Instagram is a visual social network site that based on beautiful images and photos. Because of Instagram’s nature is “beauties around you”, it is perfectly released as a mobile app. You can snap a picture anytime and anywhere, put a layer to make it look cool and upload it in no time. In April 2012, Instagram was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion while from September 2012, it had eleven million active users.
It is clearly shown that Instagram is making a new way to offer your products and engaging with your current customers online.
For example, Black Milk Clothing is making good use of Instagram to increase its online appearances.
Its concept is simple yet to the point: telling customers to take photos of themselves wearing a Black Milk product. They also need to post these images to Instagram with a caption that includes a special hashtag (#bmamethystlegs). The postings that contain this (#bmamethystlegs) are then displayed on Black Milk Clothing product listing page. For example, customers are prompted to “Tag your photos using #bmamethystlegs on Instagram” in the case of the leggings shown below:
Believe or not, this campaign has worked very well for Black Milk Clothing. Its Facebook Likes had increased to 450,000 with more than 23,000 Twitter followers. These two things had shown that Black Milk Clothing has been using social media, especially Instagram, in a correct way.
There are some reasons this strategy has been so effective. Let’s take a look a little closer:
- Using Instagram is fun. The app is creatively crafted to suit anyone with a Smartphone, whether it’s an iPhone or Android device, to create nifty photos that have a vintage, yet perky look, thanks to its built-in image filters.
- Attention is also one of human basic needs. Giving your customers a venue for self-promotion (with a little bit of narcissism, of course) is a great idea for promotion. There is a mutual relationship between your brand and your customers. The customers are being able to be seen on your website, while you get benefits from the media appearance and viral impact that this kind of promotions offered.
- Good companies will be loved. When people around the world posting their photos using your products in your feed, this will create a good atmosphere for your website visitors. This will build a sense of “belonging”, that you are well liked by your fans and your products add more benefits to others.
Adding Instagram to your Ecommerce Site
Here are some tips for adding an Instagram feed to your site.
- Using JavaScript. Instagram API will let people to search for recent posts that contain a specific hashtag. The most flexible and technical option is to write custom JavaScript code that performs queries using this API and displays the results. This seems to be what Black Milk has done. A well-experienced web developer should be able to do this in no time.
- Using a third-party tool. If the writing JavaScript code is too difficult to cope, there are some third-party tools that you can use, such as Instapress for WordPress. You can also use Stagigram that includes a widget for adding feeds to your Facebook’s timeline.
- Keep your eyes open. This is a live feed. You will definitely need to watch out and control the feed to make sure that your products are being displayed appropriately. You can set things up to approve posts before they are displayed. You may also want the ability to blacklist some people from appearing in your feed.
- Make it rich and boisterous. The most possible downside of adding a live Instagram feed to your web is that it could give the visitors negative impression if few images appear. Don’t think that this strategy has failed, yet consider to set the option of launching the feed only after you reach some minimum number of posts. Another thing to do is to encourage your current customers to “hashtag their recent purchases.” Therefore, it will increase the number of uploaded pictures and activities. One idea is to hold a contest, like “the best Instagram photo receives a $100 voucher for our latest fabulous products.” The last tip is to start the viral by taking the first few pictures of yourself to show your customers how fun it can be.