Industry round-up: What next for Instagram?
Photo sharing site Instagram is now outstripping Twitter as the social media platform of choice.
Although it’s mostly full of photos of cats, pouts and Starbucks cups (probably with the wrong name on), it can – many reckon – offer brands a great deal.
As a (currently) uncluttered platform it’s a simple and visually pleasing way to communicate – and, with 400 million users, could mean big things for a number of businesses.
The problem, however, is going to be advertisers shoe-horning messaging into a near-sacred digital environment.
So, as it celebrates its fifth birthday, what does the media industry make of Instagram’s profit-making future?
Until recently, Instagram has offered first-mover brands the advantage of it being an uncluttered platform with a greater chance for users to see branded content.
On the other hand, it’s also a relativity immature advertising platform and doesn’t currently offer the sophisticated targeting model for advertisers that its competitors do. For example, segmentation functionality is limited and reporting on the platform is almost non-existent.
For Instagram to grow and define its future offering, it should focus on what it does best: being an original format focused on creative and great images. The platform could easily move into original content creation like Netflix or remove its 30 second video limit and try to compete with YouTube. However, innovation shouldn’t be valued so highly that Instagram forgets its core consumer. In a crowded marketplace, it’s the brands that offer content that consumers really want that will succeed.
I believe that one of the biggest opportunities for Instagram lies in retail. Like Pinterest, Instagram could look to encourage brands to post products and introduce click-to-buy buttons for consumers. This would not only help increase revenues, but it would give the platform access to data that would make ROI easier to prove, allowing it to compete with Twitter and Facebook.
Furthermore, this data would help shape the type of content consumers see in order to fit with their specific needs. In essence, it would make the consumer journey richer and more convenient, while delivering results for advertisers.
The 16-24 age group has driven the growth of Instagram and currently makes up 37% of the global user base (according to Global Web Index). This audience always wants the new thing and, to them, Facebook is seen as “old” social media – especially with its ads, the grandparents joining, and its increasingly multi-purpose usage.
Instagram is simpler – to most people it’s just for pictures – and as the channel grows, we will see the Instagram audience base broaden slightly.
Despite this, we will continue to see Millennials use both channels. To this age group, these apps serve different purposes. As one of our focus groups explained recently: Instagram is for sharing moments, Twitter is for sharing opinions. Brands should think about what that means for communications.
As Instagram continues to develop, we watch with interest the launch of Instagram ads, and whether the customer experience can remain as good as it was before. Brands have a duty to create great content on Instagram, and Instagram’s owner Facebook has a duty to police the quality.
Otherwise the Millennials will move elsewhere, as pointed out in a recent focus group: “there will always be another social platform in which we can communicate without having to encounter adverts”.
Instagram has managed to get it right thanks to something rather simple: offering a platform for people to create and share imagery. This single idea has created a global community that converses in photographs – a language which is universally understood.
The platform is recognised for enabling people to document their everyday lives pictorially. But, Instagram has also done more than just this. It has played an integral role in shining a light on communities and people that are under-represented in the mainstream media.
Powerful images have the ability to change the world as they stir emotion, and Instagram has enabled people to capture and share such images.
As the channel grows in importance, Getty Images has introduced a grant in collaboration with the platform, giving photographers who are documenting stories from under-represented countries around the world an opportunity to win a grant allowing them to push their craft to new levels. It’s clear that the platform has evolved from a place where amateur photographs are posted, to something much bigger.
Instagram is becoming much more creative and has already announced some changes to the size of photos to provide professionals with more flexibility. We have seen it develop so much in the last five years, and I would expect to see further updates to the platform, which will encourage even more professional and amateur photographers to share their images with the world.
In five years, Instagram has gained over 400 million users. This says a lot about what consumers want from social.
They want to see, rather than read. They want moments that are captured in pictures, and they want to do it on the move. They are looking for creative, engaging content which is great news for businesses in engaging and visually appealing environments.
Instagram is a mobile app and its popularity shows that mobile should be a focus for retailers, and they must consider how they can integrate Instagram into their social activity.
In turn, Instagram needs to support existing social strategy, but be more creative with less focus on copy. You can’t just funnel your Facebook strategy into Instagram: naturally people interact with it in a different way. But whilst content must be creative, it must also be up to date.
Retailers need to be prepared for constant updates, new features and advertising formats. The key to success is to test as you go along and see what response the content receives, and adapt to reflect this.
It’s easy to forget, but Instagram was the very first mobile-only platform – before Instagram all the other platforms were desktop first, and mobile second.
As 44% of consumers are more likely to engage with content that includes images (data courtesy of hubspot), Instagram is ideally placed to optimise this consumer behaviour. Brands are focused on three core areas of content – written word, video and image – across paid, owned and earned channels.
Global businesses are having amazing success starting with Instagram, such as Burberry with the shot of Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne wearing Burberry macs taken behind the scenes on a fragrance shoot. Although this image was likely a result of Burberry’s pre-planned marketing strategy, rather than a spontaneous snap, it secured millions of views and became a social phenomenon.
But it doesn’t have to be brands utilising the world’s most popular supermodels who benefit from the Instagram platform. At the other end of the demographic profile, @tescofood recently secured a 124K reach with an Instagram campaign featuring all the photography from the magazine.