Now that many of us have finally figured out how to spell Pinterest, comes Instagram. Instagram is a mobile app created by Kevin Systrom, a college friend of Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, Zuckerberg invited Systrom to join him on Facebook when the social networking site was still just an idea in Zuckerberg’s head, but Systrom chose to stay in school. This decision made Systrom the newest Internet billionaire from Silicon Valley and Stanford University. Dumpor
Instagram is a free photo-sharing social media site launched on October 6, 2010. It allows users to download photos, process them through a digital filter, and share them with other connected users. Instagram has been a huge success right from the start. As of December 2010 they already had over 1 million users. As of April 2012, 30 million users were downloading more than 150 million photos on Instagram. Also in April, Instagram became available for Android users. With its social media dominance under threat, Facebook acted quickly to neutralize its newest competitor. Back in April, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. – Hjdh
How can small local businesses benefit from Instagram? First, you have to register. To register a company, you must have a website page. To create a site page for your business, you must create a Foursquare account. Foursquare is a location-based social media site for mobile users. Instagram uses the Foursquare database to tag a photo on this site. If your site is not already listed in the Foursquare database, you can add it by following these steps as recommended on the Instagram page:
Download Foursquare and sign up on the App Store: http://bit.ly/lx9vzb or on Google Play.
Go to the check-in tab and find the name of the place you want to add
Click on the “Add this place” option.
Once you’ve added the location to the Foursquare database, you can search for it on the location screen on Instagram and select it to tag your photo with the location you’ve created.
Upload your photo and click the site name (in blue text) that appears above your photo to see the site page you created, where your photo and all photos tagged with that site will appear in the future.
Once you have set up Foursquare, set up your Instagram account:
1. Register with your brand name as your username.
2. Add a profile picture, company information and a link to your website
3. Link to our other social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Now that you have set up your account, you can start creating an Instagram presence. Among the strategies you can use:
1. Share compelling content. Where have you heard this before? Anyone who has pursued inbound marketing, SEO, and building an online presence knows that it all starts with content. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your photos. Ask for feedback from your followers. What do they like the most? How about the minimum?
2. Use hashtags to find more followers and share your photos. When using tags, be specific. This will help you find like-minded people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. So instead of just saying #car, say #BMW. Try to involve the people most directly interested in your product. Find out what other companies in your field are doing. They may have used ideas you didn’t even think of.
3. Share the photo on other social networking sites. Instagram allows you to easily share photos to Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Once these users see your photo, they will either go to your website or start following you on Instagram.
4. Make sure your photos tell the story you want to tell. Posting a picture of the great steak dinner you’re about to eat won’t help you much if you own a tire store. Be real. Your users will be able to know if the photos you post are real or not
5. Be consistent. Don’t oversaturate your posts, just post them often enough to keep our followers engaged.
One criticism of Instagram is that its filters ruin good photos. This complaint came mostly from professional photographers who may be feeling the heat of the competition. Their standards for what is acceptable are often higher than the general public as well. For most commercial purposes, reproducing photos on Instagram is “good enough”.
Another criticism is that Instagram has no business model and little revenue. But that’s Facebook’s problem, not yours. As more and more online researchers are doing their work on mobile devices