The Innovative Instagram free essay sample

Marketing Technology Analysis Overview of the Product/Service/Technology Instagram is a program that designed for social networking and photo sharing, which was launched in 10th 2010. Till April 2012, there were over 30 million registered users on instagram (Galle, 2012). In early 2012, Facebook bought instagram for one billion dollars, which has made Instagram a hot topic. What’s more, famous B2C brands such as Starbucks and MTV dominant on Instagram currently, and 25% of the brands are posting photos on instagram at least once every week (Galle, 2012).This service facilitates the users to take photos by the built-in camera or upload from their computers, and applying a digital filter to them, which provides professional editing that includes amending the colors from dull to glow or even altering for a more vintage effect (Dan, 2012). After the editing, it is extremely easy to share with other instagram users through various social network services (Dan, 2010). The pleasure of using instagram is it makes the users themselves feel like artists, and the fascination of instagram for those marketers is gaining attention and interests from general customers. As Lavrusik and Cameron (2011) stated, â€Å"The posts with images can be more appealing than pure texts for social media users†. Instagram unquestionably revolutionized the mobile photo editing, and undoubtedly has huge potential for branding and outreaching (Dyer, 2012). For those marketers who want to promote their new products, take a nice snapshot, apply the professional filter to the picture and add a captivating caption, will surly tap into the audience.The use of instagram is really simple that all the procedures can be done on their smart phone or on webinstagram, no complicated procedures are required from the users, basically just includes taking photos, editing photos, sharing photos and following other users’ photo streams. There is an age restriction however where the terms of agreements requires participants to be over the age of thirteen years old and strictly prohibits anything deemed sexual or sexually suggestive. A Personal ReviewSpeaking of the main strengths of Instagram, there are six points as following: * It has fourteen free professional filters that give photos an instant ma keover, incorporating bighting, shadowing, and recoloring. * It supports iPhone, ipad, mac, web, android system, which indicates that instagram is widely accessible for all social media users. * It connects with Facebook, twitter, and so many other social networks, so when the users uploaded one photo on instagram, all their social media friends can access to it which effortlessly makes this picture a fame. The imbedded searchable database can reach your friends from your Facebook friends list and pick out the one who use instagram; also there will be new instagram initiatives emerging, whose number is increasing and continuous (Parker, 2012). * It is a creative way for marketing development, which is going to be elaborated in following topics. * As a striking social platform, instagram brings people even more closer, especially attenuate the gap between the celebrities or trendy brand with their advocators. * You can keep your privacy by only exposing your photos to selected and trusted friends.As a young product, instagram surely has weaknesses. Firstly, the system confines the uploaded photo to a square shape before editing, which doesn’t fill the frame of the smartphone’s display correctly (see figure 1). Figuer1: The example of unfit display Secondly, â€Å" the excellence of the picture leaves some space to be desired in low light situations, such as motion blur and underprivileged dynamic range†, says by a famous photographer who works in fashion industry (Is Your Fashion Brand on Instagram, 2011). Figure 2: the photo under low light situation Source from: http://fashionscollective. com/FashionAndLuxury/04/is-your-fashion-brand-on-instagram/ Thirdly, even some social mediums ease the spread of news, but also open opportunity for new forms of spam (Benevenuto et al. , 2009). The spammers may target on some heated topics, and making the URL linked to this topic redirects the users to some completely irrelevant pages. It can be risky for losing brand reputation, or even on the blacklist. In general, what nstagram has done in the previous two years has been remarkably impressive, but only two areas they should have done better. It is hard to get on the popular page on instagram, so the new users who have fewer followers and less â€Å"liked† clicks would get less chance to be discovered. Also instagram doesn’t support any special account for brand only owners. For the next version of instagram, I would like if it can facilitate the startup of new business groups regardless of the popularity among exiting users.A recommendation area can be built up for those new joined users, and it also can be categorized as â€Å"fashion brands†, â€Å"fascinating food† to expedite the entry for those new users into the instagram world, also making it easier for the fans to discover. Instagram align with Marketing Every individual image that has being processed on instagram can be considered as an immediate advertisement for the product that being photographed. By having users define why they want the item, consumers are basically writing their own sales copy (Parker, 2012).So instagram can be regarded as a perfect marketing tool for branding and brand outstretch, enabling the brands socially participating into the market and exploiting to their maximum potenti al. As a fascinating social platform, the functions of instagram can be easily learned and shared, also building up an intimate community that allows businesses to gain new potential customers and enhance marketing penetration by providing a widely accessible stage. According to the chart (see figure 3 below) provided by instagram’s main website, an increasing number of companies are finding the convenience and effectiveness in using Instagram to generate interaction with users, create popularity and publicity, and also constructing their content-based marketing strategies. It provides enough spotlights for all the emerging products, and presents them on the center stage appealing to the prospective audiences (Muyabayashi, 2012,April 5).Figure 3: The number of Instagram Uploads and Users What’s more, using instagram can reduce the financial cost as saving all the printing or postage charges. The Internet provides global access to all customers, and ease of all the content distribution (Dann Dann, 2011). Lastly, as most people are using this social networking service to post pictures and follow the posts of others, this provides enough sufficient evidence and reasoning for concentrating marketing efforts (Kirk, 2012).Sharing the ph otos in this artistic and inventive way can be beneficial for visually presenting the product. In the photo’s description, highlight the key word, craft a theme, tag the brand, or link up with other widely held hash tags could be extremely useful. In a nutshell, the main tools of instagram can assist the marketers are hash tag and geographic-tagging service. The utility of hashtags can be effective in gaining audience. With shared hash tags, it can sort and bring together Internet resources across websites (Chang, 2010).For those new business owners who only start with fewer fans, to achieve the purpose of increasing their publicity, they can check on instagram that who have been taking pictures at their place by using hash tag-searching service, if no one does, then they can host a campaign or contest to get things started. The function of geographic-tagging services of Instagram not only allows the followers to map the locations of the photos being taken, but also offers the chance for the owners of the locations to create an interactive platform or campaign for developing their brand community.A great example is the well-known Hollywood venue â€Å" the Roxy†, the owner, Nic Adler, always noticing the music lovers tag themselves at #theroxy, but there is no direct theroxy community link to it, so he creates the venue @theroxy, for gathering all the fans and at present now has over 7400 followers making it a really good promoting tool for any of their shows and relevant products (Instagram Blog, 2011). Figure4: The roxy on Instagram It also works really well in the fashion industry. By posting the photos of their staff wearing the latest line of clothing or on-sale clothes, forever21 gained a high level of likes, comments, followers and engagement, which unquestionably captivates the audiences of their fashion brand. Figure5: The foever 21 on Instagram Speaking of the marketing theory and practice, instagram is currently under the category of social media belonging to the electronic marketing in the form of marketing over IP and mobile marketing.Instagram is a new intermediary website that provides a platform allowing many sellers (brand or business owner) to connect with many customers (Dann dann, 2011). It has a high level of message tailoring, creativity, and interactive capability to â€Å"attract† the customer to their virtual â€Å"door step†. It can reach specific groups by creating popular hash tags, and the measurement of successes is simply by the number of direct feedback. What’s more, this marketing strategy is not costly at all while providing high frequency exposure.Instagram can fully utilize advertising appeals, by stating impressive informational, emotional, fear or humorous image contents to gain attention. As Stafford and Day assert that â€Å" Effectiveness of message appeal type is a function of the product type being advertised† (1995, Number 1). Instagram can be taken as â€Å"Viral Marketing†, as Wilson stated that â€Å" any strategy that encouraging individuals to transfer a marketing message to others, or creating the potential growth in message’s exposure and influence, can be defined as Viral marketing (2000).Moreover, instagram functions well in real time, and it can capture whatever is happening currently in the business and expose this to the customers. It plays a role as an instant visual twitter to highlight the small detail, so it can be used as a great tool for in-the-moment marketing or visual market (Kirk, 2012). Butter Lane Cupcakes is a good example. Taking photos of their lip-smacking cupcake and their special menu, and posting on instagram daily. The customers can be easily informed just by swipe the slide button to have a look, they also c an leave comments and ask questions under the photo. The position of instagram in its product life cycle deserves to be mentioned. Roger stated that â€Å"early adopter is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology (1962). When instagram first launched it attracted an abundant of early adopters which including big brands like Starbucks and Burberry, and now has over 30 million users (Harbison, 2011). Being a relatively young product, instagram is still on the growth stages of its life cycle as most of the users of Instagram are early adopters.So building awareness and interest in the mass market, maximizing market share, developing product extension before competitors arrive is still going to be priority task. The uniqueness of instagram becomes obvious as it can help the brand owners market their products in an innovative and effective way. Excellent filter effects and quick-shared functions are the main unique features in instagram possessing; also the marketing activities based on these features can result in unex pected promoting outcomes. Regular interactive activity is a really effective way to build followings.A widely known activity that commonly is used on instagram is asking the customers to take pictures of them using the shops products and uploads the photos on instagram to win a coupon or prize. For example, The Brooklyn bowling club once created an activity of taking a photo of customers wearing their bowling shoes and tagging #brooklynbowl for two free entry tickets (Instagram blog, 2011). This is a wonderful way to make intimate connection and interaction with the fans, promoting the brand, and building good memories based on photos. Figure 6: the Brooklybowl on InstagramConclusions and Recommendation Instagram provides people with a free space to share the trivial but intimate moments of our routine life in an innovative and creative way. As I mentioned above, the professional filters, geo-tagging capabilities are more developed than other mobile applications. The growing number of registered users is th e sound proof for instagram being a growing community that connects engaging people together while facilitating the market development. By simply capturing, filtering and sharing, the identity of the brand has already been heighted.In summary, for exploiting Instagram to the full, using it wisely and strategically is indispensable. The users should take photos of product in a creative and different way, highlighting the innovative function of the product, keep the caption creative, and holding online activities regularly, which are crucial for building up the engagement and involvement with the customers. What’s more, take the customer’s feedback into serious consideration, put the useful comments into a database for later product development, and reward the best customers.Also, follow the people in the same industry and get an interactive connection with them, let other brand owners and their followers get to know you (Eridon, 2011). All of these will indisputably contribute to enhance the business ’s presence on the Internet, also the reputation and the number of brand admirers. References Cha ng, H. (2010). A new perspective on Twitter hashtag use: Diffusion of innovation theory. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.