This article has been written by Shubham Jadia, a student of Indore Institute of Law
ABSTRACT
Social network marketing has become a very important area for marketing for brands and people into business now-a -days. After the trend of social media which started in early 21st century and gained boom with Twitter and Facebook, Instagram came into picture in 2010 and provided a unique way for marketers to stay in touch with their customers using just pictures and their captions as a tool. Catching trend with its unique idea, Instagram quickly became a trend worldwide with a unique age target group and hence becomes a more favored place for marketers to stay connected with their customers and consumers. Facebook acquired Instagram later and converted it as a proper platform for companies to target and sell their products by reaching out to them directly, hence making it a significant platform for business communications.
This research paper discussed that how Instagram has become a favorable platform for marketers to market a product or service. Instagram allows its users to upload photos, videos in form of new posts or stories, to like other users photos and videos and watch stories. Instagram also allows users to comment on other user’s stories and to tag user’s on some other posts as well. Through these likes and comments, marketers are able to reach their target audience; they can even communicate with their target audience who might be interested in their products or services.
Keywords: Instagram; Facebook; Marketing Tool; Social Network Marketing
INTRODUCTION
Social media marketing refers to techniques that target social networks and applications to spread brand awareness or promote particular products. Social media marketing campaigns usually center around: Establishing a social media presence on major platforms. Marketing is a well-improved method that frequently changes the rules based on the needs and demand of promoting and selling products and services. Unlike before the advent of social media, the impact from advertisements on Television commercials, newspaper commercials and radio commercials have decreased significantly. People are more attracted to online medium now-a-days, due to increased significance of social media on our daily life. With the rollout of smartphones, we are in the time of mobile based social networking. As technology has improved and with the advent of faster and better internet services, the number of users online has boomed. Due to rise in all such technologies like faster internet which is easily available and cheap, access to this fast internet on our LTE enabled handsets has not just only affected our lives but has opened new ways for marketers to sell and promote their products amongst their target audience. Brands and businesses are making sure to make the most of this social media boom and Instagram is the core of it.
In today’s world Industries starting from automobile to music to fooding are advertising their product and services on social media. Social media marketing is free. It, however, requires some efforts to visit social media websites regularly and share useful content. With more than half of world’s population present on social media websites and approximately 58 million users visiting different social media websites every day, SMM is an easy way to connect and communicate with large number of targeted audiences with less efforts and within less time. Social Media has turned out to be one of the most favored and loved product and service marketing strategy used by people all around the world.
Social Network Marketing
A social networking site is the use of dedicated websites and applications to interact with other users, or to find people with similar interests to one’s own on an online medium that is totally free of cost. Communication is important for any business but positive engagement with the customer base can really lead to improved reputation. Social allows brands and user to interact freely and quickly. The brand takes on a personal role and becomes a member of a conversation. Resulting exposure can develop a quality brand image.
Social network marketing uses social media, involving online communities to market. Communities over social media involve large sets of users with similar interests, unlike traditional form of marketing.
On July 16, 2010 Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger unleashed the photo-sharing platform that, though they didn’t know it at the time, would soon become a selfie-filled, multi-billion-dollar beast used by 500 million people (Bruner, 2016). Development began in San Francisco. The developers wanted to focus on a photo sharing app after working on an HTML5 program called Burbn, and named it Instagram, as an ode to the wordsInstant Camera, and Telegram.They received funding from their partners on-Burbn, as well. Within 2 years Instagram had become a sensation and in 2012, Facebook offered $300m cash and 23 million of its shares to acquire Instagram and the deal was finalized very soon after the offer.
Instagram has become a very popular website today. Over half of all 18 to 29 year olds are on Instagram, Its 55% to be exact. If a brand is looking to connect with its customers, they need to be here. It has 400 million active monthly users and 700 million users in all. The number of users has doubled since 2012. As much as 32% teenagers consider Instagram to be the most important social media. Six in ten online adults have Instagram account. The number of females in comparison to males is more 38% v/s. 26%.
Instagram as a Contributor to Social Network Marketing
Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. The customers are already interacting with brands through social media, and if the brands are not speaking directly to their audience through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, they missing out! Great marketing on social media can bring remarkable success to any business, creating devoted brand advocates and even driving leads and sales. Aside from having an account in Facebook and Twitter, new social media platform is coming in to provide another platform for many marketers. Lately, there are many businesses that starting to integrate their business with the Instagram experience. Instagram is used by 48.8% of brands—a number that is expected to rise to 70.7% by 2017. Marketers are rapidly increasing their adoption of Instagram to promote everything from clothing to concerts. According to a forecast by eMarketer, 48.8 % of U.S. brands will use Instagram for social media marketing in 2016.
Instagram can help a company to promote their products or services. The point that makes Instagram different from other social media is that Instagram is applying a visual based strategy. Everything about Instagram is about photograph. Instagram marketing is an effective way to advertise a product as it is said that a picture speaks a thousand words. Additionally, Instagram can help one in saving cost for brand designing. Every image taken for a product can be edited and filtered using the Instagram functions
According to Barnes (2014) as cited in Instagram has provided a function known as “hashtags” (#) for the convenience of indicating the relevant photos and videos pertaining to the product of any business. Dennis (2014) also mention that by clicking the hash tags, it allow the Instagram users to view pictures and videos that is relevant to the hash tag. Therefore, many fashion companies are now having an Instagram account to promote their products.
Social Media in the Implementation of E-Government
Using social media the public has an opportunity to easily and publicly view and respon to the public views of government official. The use of social media implies that government institution are beginning to present themselves to the public in a more approachable way. Being quoted from Karyailmiah.com, writing from Adimas Bagus Dewanto Putra, along with the times, social media is not only used by the community to communicate with each other, but also used by the government to communicate with the public. This is done because at present social media is considered as a platform that cannot be separated from the daily life of modern society and used actively, so that social media is seen as an alternative communication medium for the government to communicate with its people. It is not only seen as an alternative communication media but also as a strategic step in the implementation of e-government. Public Relations (PR) Jefkins (1992:8) states that Public Relations consists of all forms of planned communications, outward and inward, between an organisation and its publics for the purpose of achieving specific objectives concerning mutual understanding. Public Relations is a mediator who is between the leadership of the organization and the public, both in an effort to foster internal and external public relations. The public has the right to know the plan of policy, activities, work programs and business plans of an organization/company based on the circumstances, expectations, and in accordance with the wishes of the target public. In general, the role of public relations is as a communicator or a liaison between the company/institution and the public. Public Relations tries to foster positively and mutually beneficial relationships between agencies and the public. The role of Public Relations includes internal public relations and external public relations. Duties of public relations are now classified into three main categories:
- informing
- advertising and encourage
- seeking cooperation, integration and optimizing affairs. Public relations in organizations in term of work quality means assist to organization management in achieving organizational goals
Instagram Terms, Conditions and Policies
Just like the other social networking sites, Instagram also faces privacy issue. In late 2012, months after Facebook has taken over Instagram, Instagram has changed its terms of use and privacy policy. The changes made have received many negative responses from the users, as users were not satisfied with their decision. BBC News also reported that there are people who claimed that the new changes were “Instagram’s suicide note”.
The terms of “Instagram may share users’ information with organizations that are related to them” and “Instagram may use the photos and videos uploaded by the users for business use or advertising without any pay back or notice to the users” were updated on the privacy policy of Instagram. However, due to the difficult wording used, it was difficult to understand what the terms are meant; therefore, there are many users still using Instagram without knowing the changes to the terms and condition.
Users who are aware about the changes have shown disappointment and some decided to quit Instagram. As a result to it, Instagram co-founder has released a statement to clear the dissatisfaction by mentioning that they do not intend to apply the terms like that and they will remove the language that confused the users. Following the strong negative responses, Instagram has changes back the terms to the original version that had been launched in 2010.
Discussion
As there has been a change in the marketing strategy from traditional marketing to social media marketing, companies are making sure that they do not miss out on this, and have started promoting company’s product and services through various social networking sites. In this modern era, where everyone is busy, visual advertisements like pictures and videos seem to affect to the target customer base than just words. Therefore, the social networking website that fits best in this category is none other than Instagram. The increasing user base and large active user base suggest that the popularity of Instagram is rising day by day. Not only is Instagram well known amongst young people who are active on social media, but it is also very popular in business industry where people use Instagram as a new platform to market their product and services. Hence the functions of Instagram do not only attract the attention of social media users like you and me but also the marketers who are always in search of getting connected with their consumer base.
This method also helps the marketers to gain feedback from the customers. These benefits given by Instagram to the marketers have make Instagram in becoming one of the strong tool in the social network marketing strategy.
Nevertheless Instagram has shown to be a very useful marketing tool in the new era, there still are various disadvantages, when it is used as a marketing tool. Firstly, the customer’s information is not fully protected. Secondly, the interaction between the customer and marketer is through a media platform, it becomes hard for the marketer to know, who their customers are, because fake identity may be created for online business.
CONCLUSION
Instagram is one of the most popular social networking site used both on the mobile as well as web platform, which is getting people to interact along with each other nationally and globally. Instagram has gathered people from all round the world, both who are interested in photography and once which are not, prepresent filters which can be used. These filters were already present in many applications and web portals for editing images, but Instagram used this and created a mode to share pictures online and interact in a form of social media. Instagram, from a simple picture sharing and social tool, transformed into a new marketing tool in social media marketing. Online marketing is actually not a very new term in the industry and social media marketing is widely being used by both small and big businesses world-wide due to its vast and targeted reach. A lot of companies worldwide are using Instagram as a platform to advertise and sell its services and products. Among the social networking sites which are popular and currently being used, Instagram is a very major player and is widely used through mobile devices as an application.
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