP

23. GE - Inspired
General Electric asked
Instagrammers to take photos
inspired by three areas of GE
innovation and tag them
#GEinspiredme. The contest
winner was flown to London to
take photos of the GE aviation
facility.

24. Brisk - user engagement
Brisk encouraged
users to tag their
photos #briskpic to
enter their photos for
a chance to appear
on a limited edition
can of Brisk Iced Tea
(http://briskpic.com/).

25. #Hashtags to engage
 Charity:Wateruses #charitywater to
collect photos of the important role
water plays in people's lives.
 NBC News (@nbcnews) uses the
#TODAYconcertshashtag to organize
photos from their summer concert
series; choose a second hashtag for
each show (e.g., they used
#KennyTODAY for the Kenny
Chesney concert).

26. Ford’s Fiestagram
 A contest to increase visibility and awareness of its
latest Fiesta models amongst Europe’s
fashion, style, and tech trendsetters.
 A campaign run through Facebook via Instagram
where a new hashtag associated with one of the
Fiesta’s high-tech features, such as #entry, #music
and #hidden was provided.

28. Ford Fiesta – An Example
 People would then submit photos on Instagram, tagged with
―#Fiestagram‖ and the week’s particular hashtag to join the
campaign.
 The six-week 2011 campaign attracted 120,000 new Facebook fans
and over 16,000 photo entries.
 For Ford, Instagram was the perfect vehicle for transcending
European language barriers to create a simple and effective
giveaway contest that had a wide and resonant reach.