Instagram courts startups to become ‘virtual storefront’
New tools to build brand and drive sales
TORONTO• Foralotof people, Instagram is the social network of impossibly beautiful pictures — sundrenched travel shots and extravagant brunch photos — but the Facebook Inc. subsidiary is becoming an extremely important platform for small and mediumsized business.
Instagram is looking to deepen that relationship, by offering new tools for companies that use the social media platform to build their brand and drive sales.
This week, Instagram released new research from Ipsos looking at how Canadian users and brands interact on the site, and chief operating officer Marne Levine was in Toronto on Thursday to to talk about the platform with small and mid-sized businesses .
Instagram has long been seen as the younger, cooler, prettier sibling to Facebook. In June, Instagram announced it had more than a billion monthly active users, and in fact, just hours before Facebook released disappointing Q2 financial results that sent the stock price into a historic collapse, news coverage suggested that Facebook’s financial performance would beat expectations, driven by Instagram’s continued growth.
Part of Instagram’s success is driven by what the site can’t do. Because it’s not possible to post links, there’s not much incentive to spam the site to drive web traffic.
And Instagram doesn’t have the same “share” functions as Facebook, which means the user experience tends to feel more intimate, just displaying pictures and video from the accounts you choose to follow.
But Instagram is growing and adding new features. “Stories” are short videos and photos that tend to be much less polished, and they disappear after one day. They’ve become one of the most popular facets of the site.
And IGTV has recently introduced the option for creators to broadcast longform vertical video, optimized for people watching on cellphones.
Moreover, for businesses, the site recently added a tool that allows companies to tag products in their Instagram posts. Customers can then click on the item and purchase it from inside the Instagram app.
Levine said that this kind of behaviour isn’t exactly new. For a long time companies have been posting pictures of their products on Instagram to define the visual identity of the brand and, for just as long, people have been commenting on the photos or sending private messages to find out how to buy what they’re seeing.
It hasn’t been launched in Canada yet, but Levine said that the next step for Instagram will be “Actions,” which allows business even more options to get customers from Instagram.
“It became this virtual storefront window for businesses,” she said.
“If you see a restaurant that you might be interested in visiting, why shouldn’t you be able to book a reservation? If you see a stylist who you might be interested in, why not book an appointment? And if you saw a movie trailer that was interesting to you, you’d want to buy a ticket right then and there.”
So as the site grows and adds new features, can it retain the cool factor? What’s the soul of Instagram that needs to be maintained?
Levine said she sees the social media site as always being fundamentally a forum for visual storytelling.
The ability to interact and form a community around a business is one of the things that draws people to Instagram, she added.
“We want the businesses to be there because the people in the community are looking to find stuff,” she said. “It connects with their passions and interests.”
Levine said 80 per cent of Instagram’s users — more than 800 million people — voluntarily connect with at least one business.
“Two hundred million instagrammers visit a business profile each day, and two-thirds of those visits come from non-followers,” she said. “It’s been about discovering new businesses, it’s been about developing a deeper relationship with the businesses, and now, where we’re moving toward is really helping business get done between businesses and their customers.”
According to the Ipsos polling research, entrepreneurs on Instagram tend to be younger, and small- and medium-sized businesses on Instagram tend to empower female entrepreneurs.
Especially among entrepreneurs under 35, Instagram is seen as essential; 67 per cent of entrepreneurs under 35 said that their Instagram page is “the best representation of their business online.”
IT CONNECTS WITH THEIR PASSIONS AND INTERESTS.