Instagram, like all social media platforms, is investing heavily in its e-commerce capabilities. But while its ambitions are forward-facing, it is also looking backward at an underappreciated marketing tool to supercharge those ambitions – the QR code.
The QR code is having a renaissance. Once mostly seen in out-of-home (OOH) grassroots campaigns, the value of the code has skyrocketed as marketers grew to understand its wider implications for attribution and analytics purposes.
Instagram, finding itself on the back foot for e-commerce compared to platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat, is now quietly rolling out a new QR-based feature for all users. Following a limited trial of the tool, as noted by Alessandro Paluzzi, the platform is allowing its wider user base to share links to Reels and posts through the generation of a QR code.
A Meta representative told Techcrunch: “To make it easier for people and businesses to share specific content, we recently launched the ability to create QR codes for profiles, tags, locations, reels and more.”
It is another lease of life for the QR code. In 2015, Snapchat experimented with launching QR-based Snapcodes, allowing users to easily follow their friends. TikTok similarly launched its own visually-distinct QR code to allow users to share their own profiles.
The tool has also previously seen use in marketing in print titles. South Africa’s Associated Media – which publishes the regional editions of Cosmopolitan among others – saw positive results from printing QR codes next to products in its print magazines. That allowed its brand partners to track the purchase funnel from an analogue product to a digital one with much greater specificity than would otherwise have been possible.
At the time, Associated Media’s chief exec Julia Raphaely said: “We started with a QR code because, in South Africa, that is the payment gateway that’s very well recognized. We partnered with a QR code technology that was powered by a bank, and we started testing it.”
In the rest of the world, however, the QR code was seen mostly as a tool that had never lived up to its potential. Now, though, audiences have greater familiarity with codes for information-sharing and linking out. In its most recent Marvel series, for instance, Disney has included QR codes within TV shows that take users to bonus content.
A social strategy
Now, however, the QR code has come roaring back to the fore as a viable marketing tool. On social platforms, as in print, the codes are being used to open the purchase funnel for consumers – and to deliver greater measurement options for advertisers.
Jordan Lukeš, communications director at Emplifi, explains: “QR codes offer a wealth of opportunity for brands in terms of social-forward marketing. We know that influencer marketing is a huge hit with younger consumers especially. Just imagine how this could enhance the shopping experience – you could have QR codes connecting product info to posts where an influencer is wearing the item, or even include QR codes on physical clothing racks in stores.
“Not only does this create a phygital experience for the shopper, but it offers a new way for brands to drive and monitor their engagement in a way that can be traced all the way down to the bottom line.”
The codes would also aid with one of Instagram’s perennial issues – that of discovery. While more consumers are using platforms such as TikTok and Pinterest to seek out and discover recommendations, thus opening the purchase funnel for brand partners, Instagram has struggled to match their capabilities. This integration of QR code allows its creators to share their posts off-platform, which could help ameliorate that problem.
Beyond that, the key benefit for Instagram is one of attribution. The QR code allows for more direct and demonstrable measures of efficacy when it comes to linking through to advertising partners’ products.
Media Bounty’s Max Harris and Ali Moloney explain: “For advertisers, this trend has provided the added benefit of gathering audience data for future marketing purposes. For example, QR codes can store digital information such as when, where and how often you scan a code, which typically leads to an app or a website that then tracks your personal information. Therefore, the rise of the QR code follows the agreement between platforms and users as we exchange our data for access and convenience.”
The QR code was a victim of Amara’s Law, and its early use cases were arguably too early to take advantage of the rise of the smartphone camera and social media. With Instagram and the other major social platforms making huge strides toward developing their e-commerce operations, however, the QR code has again found its place in the marketer’s arsenal.
Apple’s quietly begun hiring for roles aimed at poaching the Facebook and Instagram advertisers that felt the biggest brunt from the company’s privacy updates
In terms of Silicon Valley feuds, you’d be hard pressed to find one that’s spicier than the years-long battle between Meta and Apple. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg started steering his company toward virtual-reality tech, and now Apple CEO Tim Cook has made it clear he’s gunning for the same. Meta’s Facebook recently started testing out encrypted chats, a domain that Apple has dominated for years.
Facebook is a company that historically hasn’t shied away from sharing user data with countless third parties. Meanwhile Apple AAPL, 0.16%, as its own glitzy ad campaigns constantly remind us, is the one tech company that doesn’t spray your data across the web.
And, of course, there’s Apple’s recent privacy changes to its operating system that wiped out an estimated $10 billion of revenue for Meta META, -0.83%. At the same time, the advertisers that relied on the long-established tools on Facebook and Instagram were left without the data they long relied on for their businesses.
In the year since Apple CEO Tim Cook denounced ad-based business models as a source of real-world violence, Apple has ramped up plans to pop more ads into people’s iPhones and beef up the tech used to target those ads. And now it looks like Apple’s looking to poach the small businesses that have relied almost entirely on Facebook’s ad platform for more than a decade.
MarketWatch found two recent job postings by Apple that suggest the company is looking to build out its burgeoning ad-tech team with folks who specialize in working with small businesses. Specifically, the company says it’s looking for two product managers who are “inspired to make a difference in how digital advertising will work in a privacy-centric world” and who want to “design and build consumer advertising experiences.” An ideal candidate, Apple said, won’t only be savvy in advertising and mobile tech, and advertising on mobile tech, but will also have experience with “performance marketing, local ads or enabling small businesses.”
The listings also state that Apple’s looking for a manager who can “drive multi-year strategy and execution,” which suggests that Apple isn’t just tailing local advertisers but will likely be tailing those advertisers for a while. And considering how some of those small brands are already looking to jump ship from Facebook following Apple’s privacy changes, luring them off the platform might be enough to hamper Meta’s entire business structure for good, ad-tech analysts said.
“If you talk to any small business, they’ll tell you, ‘Yeah, right now is a disaster,” said Eric Seufert, one analyst who’s been following the battle between Apple and Facebook evolve for years. “It’s just a meltdown. There’s been a complete, devastating change to the environment.”
Is Apple’s Tim Cook stealing a page from Facebook’s playbook? Getty Images
‘What goes around comes around’
Zuckerberg has said (over and over again) that Apple’s move to cut off the company’s precious user data would hamper “millions” of small businesses, and, indeed, in the iPhone update’s aftermath, some marketers said they were left “scrambling” to identify whom their ads were reaching — and typically paying sky-high prices for the privilege to do so.
From an iPhone owner’s point of view, it can be tough to understand exactly how a privacy feature could singlehandedly bring countless mom-and-pops to their knees. Especially when that feature, App Tracking Transparency (ATT) — which Apple rolled out in April of last year — does something as upstanding as mandating that app developers give users the freedom to choose whether they want to be tracked across their device.
Most users, by all accounts, would end up saying no. And once they did, those apps lost access to a crucial mechanism in mobile advertising: that person’s unique “identifier for advertisers,” or IDFA for short.
You can think of it as something like the iPhone’s answer to a web cookie. An advertiser can use your IDFA to track, say, whether you saw its ad on Instagram and then bought its product on Etsy ETSY, -0.66%, or followed its account on Pinterest PINS, 3.62%. IDFA was the key that let mobile advertisers know whether their ads actually worked.
So when Apple’s change hit, it wasn’t just Facebook’s advertisers that were flying blind — small shops that were running ads on Google’s GOOG, 0.63%GOOGL, 0.41% YouTube, Snap’s SNAP, 0.84% Snapchat, Pinterest or any other platform where ads are sold experiences some sort of hurt. And the more your platform’s business relied on user data, the bigger sting you felt.
“You can have an ideological take on all of this and say, ‘Well, these ad tools shouldn’t have gotten so efficient, since that was dependent on violating people’s privacy,’ ” Seufert said. “And that’s a fair argument.”
But, as he also pointed out, you can’t ignore economics. Apple certainly hasn’t.
“I guess what goes around comes around,” said Zach Goldner, a forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence who specializes in digital ads. “I mean, it’s not like Facebook hasn’t copied other platforms before.”
Aside from its myriad privacy scandals, the other core concept that the Meta brand is synonymous with is copying competitors. As Goldner put it, it was only a matter of time before someone tried made a run at the company that’s spent more than a decade weaving its brand into small businesses.
“Using Facebook ads for small businesses is voluntary in the same way that using email for a job search is voluntary,” said Jeromy Sonne, a longtime digital marketer who has since abandoned the platform to start his own ad-serving network.
“No, you’re not ‘locked in,’ and they aren’t forcing you to spend money. There’s no contract here,” he went on. “But because of the lack of options and the number of businesses that built their entire revenue off the back of the platform, it’s virtually impossible to walk away.”
Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook indispensable for the nation’s small businesses. Will that stranglehold endure? Associated Press
How Facebook became ‘virtually impossible’ for small business to escape
Before rivals like Snapchat and TikTok would hit the social-media sphere, Facebook had been running ads for years.
Some of the last holdouts in the switch to digital were smaller businesses — and reports at the time showed that there wasn’t a lack of companies trying to swoop in on the opportunity to work with local mom-and-pops. Ultimately, a good chunk of them would end up migrating to Facebook; the platform’s ad service was easier and cheaper to run than its competitors, and it offered more data than they did, too.
“You could just run anything in it, and it was so cheap it didn’t matter,” said Sonne. Facebook was offering something that was “100% self-serve” and didn’t have the price floors that other platforms — like, say, DoubleClick — were demanding at the time. And it was far easier to navigate than those competitors to boot.
Then the early aughts happened. In an effort to make its platform more user-friendly in 2014, Facebook started throttling the cheap promotional page posts that brands had become accustomed to, forcing the bulk of them to pay up for ad space in people’s feeds or lose the audience they’d spent nearly a decade cultivating.
When small businesses cried foul, Jonathan Czaja, Facebook’s then–director of small business for North America, said bluntly that the platform was simply “evolving,” and advertisers had no choice but to evolve alongside it.
So they did. A month after Czaja’s statement, the company boasted in a blog post about a new record number of small businesses operating on the platform: 40 million. At the same time, Zuckerberg noted that the company, though it was pivoting to fewer ads in people’s feeds, would be going even harder on microtargeting — a strategy that even he admitted was “pretty controversial” inside the company. Around the same time, employees reportedly began raising red flags about a then-obscure ad firm named Cambridge Analytica, which improperly harvested data from countless Americans in the run-up to the 2016 election.
‘Using Facebook ads for small businesses is voluntary in the same way that using email for a job search is voluntary.’
— Jeromy Sonne, digital marketer
By 2017, the combination of Facebook’s ever-growing cache of user data and increasing scale had left advertisers more or less stuck. When Facebook admitted to marketers no less than a dozen times that it might have flubbed the figures it provided, advertisers shrugged off the miscalculations every time. “Even with the wrong math — it is really small compared to fraud rates on other platforms,” one ad executive told Business Insider at the time. “In digital advertising, you just learn to live with a certain amount of ambiguity.”
Another executive put it more bluntly: “I wouldn’t say they are foolproof, but they are fairly impervious to almost anything.”
Revelations that the company knowingly lied to advertisers for years about how far their campaigns were reaching didn’t send advertisers packing, and neither did the slowly rising prices that many advertisers were paying. It’s typical for ad prices on any platform to fluctuate from month to month, but Facebook’s spikes were unusually extreme. Between January 2017 and January 2018, for example, one analysis found that the prices advertisers were paying for their Facebook ads were spiking as much as 122%.
“Over time the [prices] go up, support gets stretched thin, scaling issues take hold,” he went on. But what was a struggling startup to do? Venture capital had been steadily flowing into a new generation of digital-first brands for more than a decade, which gave them new monthly goals they needed to hit.
“It became a situation where brands or agencies who had expectations of eternal growth could consistently get it from Facebook,” Sonne said, and that their funders now expected the same. But it also made them dependent on a platform that was either increasingly unreliable or downright unusable, depending on which advertiser was asked. Some small businesses reported having their ads improperly flagged by Facebook’s automated ad-review process, while other marketers expressed frustration at how buggy the back-end systems were.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Meta, meanwhile, noted that “small-business owners around the world tell us our products helped them create and grow their businesses.”
“It’s why we are consistently committed to developing and providing new programs, tools, training and personalized advertiser support for them,” the spokesperson went on.
The company doesn’t disclose how many of the 10 million–plus advertisers pouring money into a given Meta property each year qualify as a “small business.” The last time Facebook shared that data itself was in a 2019 earnings call when then–Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the top 100 advertisers represented “less than 20%” of the company’s total ad revenue. An analysis from the marketing analytics firm Pathmatics found that percentage closer to 6%, at $4.2 billion in spending altogether. The company raked in nearly $70 billion in ad revenue that year alone.
Apple’s next move
Since upending the online advertising ecosystem, third-party analysts have seen a surge of advertiser activity — and ad dollars — head Apple’s way.
Last year, for example, one of these reports found that Apple’s Search Ads — which appear at the top of your iPhone screen when you’re looking for a new app to buy in the company’s App Store — were the source of roughly 58% of all iPhone app downloads. A year prior, these same ads were only responsible for 17%. And earlier this summer, one Evercore analyst projected that Apple’s App Store ads could net the company $7.1 billion in revenue by 2025.
“I think the revenue piece [of the ad market] is less important to Apple than just breaking up Facebook’s total ownership of distribution on mobile,” Seufert said. He pointed out that, for a long time, Facebook dominated the market in driving app installs. One report earlier this year found that about three-quarters of those marketing a mobile app rely on Meta’s ad-tech tools to do so.
“Ads are a revenue opportunity, but, more importantly, they’re a discovery mechanic,” Seufert went on. “And suddenly Facebook was determining which apps got downloaded, not Apple. My sense with all this is that they care about the revenue, but I don’t think that was the primary driver. I think it was about the power.”
As far as power plays go, there’s really no better move than homing in on small businesses that have become disgruntled with Meta’s platforms. And as Goldner pointed out, with the economic crush that came with the ongoing pandemic, more advertisers — big and small — are shirking display-based advertising like Meta’s for more search-based advertising like Apple’s.
“As we’re hitting a potential recession, people are moving more towards bottom-of-the-funnel ads to squeeze the margins,” Goldner said. “Whenever a potential economic downturn exists, companies want to focus on maximizing their sales. They care less about goodwill and more about just keeping their businesses afloat.”
Apple’s impending small-business push could also explain the rumblings that the company plans to add search ads to Apple Maps in the near future. After all, one of the best ways your local hardware store or diner can advertise their wares today is via search ads in Google Maps, which have been there since 2016. As Seufert put it, “How could [Apple] justify not doing it?”
Feature Image Credit: Getty Images
By Shoshana Wodinsky
Shoshana Wodinsky is an Enterprise Reporter for MarketWatch.
Accounts with verified badges are treated like nothing less than royalty on social media. According to Instagram, a verified badge is “a tool to help people find the real accounts of public figures and brands, and it means (Instagram) verified this is a notable and authentic Instagram account.”
However, Instagram says the blue check mark shouldn’t be considered “a symbol to show importance, authority, or subject matter expertise.”
To get verified on Instagram, there are vague criteria one must meet before applying. Keep in mind that requesting a verification doesn’t guarantee one.
Open Instagram on your phone and log in to the account you’re requesting a verified badge for.
Go to your profile by tapping on your profile picture at the bottom right.
Tap the three-lined hamburger icon in the top right and tap on Settings.
Tap Account, scroll down and tap Request verification.
Enter your credentials and provide necessary documents such as proof of identification. Instagram cites a “government-issued photo ID or official business documents” as examples.
Follow the on-screen instructions and submit your request.
Before applying, there are things to keep in mind even if your account ticks all the boxes. Instagram says once your account is verified, the username for the account cannot be changed or transferred to another account.
Multiple verification requests do not guarantee a quicker verification process or a verification at all, according to Instagram. It might even lead to cancellation of your application.
How many followers do you need to get verified on Instagram?
Instagram takes various factors into account while considering a verified-badge request. Surprisingly, none of these explicitly mention a follower count. While many might assume a high number of followers will get you verified on Instagram, the photo and video-sharing platform has other criteria.
According to Instagram, in addition to following Instagram’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Use, the account must be:
Authentic: Represent a real person, registered business or entity.
Unique: Represent the unique presence of the person or business. Only one account per person or business may be verified, with exceptions for language-specific accounts. This doesn’t include “general interest accounts” such as a memes account or a fan page.
Complete: Your account must have a completed profile such as be public, have a bio, a profile photo and be active when you apply.
Notable: Your account must represent a well-known, highly searched-for person, brand or entity. Instagram takes into consideration if the person or business is featured in multiple news sources excluding paid or sponsored media content as sources for review.
As long as the Instagram account possesses all the qualities mentioned by Instagram, there might be a good chance for verification. But the criteria does say the account must represent a person or a business who’s “notable” and “well-known,” so whether a “normal” person qualifies depends on the person and the account they’re trying to get verified.
It’s important to note that if you receive a verified badge using false or misleading information during the verification process, Instagram will remove your verified badge and may take additional action to disable your account.
There is no law that says you have to use Twitter.
Almost everyone agrees that large swaths of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit are terrible, each in their own way. But these monolithic social media platforms are so ubiquitous, it’s easy to forget that you don’t have to use them. Which isn’t to say that you have to swear off of social media forever: There are less odious alternatives that will still let you participate in online life.
These smaller, scrappier social media platforms aim to either correct the most egregious mistakes their big brothers and sisters make, or to provide niche experiences that the larger social media companies can’t/won’t. Below are alternatives to five of the most popular social media platforms. None of them are perfect, but they’re at least different, and probably less terrible. Plus, if any of them really catch on, you can be first to complain about how they used to be so much better.
Ditch Facebook for MeWe: Freedom from advertising and tracking
My suggested Facebook alternative, MeWe, offers a lot of features that will be familiar to Facebook-users—groups, private chats, tagging, content permissions—and boasts a Facebook-like look and feel, but WeMe is less evil. It’s completely advertising free and doesn’t track or sell its users’ data, staying afloat by offering for-pay premium services. On the downside: There are reportedly 16 million users of WeMe, which might sound like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users.
Switch from Twitter to WT.Social: News with less misinformation and hysteria
I’ve had a Twitter account since 2010, but I can’t anymore. I just want links to interesting news stories and the occasional cute cat pic, but Twitter seems intent on serving up maddening, toxic nonsense. The site is awash in hysteria, misinformation, manipulation, and bitterness. If you’re just sick of it like I am, check out WT.Social.
Launched in 2019 by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, WT.social is completely ad-free and dedicated to combating misinformation by allowing users to flag and edit any post, like a certain famous online encyclopedia. There are no advertisers to appease, since the service is paid for through voluntary donations, and WT.social says its mission is to “foster an environment where bad actors are removed because it is right, not because it suddenly affects our bottom-line.”
Switch from Instagram to 500px: Better photos, less psychological trauma
Instagram has long been known to be devastating to the mental health of young people. The photo-sharing platform has been associated with depression, self-esteem issues, social anxiety, and other issues. It’s run by the same people who run Facebook, who seem bent on making social media experiences as addictive as possible. If you’re a photographer and you don’t want to support any of that just to show off your pics, you should switch to 500px.
The platform’s philosophy is built around quality pictures, so you can view and post pics in high resolution. The algorithm that determines which photographs are widely shared is based less on your number of followers and more on “likes” from people who don’t follow you. There are even opportunities to monetize your work.
While 500px is geared toward photographers, if you just like looking at pretty pictures, it might be the service for you too. Unlike Instagram’s mix of pictures, ads, and videos, 500px’s feeds feature only photographs, and it feeds aren’t based on Zuckerberg-style algorithms, so you’ll see only what you want to see.
Switch from TikTok to, well, something
TikTok is the nearly universal choice of young people eager to watch and share shorter videos. TikTok is so huge at the moment, it has no realistic challengers (other than old-school YouTube), and none on the horizon—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any alternatives. Here are a few video sharing apps that offer things TikTok does not.
Triller. This app makes the already easy process of posting videos online even easier. Triller uses AI to edit videos in time to pre-selected music.
Clapper. If you’re worried that your important political views are being censored by TikTok, this moderation-light platform will let you spout off whatever dumb nonsense you’d like.
Clash. Created by one of the co-founders of Vine, Clash focuses on short form videos, and isn’t designed as a challenger to TikTok as much as a sidecar: It allows creators with existing followings to interact with and monetize their audience in exciting new ways. But that also means users can interact with their faves more easily, too.
Switch from Reddit to Discourse: Less dumbness, more smartness
It’s hard to believe now, but for a couple years after Reddit launched in 2005, it was a discussion forum for smart people. Unfortunately, popularity and an aversion to curation and moderation lead to a dumbing down of content and a proliferation of hateful and boring users. For a smaller, more focused discussion-based community, try Discourse. This open-source forum platform’s stated goal is to “raise the standard of civilized discourse on the internet through seeding it with better discussion software.” In practice, that means trusted, frequent users have a say in how communities are managed; it’s easy to flag bad content; and there exists robust and user-customizable curation. Plus, fewer people use it, so it hasn’t been ruined…yet.
Feature Image Credit: Chernousov family (Shutterstock)
Meta is rolling out new ways for creators to make money on Facebook and Instagram.
Content is king on social media, and all the platforms are in a sort of gold rush to ensure the supply of new content does not run dry. Every day, it seems, one platform or the other announces some new scheme or incentive for content creators to sign up to.
Not to be left behind, Meta has announced several new ways creators can monetize their content on Instagram and Facebook. Here are the details.
Meta Announces New Ways to Make Money on Instagram and Facebook
These monetization options are always being updated. Thus, Mark Zuckerberg has posted several new monetization tools Meta is rolling out for creators on Instagram and Facebook.
In addition, Meta’s blog confirms the company will not charge subscribers a fee on Subscriptions, Badges, Paid Online Events, and Bulletin for an additional year until January 1, 2024.
Clearly, Meta is going all out to attract and hold on to its best creators.
The New Monetization Tools on Instagram and Facebook
Meta has released five new ways for creators to make money on both Instagram and Facebook.
1. Interoperable Subscriptions
Facebook will now allow creators to automatically add their fans on other platforms to subscribers-only Facebook Groups. This allows them to receive payments from their fans on the other platforms, and save time by not having to manually let individual members into their Facebook Groups.
Facebook will launch the service with a limited group of partners before expanding.
2. Facebook Stars
Facebook Stars is now open to all creators. However, they must have at least 1000 followers since the preceding 60 days, be in a country where Stars are available, and meet Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies and Content Monetization Policies. This applies to Facebook Live, videos on-demand, and will soon be available on Facebook Reels.
3. Monetizing Reels
The Reels payment program was previously only available to creators on an invite-only basis. Now Facebook is allowing US-based creators to apply to join. However, they must have created more than five Reels and have a total of 100,000 views in the previous 30 days, and they must meet Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies and Content Monetization Policies to be eligible.
Facebook is also now allowing creators to cross-post Reels on both Instagram and Facebook and earn money on both platforms.
In addition, creators will shortly be able to use the “Paid Partnerships with” label for their branded content on Facebook Reels. This will allow sponsors to convert them to Branded Content Ads.
4. Creator Marketplace
Meta is following in TikTok’s and Snapchat’s footsteps by launching a Creator’s Marketplace on Instagram intended to match creators with suitable brands.
Creators will be able to indicate the brands and topics they’re interested in making branded content for. Brands will be able to find and collaborate with creators through the Meta Business Suite.
“When they’ve found a creator they want to partner with, they’ll be able to send a project that outlines the details of the opportunity, including deliverables and payment offered,” according to Meta.
5. Digital Collectibles
Instagram started allowing NFTs to be shared on its platform in May 2022. Now Meta will allow this feature to be available to more creators in select countries, and soon on Facebook as well (starting with a small group of US creators). Users will be able to cross-post on both Instagram and Facebook.
Instagram Stories will also start hosting NFTs, in partnership with SparkAR.
Creators Have the Upper Hand
In the old days, the content we consumed was determined by a few people at the top of a production company sitting around a boardroom table. These days, social media has shifted the power to independent creators who execute and deliver content directly to us, with no oversight.
The leading social media platforms have taken notice and are scrambling to find ways to lock in the best creators on their platforms in order to lock in our eyes as well. Clearly, it’s a good time to be a creator.
Kariuki is a Nairobi based writer. His entire life has been spent trying to string together the perfect sentence. He is still trying. He has published extensively in Kenyan media and, for a hot 7 years or so, dived into the world of Public Relations where he discovered the corporate world is just like high school. He now writes again, focusing mainly on the magical internet. He also dabbles in the vibrant Kenyan start-up scene, AKA the Silicon Savannah, and occasionally advises small businesses and political actors on how to communicate better to their audiences. He runs a YouTube channel called Tipsy Writers, which attempts to get storytellers to tell their untold stories over a beer. When not working, Kariuki enjoys taking long walks, watching classic movies – especially old James Bond movies – and spotting aircraft. In an alternate universe, he would probably be a fighter pilot. More From Patrick Kariuki
While scrolling through Instagram, if you’ve ever come across images of a laid-back yet sophisticated cocktail party filled with effortlessly cool people drinking colourful cocktails and spritzes, that’s probably because of Helena Hambrecht.
Hambrecht is the CEO, co-founder, and branding mastermind of aperitif brand Haus. Before Haus, Hambrecht cut her teeth in brand consulting for big names like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Uber, and Airbnb. In other words, Hambrecht has “this really weird, but useful skill set of learning how the internet sausage is made.”
Haus isn’t like other alcohol brands, it’s a cool brand
“Historically, there just hasn’t been a lot of innovation in liquor,” says Hambrecht. From ingredients to distribution, Big Liquor is very much a gatekeeper industry that Hambrecht and her co-founder saw an opportunity to shake up. (Pardon the pun.)
Other brands add sugar, preservatives, aren’t transparent about their ingredients or where they’re sourced, and have high alcohol content, which is a pretty nasty combination for a hangover. Instead, according to the website, Haus uses responsibly-sourced “natural fruits, herbs, and botanicals,” has lower alcohol content (more than wine, less than whiskey), and is made sustainably.
But it’s not just a better-tasting booze with less of a hangover. According to alcohol distribution laws, aperitifs that are mostly grape-based, like Haus’s product, can be sold online. And that’s how Haus became a business-to-consumer brand for the Instagram era.
“Because we have the freedom to sell online, we just re-thought what a brand could look like.”
The Instagram effect
Since launching in 2019, Instagram was an inherent part of brand strategy. Today, Haus has 65,000 followers. “I wanted to make something that you could recognize from 200 feet away,” says Hambrecht. “That has made Instagram really successful for us, because when you see the Haus bottle, there’s nothing else that looks like it, even if it’s 10 pixels high, you can recognize it.”
From day one, Instagram was a part of Haus’s strategy.Credit: Haus
Building an online presence had a major advantage of working with distributors that normally wouldn’t give indie alcohol brands like Haus the time of day, said Hambrecht. “We could go to them and be like, ‘Look, we built the brand for you. We already have this national audience that knows who we are and they’re all waiting for us to get into wholesale. So all you have to do is clear it for us and take a chunk of our money.”
Currently, Haus is in the middle of launching wholesale in 24 states.
Yes, TikTok is currently the most popular app, but Instagram is a key asset for consumer brands who want to build a following. We asked Hambrecht our burning questions about the importance of promoting your business on Instagram and here’s what we learned.
1. Define an aesthetic.
Instagram is all about aesthetics, which is why it works best for consumer brands like Haus.
“A big reason why people will buy food or beverage or really anything online is that they can see how it lives in the world,” says Hambrecht. “For us, we’ve been able to use photography on Instagram to show, ‘this is how you drink it, this is where you drink it, this is who you invite over, where you put the bottle.’ All of those things can be answered visually and that’s where Instagram is just so much better at education and brand marketing than most social channels.”
Hambrecht says they wanted to create a visual style that was aspirational, but attainable. “What we found is it resonates a lot with people, it makes it feel approachable, it makes it feel like maybe something that they could bookmark as inspiration.”
2. ‘The less you sell, the more you’ll sell.’
Sound counterintuitive? Allow Hambrecht to explain. “It’s obvious that you want them to buy [the product], you don’t need to say that.” Customers should want to buy a product based on what they see and feel, Hambrecht explains. “It’s less about selling and more about how can we use this as a brand extension to give our community what they want?”
3. Give the people what they want.
A key part of promoting your business on Instagram is figuring out what your followers may want. “You may not even have a community yet, but say you’re making a food product. You can take a wild guess that the community might want to have some food recipes, or they may want to have your recommendations for other products that could accompany food,” says Hambrecht.
“What can you give your community that isn’t necessarily tied to your product, but makes them really love your brand and think of you as creative and generous and thinking about what the community cares about,” she continues. “That’s how you build that brand loyalty and that’s going to make people want to follow you.”
If you’re thinking of Instagram as more of a content and community engagement channel instead of a sales channel, your posts will be genuine and align with the followers you’re looking for.
4. Build community around your brand.
According to Hambrecht, Haus learned from its customers that they loved seeing other members of the community, so the company started featuring them in more Instagram posts. “It’s really awesome for our audience who wants to see who else is part of this community, who else is drinking this product and they can follow them or they could reach out to them.”
Haus didn’t spend any money on marketing for the first six months, which Hambrecht attributes to investing in branding and customer experience early on, which generated lots of word-of-mouth buzz. Having a strong engaged community proved to be critical when the worst happened…
5. Always be willing to adapt.
Haus was just six months old when the pandemic hit. For a business that built its brand around gathering, Haus suddenly faced huge challenges. Hambrecht says they had to rethink how Haus would live in their customers’ lives during that time. “We shifted our focus to things that were still relevant, like educating our community on the product, how it’s made, the ingredients and where they come from, and recipes they can make at home.”
There was also the practical issue of how to photograph and create new content during social isolation. Hambrecht says they crowdsourced their customers and team about how they were staying connected to each other during the pandemic, which became the genesis for an interview series called “My Haus.”
“We were like, ‘Well, we can’t go and like meet these people in person, it’s dangerous to send a photographer. So why don’t we start sending disposable cameras?'”
“It’s an interview series where we send members of our community disposable cameras, and they photograph a day in the life in their home. We interview them about their home rituals and how they stay connected with the people in their lives in this strange time, whether that’s over zoom, or in person with whoever they live with at home.”
Of course, these were extreme circumstances that forced businesses to adapt for their very survival, but it taught Haus some important lessons.
“Don’t feel so stuck in one strategy. Whatever works today, may need to change six months from now or a year from now,” says Hambrecht. “It’s just a matter of paying attention to what’s going on in the world, and paying attention to what your community cares about or what they need help with.”
6. Play it cool — and be patient.
In other words, it’s all about the long game. “We didn’t take shortcuts, we weren’t begging for followers. You just gotta be cool. Play it cool and be patient.”
Hambrecht built Haus’s following through “building genuine connections,” which has carried the brand through a global pandemic. “Whether it’s with your customers, reporters, retailers, partners, or investors, you’ve just got to play the long game and know that those the relationships you’re making today might come around in two to three years for you.”
Feature Image Credit: Mashable composite: Bob Al-Green / Haus
Instagram is my waiting room app. I don’t use it every day, but when I have a couple of spare minutes, I like to casually check out what the people I’m following are up to.
The problem, lately, is getting to the stuff I actually want to see requires battling through a mountain of sponsored content and suggested posts. When it comes to ads on platforms, there’s a point at which a user inevitably will throw their hands up in the air and say: enough. This level is different for everyone, but for me, Instagram has not only reached it — it’s running circles around it.
Dude, where’s my content?
Let’s test this. I’ve just opened the Instagram app on my iPhone and counted 14 (fourteen) instances of ads, suggested posts, and sponsored content, in the first 16 posts on the top of my feed. I had to scroll past six ads before I got to a post by someone I actually follow. I’m not sure when Instagram became this aggressive when it comes to ads, but I don’t remember it being this bad earlier this year. A month-old Reddit post showcases the same issue, with a seemingly infinite array of ads lined up one after another.
Worse, there’s something deeply insulting by the content of the ads and suggested posts I’m seeing. Yes, I follow a couple of fitness-oriented pages, as well as wrestling pages, on Instagram. So its algorithms have decided that I must be into boxing and bodybuilding (I’m not). I’m constantly being served ads for boxing lessons, which I don’t particularly care about, and I keep seeing muscular men posing on a stage, which, again, is not my cup of tea. Instagram is relentless about this type of content; there’s little variety to it. I’m a human in 2022, which means I have the luxury of having specific, nuanced interests — I’m alright with bodyweight workouts, but not interested in bodybuilding. I can watch Brazilian jiu-jitsu videos all day, but not boxing. Maybe it’s the way I’m engaging with this content that throws Instagram’s algorithms off, but it just seems incapable of accurately predicting what I really want to see.
It’s not just me. Another Reddit thread, also from about a month ago, titled “Okay, we get it. Your feed is entirely ads,” has dozens of users complaining about how bad Instagram’s feed has become.
“60 percent of the posts on my newsfeed are from accounts I do not follow — yet there are accounts I do follow who post regularly and I don’t ever see their posts,” writes user HireLaneKiffin. “It’s gone from all my follows to every other follow and ad to as of today a three to two ratio of ads and promoted follows from the worst people and things,” writes user ilivedownyourroad. I don’t have a scientific method to determine how many ads are too many for the majority of users, but my guesstimate is that Instagram is well past it.
This behavior is spilling over to Meta’s other property, Facebook. On this platform’s feed, you’ll see at least some content from the pages and people you follow on top, but there will be a ton of ads in between, and every now and then you’ll see a suggested post from a page you don’t particularly care about — I’m looking at you, Nick’s Strength and Power. In fact, this particular page which serves bodybuilding-related content, probably has little to do with it; Facebook has decided that I must be into bodybuilding, and bodybuilding videos I will watch, so help me the almighty algorithm.
But I don’t wanna watch what Simon did next. Credit: Instagram/upromototraining
The sponsored overload is not as bad on Facebook as it is on Instagram, but Instagram may be an early warning here. A few months down the road, you might have to jump through the hoops of switching to chronological post order every time you open the app (to do that, tap “Menu,” then “See more,” then “Most recent” on the iPhone).
Can you help it? Yes, but not quite.
There are ways to alleviate this influx of ads, but Instagram is quite cunning about it. Once you’ve opened the app, there’s a little white arrow that appears next to the Instagram logo on top, letting you see content only from the accounts you’ve set as favourites. But the little white arrow only appears once you’ve scrolled past the first post — a way to force you, I reckon, to see at least one ad before getting to the content you want. Furthermore, you have to do it every time you start the app, and you also have to ardently add all the content you want to follow to your favourites, which is an additional hassle.
You can also get an Android-only unofficial app for Instagram that lets you get rid of ads altogether, but unofficial apps, besides probably being against Instagram’s terms of service, can be a way to get malware on your device.
The bottom line is that, for the majority of users, the Instagram experience is severely tarnished when you’re force fed stuff you don’t want. There’s a point at which even advertisers will start to complain, as they inevitably see engagement numbers fall from their tired and resigned audience. I’ve asked Instagram whether they think they’ve gone too far with sponsored content, and will update this article when I hear back.
UPDATE: Jun. 9, 2022, 12:21 p.m. EDT An Instagram spokesperson got back to me, saying that my feed having so many ads and suggested posts is “not the intended experience.” The company will look into it and get back to me with more information.
I know the mantra: If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the user, you’re the product being sold. But for me to consent to being sold, I need to get something back from the app or else I’ll just give up. Right now, Instagram is working very hard to make me give up.
Are you unable to bring UK Instagram followers to your business profile? Then you must be lacking something, and it needs your consideration. We have collected the top branding plan after detailed research to boost your brand on the photo-sharing application.
Many businesses feel the urge to showcase their products on every social media stage. And in the wish of more, ignore the policy. Never do such mistake if anyone desire to approach the right audience. Because Instagram is so different from other famous social sites, it needs a perfect marketing policy.
What are the top Instagram Branding Plan to bring sales
Start here to create your unique style for our brand and bring more engagement and interaction to your post. Yes, you can buy real Instagram likes UK and followers for the marketing plan but how. Stay tuned; you will also learn this.
Set your aims for Instagram:
Before posting on Instagram, you must verify one thing: Why are you on Instagram? Do you have any goals here? As famous as the site is, your answer must be no, “because everybody else is.” To be growing on Instagram in the long term, you need to set goals and objectives to explain your time, energy, and financial investment. It is essential for businesses.
Be sure to specify your Instagram aims first. And guess what? Your Instagram can have several aims — you can also post product pictures while sharing user-generated content (UGC). It’s more about the type of your posts and more about why you are sharing them. If you know the reason, you can learn how to achieve your achievement and use Instagram features to achieve your aims.
Decide your Instagram targeted followers:
Before you start marketing on Instagram, determine the audience you want to reach. If you have other marketing plans, use them to keep up your attempts. Consider age, gender, interests, motivations, income, location, and pain points. Your post style, captions, and Instagram features depend on the target market
Conduct a competitive research about your competitive profile:
After you decide on your Instagram audience, do detailed research to see what other firms post in your sector.
Quickly view the relevant accounts to find which posts are having the high interaction:
What are their captions are
What popular hashtags they are using
How often they post and how often.
So, having all this data help you to create the right content and compete with the others.
When reviewing your competitors’ content, note the chances they missed. Using content that other profiles; will help your business be distinct from the others.
Create a logical brand on Instagram:
Random or interrupted content can confuse your audience, and you may lose UK Instagram followers. To avoid this, maintain a permanent brand image on your Instagram account. Consider posting pictures with your brand in mind. Adding great stories to your captions can make your business more related.
Listen to Your Customers:
As you increase your Instagram presence, you will search for more and more users raising their voices with questions and proposals.
For example, Instagram is used as a user facilitate channel to answer your users’ questions to help them decide on an appropriate purchase.
As a result, Instagram is another site for gathering responses and understanding what people want from your store. These beneficial visions can help you to better your products and significantly improve your Instagram marketing plan
Create Instagram-Specific Landing Pages:
Only Instagram provides the option to reach the landing page. Go for the valuable bio link to drive traffic directly from this platform to your site.
We never lost this real estate.
For example, do not just post a simple homepage link in your Instagram bio. But be sure that your landing pages and website are also mobile-friendly. So, make sure that your landing pages are suitable for most of Instagram mobile user support.
That’s why many brands assist with landing pages specific to Instagram or, at the very least, landing pages suitable for cell phones. The advantage here is two-fold:
you create complete shopping skills for viewers
It provides you the chance to measure how well your Instagram followers turn.
Build up your Instagram follower base:
It takes serious time and energy to increase your following. Many businessesbuy real Instagram followers UKto kick start their game on this photo-sharing application! Buying followers from an authentic seller will increase engagement and brings more likes.
More to add: This is what you can focus on to follow the right path.
Confirm your username is identifiable and searchable. If people fail to search for you, they cannot follow you! Complete your bio. It is the last thing anyone sees before they decide to follow you, so make sure to know who you are and what are you doing.
Once your profile is improved, begin posting. It’s a good plan to expand your catalogue with 15 to 20 excellent posts before you seriously start attracting people. If customers visit your profile and find it blank, then it is possible that they may not be following you.
Then, start following accounts of interest to you and link them with your business. Think of Instagram as a community and find other companies or influential people in your area who may entertain your products.
Inspirit others to share your content. Contact the influencers to share your account and products.
Instagram is a powerful tool for both established and up-and-coming businesses. Here are a few tips on how you can use it better.
For any company or business, it is of utmost importance to maintain a presence on social media, and do so in the most efficient way possible. Nailing down your internet strategy is as important as ever, and if you’re a business, it can score you a lot of points to get things right.
One of the biggest social networks around right now is Instagram. It can be a daunting platform to get into, but if you use it properly, it can be a powerful tool for your business. Here are a handful of tips on how you can boost your presence on Instagram.
1. Get the Basics Right
When first creating an Instagram account for your business, there are a few things that you need to do before kicking it off other than just putting a name, a profile picture, and a bio. These will be essential for your journey later on.
The first one is to switch your profile to an Instagram business account. This will allow you to access juicy metrics later on, and use some of the tools we’ve detailed later on in this post—and it will also make prospective customers take you more seriously. To do so, go to Settings, tap on Account, then tap on Switch to Professional Account and follow the steps—select the category that best suits your business, and click OK to confirm.
The second one is to put action buttons on your profile. You can add info to your profile, like a phone number or an email, and make it easily accessible via call-to-action buttons on your profile, so people can quickly reach out to you. Create a Linktree link and put it in your profile, too, as this will allow you to both add extra buttons not supported by Instagram and also link to your other social media accounts.
Also, while we’re on it—even if you do all of this, keep an eye on your DMs, because you’ll almost certainly still have people message you there, and you don’t want to lose out on them.
2. Use Facebook Creator Studio
To manage both your Facebook account and your Instagram account, this is one of the best options around. It’s an official tool developed by Meta itself, first launched in 2018. A mobile app was also launched in 2020.
Facebook Creator Studio tool allows you to schedule posts on both social networks, and lets you monitor statistics on your profile to know how well your posts are performing. Being a tool developed by the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, it stays constantly updated and relevant with the latest additions to the platform. And for Instagram, in particular, it’s a very powerful tool, allowing you to do mostly everything short of posting stories. You can post pictures/videos, schedule content, and look at stats on everything from followers to post metrics.
It can do many things, but don’t go overboard, either. If you’re just getting into this tool, in order to make it much more bearable to use, make organizing content your priority and take into account the fact that you don’t need to check out all the metrics or use all tools at your disposal. Stick strictly to what you need.
If you’re an entrepreneur looking to grow their social footprint, you should adapt to what you really need inside Creator Studio. You don’t need absolutely everything—the key is to make things easy, and for that, it is best to use only what is really necessary.
3. Feed Design is Key
Keeping your post feed nice and tidy is something many businesses overlook. And quite frankly, these days, it might very well be one of the most important.
The very moment users click on your profile, they’re going to form their very first impression of your project. And it goes much further than just reading the bio, or looking at your profile pic. They’re also going to take a look at your feed without necessarily looking at each post in deep detail, so make it looks appealing and consistent.
Use websites like Unsplash to get high-quality, free-to-use resources for your content, and use tools like Figma Editor, Canva, or even Adobe Photoshop to create killer images. And while making them, remember to keep a common design language, in order for your feed to have a nice dose of visual harmony.
4. Don’t Be Afraid of Branded Content
Once you start getting a large social media following, and you’re looking into actually pouring money into your promotion efforts, you can look at branded content.
Instagram’s branded content is pretty much just partnering with influencers and other users for them to promote your product. It’s actually surprisingly effective—things can and often do go viral on TikTok and Instagram, resulting in sales multiplying exponentially. People see their favourite creators using things, and then want to buy those things.
To make branded content, you’ll actually need to reach out to creators. But once you’ve agreed on terms with them, Instagram makes disclosing a partnership to the public quite easy.
Finally, no matter at which stage of the process you’re in—whether you’re still a growing brand, or if you already have a large following—it’s very important to always be customer-friendly.
Keeping attention to detail, being responsive, and listening to your users are all key parts of not only holding up your social media presence, but also your integrity as a business. If you’re a small or big store selling things, make your price tags visible and be responsive to users looking to buy from you. Keep your catalogue of products visible and easily accessible. Ideally, you only want people messaging you to either buy something or know more about a specific product—always be kind and proactive with them.
Growing on Instagram Takes Time and Effort
The tips we’ve detailed here are not a sure-fire way to grow into a world-renowned brand in a matter of days. That will actually need more dedication and effort. But they’re a good place to start from scratch, or boost things if you’re already established.
Organizing your content better and being proactive will set you apart from a big crowd.
Arol is a tech journalist and Staff Writer at MakeUseOf. He has also worked as a news/feature writer at XDA-Developers and Pixel Spot. Currently a Pharmacy student at the Central University of Venezuela, Arol has had a soft spot for everything tech-related since he was a child. When not writing, you’ll either find him nose-deep into his textbooks or playing video games.
Facebook has had a big year. It changed the company name to Meta. It endured multiple scandals.
And its darling division, Instagram, went largely unscathed until just recently. Now it looks like some more stuff is cropping up in the Insta camp as The Wall Street Journal reports the platform is actively pushing users to create multiple accounts. Of course, as anyone who knows anything about social media will tell you, the more usernames, the better, and it looks like Instagram has taken that to heart.
First, the process of creating a second account on Instagram has never been complicated. The only real question is “why now?” For that answer, we have to turn to advertising and the other ways that the platform makes money.
Still, it’s all quite interesting to discover that Instagram is pushing the creation of multiple accounts while also publicly talking about mental health and responsible usage of the app. Namely, keeping yourself off of it and enjoying life; creating multiple accounts, ostensibly geared towards different types of content or followings, somewhat undermines this proposition.
But it seems like that is exactly the goal of prompting users to create more than one Instagram username.
A spokesperson for Meta, Christine Pai, told the WSJ, “We know people come to Instagram to connect with those closest to them and to explore their many interests…By allowing the creation of multiple accounts, whether it be for professional or personal purposes, we hope to give people more ways to express themselves and have more control over the content they see and share.” She added that, with this tool, the process “can be seamless.”
What do you think of Instagram’s push to get users to manage multiple accounts? Savvy business move or sign of desperation? Let us know your thoughts on Instagram’s push to up the number of registered accounts in the comments below.
