Surviving the Insta-pocalypse

SURVIVING INSTA-GEDDON by @dirktherabbit

Athens, 22 April

@Qualsiasi, Flickr

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

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’)

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)

HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE YOUR POSTS?

“On average, people miss about 70 percent of the posts in their Instagram

feed” (Kevin Systrom, March 15th 2006)

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

INSTAGRAM - 30%

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

FACEBOOK - 7.39%

More specifically: Videos 9.14%

Links 8.9% Images 6.8% Status 3.7%

(Source - Locowise, Dec 2015)

@chollingsworth3 / Flickr

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)

WHAT ABOUT ENGAGEMENT?

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

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)

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!

IT'S TIME FOR THE ‘INSTA-POCALYPSE’!’

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

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)

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

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

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

LOOK AT THE ALTERNATIVES

For serious, quality photography - Berlin based, EyeEm

eyeem photo missions

SNAPCHAT - THE NEXT INSTAGRAM?

“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

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)

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

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

USE VIDEO - ESPECIALLY NOW THAT YOU CAN DO 60 SECS

Source - Quintly

“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)

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

WORK WITH INFLUENCERS Example - “Spot the Plane”, working

with Instagramers Munich

INSTAGRAMERS

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

WORK WITH SUPER-FAN GROUPS AND THE MODERATORS

For example, in Munich

The group The moderators

INTEGRATE YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS

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?

AS WELL AS POSTING ON YOURS

ADD AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

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

SIMILAR GROUPS EXIST IN ALL MAJOR CITIES

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?

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

FINALLY ACCORDING TO INSTAGRAM • Engagement not followers

• Craft a strong identity

• Authenticity wins

• Collaborate with natives

• (Eva Chen, Instagram)

PS - PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!

Thank you! Any questions [email protected]