How To Get Instagram Followers For Your Company’s Account

Of all the types of content on social media, images are shared the most often. Instagram has long been the most popular image editing and sharing social media app. Instagram became even more popular, and even more useful, when Facebook bought the app last year. Thanks do the patronage of the social media giant, Instagram has been able to increase its user base to over 130 million and improve its photo editing software.

As more and more people are accessing social media sites on their mobile phones, it’s vital that companies have an active account on Instagram, which is one of the most popular social media apps for phones and tablets. However, user’s will only see the photos on a companies account if they follow it, so gaining followers is of the upmost importance to companies who want to successfully promote themselves on Instagram.

Photos

Instagram is first and foremost an image sharing app. You need to make sure that you upload the best quality photos. Take a few photos of one subject, testing filters and angles, then post the best one. All your photos need to be mobile friendly as well: although Instagram can be accessed on desktop devices, most people will use their phone.

Schedule your photos to appear on Instagram at intervals, so that your follower’s streams aren’t inundated with your photos. Work out when your followers are active on Instagram and schedule your pictures so that they appear when your followers are looking through their stream. Depending on how many people they follow, your followers’ streams will be constantly updating. You need to post your photos at the right time so that they stand out.

Also, you need to be aware that your photos will appear on your profile as well. The photos on your profile will often influence people on whether they want to follow you or not.

Post photos that are relevant to your industry and interesting to your followers. If you’re stuck for ideas on what to post look at what’s popular online and what people are posting and interacting with. Make sure you don’t just imitate other people, however, you need to be original and true to your brand identity on the site.

You can’t just be a brand, though. Instagram gives you a great opportunity to humanise your company, both through the images you post and the engagement you do. The more human your company seems on the service, the more Instagram followers you will get.

Tags

Make sure you tag your photos with relevant, popular hashtags. Using these hashtags, potential Instagram followers will be able to find your photos and click through to your account. If you’ve had an Instagram account for a while then go through your old photos and add hashtags and comments, this could get your photos more engagement even if they are old.

Geotag all your photos so that people can see where you are and where you have been. Geotagged photos of your business may draw customers. People who geotag photos in the same location will be able to see your photos, which they may click on to see your profile.

Use hashtags to research other potential images that you could post. The most popular hashtags will have some great images tagged with them.

Put calls to action on your actual images, encouraging users to click the like button or click trough to your website.

Connect

Connect your Instagram account to your Facebook account so that all your great photos get shared on the larger social media platform. You could even post your photos across other social media sites like Twitter andPinterest.

Connect with other users as well. Follow people who interest you or are relevant to your industry and they might follow you back. Follow users that Instagram suggests to you. You could even like and comment on great photos that are relevant to your business. Don’t get too spammy though, if you comment on everyone’s photos people will ignore you – plus it’s a waste of time.

Search for popular Instagram users and have a look at what they post: it may give you a great idea.

Post the odd video as well. Use the 15-second video length to your advantage: create a video that says a lot in a short space of time; one that is eye-catching and sharable. You could host a competition using the service, where people have to post photos with a specific hashtag to enter. This will get you great user-generated content.

Make sure that you constantly monitor your Twitter stats and how successful your photos and comments are at getting you followers.

How do you get people to follow your Instagram account?

Twitter Releases Photo Filters

A week after Instagram disabled full photo sharing on their mobile app, Twitter have released a photo filter service of their own.

Last week, Twitter users noticed that Instragram photos were being cropped on their Twitter feed. In a statement explaining the change, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told Mashable that Instagram had supported Twitter cards before because at the time they had a “minimal web presence”, but actually found the update “really confusing”.
“We’ve since launched several improvements to our website that allow users to directly engage with Instagram content through likes, comments, hashtags,” explained Systrom, “and now we believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives."

After Instagram disabled the photo sharing service, Twitter had to act quickly to release their own in-app image editing software. They announced three days ago that they would hopefully have a photo filter available by the holidays, but managed to release something yesterday with the support of Aviary, an image-editing API firm.


“Starting today,” says Senior Designer Coleen Baik on the Twitter blog, “you’ll be able to edit and refine your photos, right from Twitter.” The photo filtering service is easily accessible from the tweet composition screen.

The app is not as versatile as it was with Instagram, but still has a few nifty features:

• Users can crop their photo or change it from landscape to portrait.
• Photos can be instantly enhanced at the touch of a button.
• There are several photo filters, including Warm, Vignette, Black & White and Vintage.

The Twitter photo filter is not yet available to all users, but should become so over the next few days.
Instagram, meanwhile, have just released their own update.



What do you think of Twitter’s Photo Filter?

5 Phenomenal Ways Instagram Can Boost Your Marketing Efforts

Instagram is a newly acquired tool by Facebook, available only on Androids and iPhones. It is a photo-sharing program and requires only the possession of relevant mobile apps. Although this holds maximum usage in personal relations, business enterprises are also using this tool to boost their marketing plan. Here are five keys:

1. The common method is by using the square photos for advertising. You can also try different type of affiliate marketing by presenting rebates and events of different companies on the snaps. You can first create relevant brochures or pamphlets and then snap them to make the process viral. It has a tremendous amount of footfall and thus you can entertain others through periodic photo contests. Holding prizes or random selection of viewers has a remarkable way of ennobling followers.

2. You can automatically broaden the horizon for your snaps by geo-tagging the photos and naming the locations. This way, it qualifies into diverse selection of photos privy to that location, and reaches more people. Lately, other web profiles have been engendered to connect to Instagram snaps to any way reach for the stars.

3. You have to be a party animal here. Spare some time to go through others' snaps and like those relevant to your niche. This builds camaraderie and exalts your stand in others' eyes. Apt titling of the photos is must, so that Google Spiders catch these. Bing has a great sense of valor with Instagram.

4. Instagram shouldn't only be about formal etiquettes. Encourage employees and customers to post some rare and shocking photos. The placement of bosses and subservient employees in a casual atmosphere would do well to showcase your love and bond to others. There are a few exceptional photographers and if you allow them their creative streaks, you allow a situation where new snapping ideas come into the fore. This builds enormous rapport with employees and helps impressively into your marketing plan.

5. You can also strengthen your SEO base by naming photos with apt titles. Keep space for viewer's comments. You can use tools like Textagram to pave way for exciting content for your snaps. Send alerts to potential customers about the snaps, and weave a fluent marketing system through your photos. You can tell a smart marketing story through connecting snaps; almost in line of a PPT presentation. You can also be inventive and show others how they can varyingly use your products. It is better to get some basic knowledge about photography before utilizing Instagram. It also allows hashtags to facilitate connection and update with Twitter, where you can be more specific about your plans. Yes, you cannot think your work done by working extensively over Instagram. There has to be a coherent and layered work done on Social Media Sites as well to draw a balance.

There is no question that Instagram and sharing of photos has exponentially helped businesses to thrive. In order to stay updated with viral changes, it is imperative that you stay with the times and accept these mores to your advantage.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7375663

Instagram Rolls Out Web Profiles

While most businesses are focused on going mobile, popular photo-sharing app Instagram is making its web debut. Two years after arriving on the iPhone, the company has finally started to roll out web profiles.
“People have been asking for this for a while now and we’re excited to finally start rolling them out,” explained Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. “We’re going to start out by launching to a small percentage of people today and will roll it out slowly to everyone in the coming days.”

Currently, when you share a link to an Instagram photo on Facebook or Twitter, people can view that photo but not much else. For example, if someone wanted to browse through your additional photos, he or she would have to look you up on Instagram. The company’s new web profiles aim to resolve that.
Bearing an incredible likeness to Facebook Timeline, Instagram’s web profiles feature a rotating collage of photos where your Facebook cover photo would sit. Below that, a small profile image, short bio, and follower stats rest just above your photo history — which is arranged in reverse-chronological order.

Instagram’s web profiles also enable individuals to follow new users, like photos, and leave comments directly from their browsers. To check if you’ve received the new profile, just access your profile (for example, http://instagram.com/sproutsocial). Instagram details what new features visitors can expect on profiles still awaiting the update.

If you’ve been neglecting your Instagram account, the new profile — which puts an even greater emphasis on your photos — is a good reminder to revisit and re-evaluate your goals on the platform. Photo sharing sites like Instagram have revived storytelling through photos; make sure your story is ready.

[Image credit: Instagram]

Using Instagram for Brands

Instagram is a mobile photo editing and sharing app that saw its user base explode from 15 to 80 million since Facebook acquired the company back in April.
But even before the acquisition, many savvy brands had joined the platform—especially retail brands with stunning visual content. Clothing, media, and design-based brands were a natural fit for both the platform technology and Instagram’s early adopter user base.
However, unlike Facebook or Twitter, Instagram doesn’t have business-specific profiles, built-in visibility or engagement metrics, or paid advertising options. 
So why are brands rushing to join yet another social network? Here’s why:
Instagram is both a photo editing tool and a social network
By keeping it’s focus limited to photos, Instagram has carved out a unique space in the social media sphere. In essence, the genius is in its simplicity, especially when so many social platforms continue to bloat with additional features and functionality. The app has commonly used social actions built in—post, like, comment, follow, unfollow, etc.—so using the community aspects of the platform feel familiar.
The other side to this app is its ability to turn almost any photo into art by using filters and other tools.
Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that most users follow between 50 and 250 users. I think this is a sign of social media maturity—folks are learning from their experiences on Facebook and Twitter that following too many accounts is overwhelming.
But Instagram’s technology helps you easily create stunning images that you can easily share on your other social networks.
Both Facebook and Twitter have optimized how photos are displayed on these platforms and you can share directly from Instagram to those platforms (as well as to Tumblr, Foursquare, Flickr, and email) automatically or by individual selection.
Instagram is about visual storytelling
Both the way the platform works (the technology) and the way most users approach the platform (the user experience) allows brands to employ visual storytelling that has more continuity and artistic value than other platforms.
With the absence of advertising (or even clickable links in captions or comments), business uses for an Instagram profile begin and end (for now) with awareness and branding. However, a few images that encapsulate a brand moment in a second or two is much more impactful than lines and lines of copy—no matter how brilliant the writing is.
Instagram is the perfect storm of mobile and image-based technology
Instagram combines two of the most powerful forces in the social technology market—mobile and photo sharing—to create a platform that truly offers a unique value proposition. Brands with an Instagram presence can take advantage of that intersection where users are focusing their attention.
Here are six tips to help you get the most out of this tool:
1. Use images to tell a story, not blast your branding
If you sell a product or service, make sure the images you use are about the experience of using the product or service, and not a product placement ad.
Starbucks is an example of a big brand that does this well. Sure their photos show lots of Starbucks cups, but their photos also tell a story—the focus is always on what the person is doing while enjoying their coffee—on the beach, reading a book, etc.
There’s not a lot of tolerance for marketing that’s obviously marketing on social in general, and I would argue less so on Instagram. Keep it subtle and keep the focus on the experience or emotion your Instagrams project.
2. Most photos fall into two categories: beautiful imagery or humor
Make sure your Instagram photos fall into one of these categories. Generally a humorous photo needn’t be beautiful as well. Most users aren’t posting all their random party pics to their Instagram stream and brands should exercise similar constraint. Photo albums in that vein are for Facebook. Think of your Instagram photos as high value/low volume.
3. Don’t post too often
A general rule, don’t post more than three photos in a row or once every three hours. If you post more often than that, you run the risk of hogging your users’ feed. And don’t automatically share your Instagram photos to all your networks—editorially select and customize each one for the appropriate platform.
And remember, you can use apps like PicFrame to include several snaps in one Instagram. Just be sure the images are related and the impact is magnified (rather than splintered) when you use a collage.
4. Choose an account name that’s the same as your Twitter handle
Having the same Instagram account name and Twitter handle serves two purposes. One—your profile will be easily recognizable and easy to find. And two—if you are tagged by another user in a caption and that photo is shared on Twitter, that tag will link to your Twitter profile. It ensures that tagging makes sense when an Instagram photo is shared on other networks.
5. Use hashtags, but don’t be creepy about it
Like on Twitter, hashtagging photos enables discovery of your profile by users outside of your primary connections. You can use the search functionality on the app to find out which hashtags are often used. Like on Twitter, hashtagging Instagram photos by event, geolocation, or subject matter is a good idea.
Other hashtags people tend to use on Instagram are filters and colors. Hashtags tend to be somewhat limited on Twitter due to the character length limitations. Because Instagram doesn’t have these limitations, this has encouraged some users and brands to stuff Instagram captions with every hashtag imaginable. Don’t do this—it looks like you’re trying too hard. Even worse, it makes you look like a spammer.
6. Set up an account on a web-based viewer
Instagram’s focus continues to be all about the mobile experience, but the app recently added the ability to view individual photos on the web through a shareable link. This feature allows your Instagram stream to not only be seen by those not using the app, but allows those who do have an account to like and comment on a shared photo right from the web. However, using a separate web-based viewer can help you manage your presence and track your progress.
Using Instagram’s API, these tools recreate your feed on a webpage, so you can view multiple photos at a time (without scrolling) on your computer. Most often you can make the same actions (liking, commenting, searching, tagging, etc.) on these web viewers that you can make on the mobile app. My favorite tool is Statigram—they even have a few basic metrics, comment notifications, and an Instagram campaign toolkit.

52 Social Media Facts - Blow Your Mind

Today I came across 52 up to date social media facts. Some of these I found truly mind boggling. It just goes to show how huge social media is these days! It's so impressive how these social platforms have grown in stature.


Facebook
1. 85% of women are annoyed by their friends (note – I don’t think this is just limited to Facebook!!).
2. Links about sex are shared 90% more than any other link.
3. More than 350 million users suffer from Facebook Addiction Syndrome.
4. 25% of users don’t bother with any kind of privacy control.
5. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Statistics from Economist, Social Times, CNN.

Twitter
6. 750 tweets per second are shared on Twitter.
7. The original Twitter beta was launched on the birthday of CEO Evan Williams.
8. If Twitter was a country, it’d be the 12th largest in the world.
9. 30% of Twitter users have an income of more than $100,000.
10. Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined (24 billion versus 4.1 billion and 9.4 billion respectively).

Statistics from Compete, Twitter Press Centre and BNN News.

LinkedIn
11. Two new members sign up to LinkedIn every second.
12. LinkedIn has 161 million members in more than 200 countries and communities.
13. Members are on track to make more than 5.3 billion searches on the platform in 2012.
14. LinkedIn’s revenue has doubled every quarter for the last two years.
15. There are more than one million LinkedIn groups.

Statistics from LinkedIn Press Centre.

YouTube
16. YouTube was founded to share dinner clips of a party due to the files being too large for email.
17. The most watched video is Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, with 470 million views.
18. The most watched non-commercial video is Charlie Bit My Finger Again, with over 458 million views.
19. The average visitor spends 15 minutes per day on YouTube.
20. It originally started life as a dating site and was influenced by the Hot Or Not website.

Statistics: Techzine and YouTube Archives.

Blogging
21. 3 million new blogs come online every month.
22. 60% of bloggers are aged between 25-44.
23. 20% of bloggers have been blogging for more than 6 years.
24. Professional bloggers upkeep an average of four blogs.
25. 35% of corporate bloggers worked in a journalism, media or professional writing role.

Statistics: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011.

Pinterest
26. Pinterest drives more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.
27. Users spend an average of just under 16 minutes on the site.
28. The most popular age group is 25-34 year olds, accounting for 27.4% of the user base.
29. Pinterest receives 1.3 million visitors per day.
30. 97% of the fans of Pinterest’s Facebook page are women.

Statistics: Modea

Instagram
31. 25% of Instagram users upload more than three pictures.
32. Over 5 million images are uploaded every day.
33. President Obama is on Instagram, having joined in January 2012.
34. Earlybird is the most popular filter, with 12.5% users preferring it (zero filters is the most popular way to use Instagram, with more than 47% of users going au naturel).
35. There are 575 Likes per second.

Statistics: Instagram Press Centre, ReadWriteWeb, Social Media Delivered.

Google+
36. “Student” is the number one occupation of Google+ users.
37. More than 2/3 of its users are male.
38. The Google +1 button is used more than 5 billion times per day.
39. Google+ is adding 625,000 new users every day.
40. More than 42% of Google+ users are single.

Statistics: Google Blog, Techcrunch, Google Investor Reports.

Social Media Influence Platforms
41. Klout has 50 times more traffic than PeerIndex, its closest competitor.
42. Kred tries to measure offline influence by allowing you to add achievements away from your online activities.
43. Klout changed its privacy model to allow opt-out from its service after a negative backlash in 2011.
44. Empire Avenue has users in more than 150 countries.
45. Justin Bieber is the only person with a perfect Klout score of 100 (says it all, then).
Statistics: Social Media Today, The Next Web.
The Mobile Web
46. 42% of phones in the U.S. are smartphones, with 44% of European users on a smartphone.
47. More than 110 million smartphone users in the U.S and Europe access social networks and blogs on their phones.
48. Tablets took just two years to reach 40 million users in the U.S. – it took smartphones 7 years to reach this figure.
49. China is the number one country in the world for smartphone use, with approximately 1 billion users.
50. In the U.K., there are twice as many smartphone users than cigarette smokers.

Statistics: ComScore and SoMobile.

Bonus Facts
51. Social gamers are expected to buy $6 billion in virtual goods in 2012.
52. One in 5 couples meet online; 3 in 5 gay couples meet online.

Statistics: eMarketer and Stanford University.

Are there any there that you are truly surprised at? Let me know in the comments!

Twitter Wanted to Buy Instagram

Facebook snapped up photo-sharing app Instagram last week for $1 billion, but the social network wasn’t the only one interested in purchasing the photo-filtering wonder app.

Twitter “expressed interest” in purchasing Instagram just a few months ago, according to the New York Times.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was one of the early backers of Instagram, investing in the service in February 2011. Dorsey was also a part of the beta of Instagram and tweeted pictures using the service before it was available to the public, adding buzz around the app’s release.

While Dorsey has posted quite a few Instagram photos over the past year, his Instagram stream has gone silent since the Facebook acquisition of the service.

Facebook’s purchase of Instagram included not only the app but also the Instagram staff. In the Timeline post announcing the acquisition Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that the company plans to continue to develop Instagram as an independent service and will continue to support sharing Instagram photos on other social networks — including Twitter.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family.” Zuckerberg said in the announcement. “Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

What do you think Facebook has planned for Instagram? Do you think the fate of the photo-sharing service would be better or worse in the hands of Twitter. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion

Facebook snapped up the hugely popular photo-sharing app Instagram Monday, for roughly $1 billion in a combination of cash and stock.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in a post on his Facebook Timeline Monday.

The sale is expected to close later this quarter, and will bring the nine-person staff of Instagram to the social network.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family,” Zuckerberg said in the post. “Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Zuckerberg went on to say that the company will be building on Instagram’s strengths and features and growing the app independently rather than “just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.”

Facebook plans on keeping features within the app that allow photos to be published on other social networks, and the ability to have followers and follow people who are not necessarily your Facebook friends.

“We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products,” Zuckerberg said. “At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.”

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom echoed Zuckerberg’s statements on the Instagram company blog adding “We’re psyched to be joining Facebook and are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.”

Instagram launched its iOS app in October 2010, and came to Android for the first time last week.
This is the first time Facebook has acquired a company or product with so many users. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.” Zuckerberg said. “But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

What do you think this means for the photo-sharing app — and how will it boost the social network? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.