Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Lets Talk Instagram...



          John here, coming at you from Hunt Valley Maryland enjoying our short fall break from classes. Today I would like to talk about a company that is very popular in our generation, Instagram.  Over the course of the past couple months, Instagram had turned itself into a company promoting tool with the implementation of sponsored adds, a contact button, and stories.
            First things come first, the ads that sponsors companies, which always somehow appear in the middle of your timeline. These ads can come in picture or video form and depict a product being offered. This is a fairly new concept implemented by Instagram and carried out over the past 6 months. With this being said, Instagram’ advertiser base had jumped to almost 500,000 who use it consistently per month. All of these sponsored ads are essentially turning your timeline into a Marketspace. A Marketspace is described as, “An information- and communication-based electronic exchange environment occupied by digitalized offerings”. In the case of Instagram, these ads are an opportunity for a company to promote their product and give the consumer a chance to get in touch with the organization. They call this addition to their social platform “Business Tools”.
            To piggyback on the topic of communication between the company and consumer, we can look at the “contact” button that is found to the left of the follow option. The contact button helps to create quicker and easier means of communication between the organization and customer from their targeted market. Instead of commenting on a photo or direct messaging the company, the contact button allows for email, phone number, etc. to be displayed. Not only does the customer benefit from these new features, the business does as well. From the content the company posts and responses they may receive, their target market can be narrowed down and pinpointed. These companies are using Primary Data to determine the future content that will be posted. Primary data is described as, “Fact and figures that are newly collected for a project”. Being able to gather this data is one technique to identify a specific target market and which marketing techniques to use. 

            The final and one of the most substantial changes made by Instagram is the “Story” function. These stories allow a person or company to depict more personal actions or activities not typically seen by the every day person. One of the major concerns, as you can imagine is the resemblance to Snapchat. This presence of two similar ideas or services is known as competition. The technical definition of competition is, “Alternative firms that could provide a product to satisfy a specific market’s needs”. In this case, Snapchat and Instagram both offer the “story” option with Instagram’s version focusing on a business/ customer relationship.

            With advances in technology and times that are rapidly changing, companies such as Instagram must use tactics such as Environmental scanning to stay updated. This is, “The process of acquiring information on events outside the organization to identify and interpret potential trends”. By implementing these new features, Instagram is staying up to date with its competitors and creating a closer company/ consumer relationship. From my personal experience, Instagram has done a very good job with these functions. It helps to cut out steps previously needed to get in touch with a business and the stories can even show behind the scenes of production.  That’s all I have for you today, tune back in next time for more exciting marketing news!

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