Like many visual social platforms there are many skeptics who don't see the real value behind Instagram as a marketing tool. While it won't work for every business, there are certainly many that it will work for and that's why you're going to love this presentation.

1. Instagram For
Your Business

2. Instagram For
Why Instagram?
Your Business

3. Why Instagram?
1. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Do you have a product that you can display in a really visual dynamic way?
Do you have a service that some great photos can highlight in an emotionally charged, dramatic
manner?
Most people like to look at interesting images and if you can “draw” them in with a photo that is
an “ad” but isn’t, it could end up worth as much as some of the best advertising campaigns out
there.

4. Why Instagram?
2. Instagram Can Offer A Behind the Scenes Look
A photo of your product being made or the service you offer being performed from the
perspective of an “insider” can really intrigue and fascinate potential customers and clients. This
is one of the reasons why television is packed with shows of people working at interesting jobs.
It’s human nature to be curious about what’s going on “behind the curtain”.

5. Why Instagram?
3. It Encourages Customer Participation
Why not encourage igers, (instagram users), to share photos of themselves
using your product or service, if appropriate? This is why people love it so
much and the more fun exchanges they have with your business in social
media the greater chance they will end up spending money with you and
encouraging their whole social circle to as well!
*Sample
Brands Being
Shared on
Instagram*

6. Why Instagram?
4. Instagram Allows You To Build
a Personality for Your
Business
Instagram should be an intricate
part of building a distinct and
winning personality for your
business. Combined with
other forms of social media,
your website and your
advertising, you are given a
great opportunity for molding
how your business is
perceived by your customers
and potential leads.

7. Why Instagram?
5. Trust Building
The online experience can take a human face away from our business interactions.
This is a bad thing if you are looking to build trust in what you offer. Instagram lets
you put a face, literally, on your efforts and in ways that can be targeted to help
build confidence in you. This is a very good thing.
TIP: Don’t neglect the occasional happy go lucky photos which can go a long way in
this direction.

8. Why Instagram?
6. Instagram Keeps Your Name In Conversation
Holding Instagram contests.
Instagram is the ideal platform to hold contests to promote your business. The options
are only limited by your imagination. “The best photo shared featuring what you
offer receives a free product” is a popular formula that works again and again.
Contests are a great way to get Instagram users and other lovers of social media
talking about you and what you do!

9. Why Instagram?
7. Instagram Helps Promote Special Events
Are you planning on going to a trade show or something similar? Promote the fact you
are going, on Instagram, to draw support and interest in your attending. During
and afterward, document your trip with cool and fun Instagram photo shares.
Focus on some containing yourself and customers or other business
associates. Nearly everyone loves this type of fun attention. People also don’t like
to feel like they are missing out on something so they may be interested to rock up
at your next show to experience the adventure in person.

10. Why Instagram?
8. The Chance To Go Viral
Think company mascots, pets, adorable babies or animals doing funny things around
your logo.It only takes one home run to change the public profile of your business
forever so don’t laugh this off.
It’s also a nice thing to encourage employees or friends and family to participate in
sharing the word about your business.Yes, one cute kitten photo shared for free
can equal tens of thousands of dollars of advertising.
Welcome to the age of social media. Learn how to use Instagram along with the other
more obvious platforms and become a social marketing guru of the digital age!
**IDEA ALERT**
Grandstand could play on
the term “pint sized” and
feature cute small animals
like hedgehogs, puppies,
kitties, turtles, etc. next to
a pint glass.

11. Instagram For
How to Use
Your Business

12. How to Use Instagram - Notifications
• At the start of your Instagram
journey, no-one will be talking to
or following you.
• A key to good business is
responding to your customers,
enable notifications so you can
see when people share or
comment on your photos. This
will let you engage with them
more quickly – just like a lot of
companies do on Twitter. You can
also use image based responses
to show you are taking their
communications with you
seriously.

13. How to Use Instagram – Get Connected
• Instagram isn’t just about
internal photo love; you can
also share your uploads on
other social networks.
Boosting their reach, and
improving the likelihood
that you’ll get people
responding to them.
• Go ahead and link
Instagram to Twitter and
Facebook.

14. How to Use Instagram – Editing Photos
•
•
•
Open the Instagram app to start up your camera
or choose a photo from the gallery.
Then give your image the professional touch by
using Instagram’s built-in filters. You can
brighten colors, change pictures to sepia, enrich
the overall look, rotate, crop and change the
image focus.
Be innovative. One example might be to brand
your photos so they all have your logo attached.
A simple way to do this would be to have a small
printed out logo to hold up (by hand) in the
corner of your shot as you take it. This is the
business equivalent of those classic photos
where people take photos of their feet in exotic
locations. Have you seen anyone else do this?
Nope. That’s the point. Don’t rely on your profile
to extend your brand, make it a part of
everything you produce.

15. How to Use Instagram – Sharing Step 1.
•
•
Add a caption to your photo and upload it. A
good tip for business users is to ask questions
in your captions to increase the possibilities
for engagement.
As mentioned above, asking questions
increases engagement. If you have a brick and
mortar business, ask people which locations
they’ve visited. If you run an online business,
include a URL in the comments that
interested viewers copy and paste into their
mobile browser.

16. How to Use Instagram – Sharing Step 2.
•
•
•
Now that you’ve uploaded your first photo,
try it again, but this time, to give your photo
more reach – add a hashtag. Hashtags have
become part of the social media landscape
(not just Twitter).
They are a key tool for organizing your photos
and helping Instagram users to find photos on
topics that interest them (such as your
products). Add hashtags to your captions to
see engagement grow.
Establish hashtags for your business from the
start, so that you can provide consistency and
something customers can memorize.

17. How to Use Instagram – Hashtags
25 Most Popular #Hashtags on Instagram
1. #love - 143,817,139 photos
2. #instagood - 97,570,915 photos
3. #me - 80,693,198 photos
4. #tbt - 75,411,509 photos
5. #cute - 75,047,873 photos
6. #photooftheday - 70,995,806 photos
7. #instamood - 64,925,462 photos
8. #beautiful - 54,570,181 photos
9. #picoftheday - 53,776,027 photos
10. #igers - 52,997,258 photos
11. #girl - 52,960,538 photos
12. #instadaily - 51,313,415 photos
13. #iphonesia - 51,124,375 photos
14. #follow - 46,372,281 photos
15. #tweegram - 44,656,230 photos
16. #happy - 43,360,681 photos
17. #summer - 42,718,347 photos
18. #instagramhub - 42,101,798 photos
19. #bestoftheday - 40,202,550 photos
20. #iphoneonly - 39,287,795 photos
21. #igdaily - 36,932,129 photos
22. #fashion - 35,815,277 photos
23. #webstagram - 35,073,684 photos
•
•
•
It’s very important to use a mix of
#HASHTAGS related to your business as well
as Trending/Popular hashtags.
Not Sure What to Tag?
Go To http://www.tagsforlikes.com/ to see
full “tag blocks” that you can copy and paste
directly into Instagram to increase your likes
and reach. Tags for Likes also has an app, so
be sure to download it!
Another tag site is
http://www.tagstagram.com/ . This is a
newer site but they also have an app
available for download.

18. How to Use Instagram – Finding Followers
•
•
•
Now that you have a few photos on your
Instagram page, find and follow compatible
users.
Instagram has a built in tool to help you find
people which works particularly well with
Facebook.
Again you should rely on hashtags. This time,
use them to find people that are
discussing/sharing photos relevant to your
business. If your Facebook or Twitter
followers are busines focused you can search
to see if they are on Instagram, broadening
your sphere of connectivity with them

19. How to Use Instagram – Finding Followers
•
Since your customers also use the caption
and tagging features in Instagram, it’s easy for
you to search and see who’s already using
your product or visiting your business. There
is a ready-made fan base for you to interact
with.

20. How to Use Instagram – Your Profile
•
•
•
•
Much to the delight of fans, Instagram
recently introduced web profiles.
Yours will be http://instagram.com/[yourusername]
Have a look at your profile and see if it
represents your brand well, once it does, get
sharing this new profile URL.
Add some of your business personality to
your profile. This can include having an image
of your office or employees, or your logo,
rather than personal profiles which often
have a photo of the user.

21. How to Use Instagram – What to Post?
•
•
•
•
To make the most of Instagram, avoid generic,
posed photos that have zero personality.
Photos that look like they are taken on the fly
or those that are a bit wacky tend to do
better.
Cute photos of animals or flowers can work
well too (but are probably best saved for
times when you need to inject some
personality into your brand)
Many companies use different social
networks to create different experiences.
LinkedIn for business discussions and lead
gen, Twitter for content marketing updates
and customer conversations, and Facebook
for more fun company culture based updates.
Instagram is also perfect to help your
Facebook account by capturing funny
moments on the fly and push them to
Facebook to brighten up your presence there.

22. How to Use Instagram – What to Post?
•
•
•
•
•
Because it’s so visual, Instagram is an
excellent tool for marketing and promoting
your business.
Some of the ways you can do this include:
Hosting a photo contest.
Documenting the projects you undertake so
everyone can see your expertise.
Show context of use: Instead of just using
standard shots of your product, try showing
people using it to illustrate the benefits of
doing so, and that you have a customer base.

23. How to Use Instagram – What to Post?
•
•
•
•
Instagram can also help you improve what
you offer customers. Consider:
Asking customers to post their own photos of
your product or service and then showcasing
them.
Showcasing a ‘behind the scenes’ look at your
business, including employees, product
development and more.
If you make a mistake, issue a different style
of apology, perhaps a photo of your CEO
holding a piece of paper saying “I’m Sorry”.
Then include a comment with more details
and a link to a landing page that has a more
formal letter.

24. How to Use Instagram – Strategy
•
•
•
•
Like other social networks, using Instagram
successfully means interacting with others.
That means liking other users’ photos (by
double tapping in the app), commenting on
them, mentioning them by name when you
post something interesting (using @ plus the
username) and responding to their
comments.
Post consistently, but don’t overdo it: thou
shalt not spam! Be authentic and
engagement will follow.
If you’ve successfully grown your followers
based on customers or leads from your other
networks, make sure you engage with them
regularly, with comments and likes on their
photos, to keep you top of mind.
**CROSSPROMOTE!**

25. How to Use Instagram – Location Services
•
•
•
•
•
As a business, you probably want to take
advantage of local traffic and Instagram works
well for this.
Take a photo of your business, tap the
‘where’ field, locate your business and upload
your photo.
You can also pin photos to maps (shown
opposite). For example showing where
people are using your products or services.
This will help you to make local connections.
Bring customers to you. If you make updates
based on a geographical location, mention
that you’ll be there and to come on down for
a free prize giveaway – bringing customers
directly to your store.

26. How to Use Instagram – Analytics
•
As with any social site, you need to know
what people are responding to and how so
you need analytics. A good option is the free
Instagram Analytics report on Simply
Measured.
•
Like any marketing endeavor, you need to
know what your goals are. Is it sales, or
increased brand awareness. If it’s a tangible
goal such as sales then you need to track and
report on it to see if this channel is a viable
marketing tool for your company.
**It will ask you to post or tweet that you are using the
service in order to receive your report. Use a personal
account to do this, NOT your business accounts.**

27. Instagram For
Brands Who Get It
Your Business

28. Brands Doing It Right On Instagram
• Deschutes Brewery is
consistently posting
beautiful images of
everything from
mountain landscapes to
beers to barrels full of
hops that keep
followers engaged.

29. Brands Doing It Right On Instagram
• Whole Foods

30. Brands Doing It Right On Instagram
• McKay Flooring.
• Proof that you
don’t need to
be a big brand
to have a
successful
Instagram
campaign.

31. Brands Doing It Right On Instagram
• Redbull (of course.)
• Red Bull, not
surprisingly, has a cool
Instagram account filled
with high-quality action
shots of people doing
sports ranging from
snow boarding, to
surfing, to rock
climbing.

32. Brands Doing It Right On Instagram
• Starbucks.
• Starbucks has the
most User
Generated content
on Instagram.

33. Brands Doing It Right On Instagram
• Taco Bell.