A presentation delivered at the Social Media Conference Greece 2016 on the changes coming on Instagram and what brands can do about it

1. SURVIVING INSTA-GEDDON
by @dirktherabbit
Athens, 22 April
@Qualsiasi, Flickr

2. I love Instagram, it’s my ‘go to’ social
network for clients, and I’ve had the
opportunity to do some fun and
worthwhile campaigns on there
Hello, I am @dirktherabbit

3. I DO A LOT OF WORK WITH AIRPORTS AND AIRLINES
1. Airlines were pretty
much 1st in on photo
networks
2. People are in a ‘sharing’
frame of mind when they
travel
3. People love taking
pictures of planes (‘AV
Geeks’)

4. FOUR THINGS TODAY
1. Why it’s great right now
2. What’s changing
3. What you should do about it
4. What the alternatives are
(The most popular Instagram pic ever)

5. HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE YOUR POSTS?

6. “On average, people miss
about 70 percent of the
posts in their Instagram
feed”
(Kevin Systrom, March 15th 2006)

7. 70% of posts are missed ….HOW DOES THAT COMPARE?

8. INSTAGRAM - 30%
Image from “Five great mobile photographers to
follow” - http://bit.do/4HH8 (@rdepaolo)

9. FACEBOOK - 7.39%
More specifically:
Videos 9.14%
Links 8.9%
Images 6.8%
Status 3.7%
(Source - Locowise, Dec 2015)
@chollingsworth3 / Flickr

10. TWITTER - between 1.3% - 4.1%
@pitaka525
Source - Danny Sullivan,
Marketing Land
(According to Follower Wonk,
only about 6% of your
followers will be online
anyway)

11. WHAT ABOUT ENGAGEMENT?
Image from “Five
great mobile
photographers to
follow” - http://
bit.do/4HH8
(@cedricblanchon)

12. AVERAGE ENGAGEMENT SOCIAL NETWORKS
0
0.008
0.015
0.023
0.03
Instagram Facebook LinkedIn Twitter
0.027%0.055%0.22%
2.25%
Source - Nate Elliott, Forrester, Sept 2015 (top US brands)

13. Image from “Five great
mobile photographers
to follow” - http://bit.do/
4HH8 (@helenbreznik)
INSTAGRAM RIGHT NOW
1 - A lot of people see your posts,
reach is 4x as good as Facebook
2 - Engagement is good, 10x as
high as Facebook
3 - Images cross cultures and
languages
4 - A lot of people see it, "a
picture says a thousand words
and now a picture can speak to
millions of people"(Eva Chen)
All for free!

14. IT'S TIME FOR THE ‘INSTA-POCALYPSE’!’

15. MORE SPECIFICALLY, INSTAGRAM IS
GOING TO BECOME MORE LIKE FACEBOOK
Rather than just seeing a stream of posts, Instagram / Facebook
wants you to “see the moments you care about first”
@snoopybabe - 325k followers

16. IN PRACTICE - WHAT WILL THAT LOOK LIKE?
“One morning a couple of weeks ago
as I toggled back to my personal
account something was very
different.
A blue-eyed baby was king of my
feed with hundreds of likes and a
decent smattering of gushy
comments.
“The photo was 15 hours old and no
matter how many refreshing swipes
of my thumb were made this little
guy wasn’t shifting from the top
spot.”
(From James Towers, a look at Instagram’s new
algorithm - http://www.adnews.com.au/opinion/a-
look-at-instagram-s-new-algorithm-and-what-
you-can-expect)

17. EVENTUALLY - IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE THIS
In 2012, your Facebook page would reach 16%
of your followers.
Today it is more like 5-10% (or even 2% for the
biggest pages)
The result is that more brands are now paying.
Forrester has seen a slight increase in
Facebook engagement - it reasons that more
brand pages now promote their posts

18. ESPECIALLY GIVEN THIS
Instagram and premium video will
be a big driver for mobile and
desktop ad revenue, the team
writes. "Our projection for
consolidated ad revenue of $5.24
billion in [the first quarter] reflects
our projection for $573 million and
$260 million in contribution from
Facebook's Instagram and
premium video ad product,
respectively.”
Bloomberg on Credit Suisse

19. SO WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
• Quality over quantity. What gets the best reaction? Find a formula and stick to
it. Stop posting things that don’t get engagement
• Think about some alternatives
• Use hash-tags. They work
• Use Instagram video
• Engage with people in your subject area. Make a habit of liking and
commenting on things that are relevant to what you do
• Work with influencers. Recruit bloggers or Instagram groups with a lot of
traction. Potentially use them as guest editors
• Do these things now, before the algorithm changes for everyone

20. LOOK AT THE ALTERNATIVES
For serious, quality photography - Berlin based, EyeEm

21. eyeem photo missions

22. SNAPCHAT - THE NEXT INSTAGRAM?

23. “MOST IMPORTANT” SOCIAL NETWORK, US TEENS
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
Spring 2014 Spring 2015 Autumn 2015 Spring 2016
Instagram Facebook Snapchat Twitter
28%
27%
18%
17%
Piper Jaffray’s semi-annual survey of 6,500 US teens

24. SNAPCHAT
• 100 million active users
(compared to 300 million
Twitter, 400 million
Instagram
• 2/3 are over 18 and 50% are
over 25
• 2/3 users create new content
every day
• Entry level advertising has
gone down from $750k to
"tens of thousands" (head of
content, Nick Bell)

25. HASHTAGS WORK - USE THEM
Posts that included hashtags
had a far higher like to follower
ratio than those that didn’t
Source: Dan Zarella
http://bit.do/4HGj
(But make sure they are
relevant!)
Identify 10 hashtags that you can
use regularly in your copy to keep
users plugged into your brand,
while also monitoring the hashtag
trends of your competitors and
related niche

26. Do a daily sweep of
relevant hash-tags.
Like every one. It
encourages people to
keep using your
hashtag, and chances
are they will come
back to like and even
follow

27. USE VIDEO - ESPECIALLY NOW THAT YOU CAN DO 60 SECS
Source - Quintly

28. “In a world where liking is as common as
blinking, a like no longer signals that a
consumer loves your brand”
(ben kunz, BUSINESS WEEK)
Selfies generate 2x as many likes as videos, but
videos represent a deeper level of engagement
(Pixelate)

29. INSTAGRAM VIDEO
• In the last six months, the
time people spent watching
Instagram video increased
by more than 40 per cent
• Cisco, for example,
predicted last year that
video will account for about
80 per cent of all internet
traffic by 2019
• Google claimed last week
that YouTube ads are more
effective than TV ads

30. WORK WITH INFLUENCERS
Example - “Spot the Plane”, working
with Instagramers Munich

31. INSTAGRAMERS

32. THE PROCESS
• Four new destinations from Munich
• Over the course of four weekends, the two moderators did a social media
take-over and travelled to the four cities (Southampton, Rostock, Bergamo,
Norrköping)
• They posted photos of the destinations on the @bmiregional feed
• They also promoted it on their own feeds
• One photo in each destination had a model plane in it
• “Spot the plane” to win flights

33. WORK WITH SUPER-FAN GROUPS AND THE MODERATORS
For example, in Munich
The group The moderators

34. INTEGRATE YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS

35. ENCOURAGE YOUR INFLUENCERS TO SHARE IT IN YOUR OWN FEED
Kevin Systrom tells us on average 30% of followers see a post. Do 30% of
newspaper readers read every article?

36. AS WELL AS POSTING ON YOURS

37. ADD AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

38. BENEFITS OF A CAMPAIGN LIKE THIS
• Team up with people who have a
lot more followers than you and
credibility
• Original content for your feed
• Builds up a basis of working with
these groups in the future

39. SIMILAR GROUPS EXIST IN ALL MAJOR CITIES

40. QUESTIONS TO ASK
• Who should you work with? Should you work with a group, a blogger or
both?
• Have they done this before?
• What’s in it for them? If you were them, would you want to capture and
post what you are asking them to do?
• Will money change hands? Often it has to, but can you offer an alternative
• How much control are you willing to give them?

41. THE SAME IDEA CAN WORK
ELSEWHERE
• Clothing / fashion company
- do a behind the scenes
tour
• Supermarket? Go to where
the food is made
• A bank or an insurance
company, involve them in a
CSR or charity initiative

42. FINALLY ACCORDING TO INSTAGRAM
• Engagement not followers
• Craft a strong identity
• Authenticity wins
• Collaborate with natives
• (Eva Chen, Instagram)

43. PS - PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!

44. Thank you! Any questions dirk@therabbitagency.com