Become Instagram Famous

Why choose Instagram?

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks and photo-sharing applications worldwide. Instagram is a free mobile app which, despite its free-of-charge system, worth approximately US$1 billion. It was launched as a photo- and video-sharing service which allows application of various filters on uploaded images and videos. It was launched and currently supports every popular mobile operating system.

History of Instagram

The idea of a startup which will soon become Instagram as we know it belonged to Kevin Systrom. He came up with the idea of using filters to hide imperfections in image’s quality and also with the idea of creating a service to share such photos.

The creation of Instagram was a result of developing another application which was called Burbn. Burbn had the functionality of a social network and allowed to edit photos and check into locations. Systrom, together with Mike Krieger, were developing the platform but it was not popular and could not compete with numerous rivals on the market. In order to become more popular there must be a unique feature and for Burbn that feature was photo filters, which made low-quality pictures look better with applied filters.

In 2010 the development of Instagram has begun and on October 6, the first version of the app was officially released through the Apple Store. On the first night of release it was so popular amongst users that the servers needed additional maintenance so that they would not crash and stop app from working. With time, more members joined the development team: Josh Riedel joined the company as Community Manager, Shayne Sweeney joined in as an engineer, and Jessica Zollman joined as a Community Evangelist. In January 2011 hashtags were introduced to help discovering more photos to Instagram users. In autumn a 2.0 version was rolled out which included new filters, tilt-shifting, high-res photographs and an updated icon. Instagram was growing in popularity but still did not make enough money. For many users it was akin to a game app and was not anything serious.

In spring 2012 Instagram was bought for $1 billion in cash and stock by Mark Zuckerberg. Both Systrom and Krieger are still working on Instagram, however, and do everything to keep their platform growing. A 2.5.0 version was released shortly after acquisition by Facebook and allowed to connect an Instagram account to Facebook profile.

First appearance of ads

It was inevitable to Instagram to include ads sooner or later. After all, it is owned by Facebook which is among the biggest companies whose main source of income is advertising.

In October 2013 ads and monetization were officially announced as a platform’s feature. The announcement did not come as a surprise and in early November to all American users the first advertisement was shown – it was a Michael Kors brand ad. To indicate an ad “Sponsored’ tag was placed at the top right of the image. The ad was being shown to specific users, which parameters coincided with the settings. When publishing an ad on Instagram, user’s age, gender and location can be specified. When user meets all of these specifications he will see an ad post even if he does not follow that advertiser’s Instagram profile.

The first advertisement from luxury designer brand Michael Kors was met with overwhelming negativity which people were expressing in ad’s comment section. They were not just angry; they were outraged by the feature. But the statistics did not show any decline and later on, following Michael Kors’s example, other American brands such as Adidas, Levi’s, Burberry and Lexus were lining up to promote their products on Instagram.

Advertisement development on Instagram

Ever since ads were introduced back in 2013, Instagram has become a popular platform for a myriad of brands. After a while in November 2015 the Instagram’s own API was implemented to find suitable marketing partners for different ventures. Later on the platform was allowed for both small- and big-sized businesses. It took one and a half years for the developers to create a fully functional advertising platform for large brands. The next step was creating a similar plan for other companies as well as further targeting improvements to fulfill all advertisers’ needs.

In advertising, targeting is a form of promotion which advertisers use to target a certain audience which would be more receptive to certain approaches. A user would receive an ad that supposedly would be more interesting to him. An API was later introduced for further expansion of advertiser base, which allowed advertisers to create their own ad campaigns.

At first, it was up for Instagram to decide which brands could advertise on the platform. Brands were selected by a group of experts at the company. Nowadays, it is free to advertise for all users, just like on Facebook.

The new features were also added: “Buy” and “Learn more” buttons helped users to take a closer look at the product in just one click. The new additions assisted to advertisers and boosted their traffic and viewership as well as number of sales, followers etc.

With the enhancement of advertising functionality, it is estimated that in 2017 the Instagram’s global ad revenue will be 5 times more compared to year 2015: from $595 million in 2015 to $2.81 billion in 2017. Even before the advertising update the app saw a significant growth in popularity. According to Instagram itself, a third of all professional advertisers prefer Instagram to promote their products and reach their clients. Other social networks that were popular in the past, such as Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn are now dragging behind Instagram.

The development of official ads on Instagram and new formats of advertising

A first Instagram ad in Russia was launched on September 30, 2015 in cooperation with marketing company AiTarget. Each user would see an ad which included photo, “Sponsored’ tag and additional function buttons. It is only possible to start advertising on Instagram if you have a Facebook account.

There are three actions an advertiser can include to the official Instagram ad:

– Go to advertiser’s website;

– Download the app;

– Watch the video.

Sometimes the advertiser wants to increase following of their profiles, but their ad or the UI is not suited for it.

For example – a Russian banking company Sberbank which promoted their Instagram profile utilized a “Go to advertiser’s website’ function in their ad which included a link to their Sberbank’s official website but only allowed for redirects via web-version of Sberbank app. Without authorizing in the web version of the app it was not possible to follow Sberbank and not everyone is keen to recall and enter their login and password from another app just to follow a company on Instagram. There is also “Open in app’ button in between all those operations, however, it does not always work and additionally may close Instagram even if the app did not open. When testing on Android app this happened almost every time.

More functions and features appeared on Instagram and the visual design was also constantly changing over the time. Ads were changing, too. Advertisers include links to their website, which is an effective and quite common way of generating traffic. Video-ads were introduced lately, and they were even longer than videos from users – 30 seconds instead of regular 15. Nowadays the limits are set at 1 minute for both ads and users’ videos.

Another mean of promotion is by offering an official brand app which is not only suitable for Instagram format, since it is a social network app as well, but may be rather fitting for the advertiser to reach and keep the audience and raise their interest in the brand.

One of the newest formats of advertising on Instagram is carousel-ads, recently it was made available for users from Russia and other countries. You can now add multiple photos in one advertisement post and by swiping them users will interact more with the ad, show more interest and remember the brand better. This method of advertisement is largely adapted by huge companies and established brands who give more extensive reviews of their product and larger overview of their company as a whole.

Finally, Marquee ads are not visible for all users but also are types of ad which are more in use by large enterprises with significant budgets invested into them.

Why mass following is not suitable for targeting format

Before we answer that question, let us define mass following.

In a sense, mass following is a form of spam which includes rather prominent, aggressive even, following of large amounts of profiles with consequent unfollowing profiles that did not follow back later on. It results in an active process of promoting your account amongst users and expanding your follow base.

With targeting becoming more and more widespread on Instagram mass following and mass liking is not as relevant as it was but is still being used by many. In 2017 in the US a huge number of automation services were closed so it is expected to see less and less such platforms in Russia as well. Right now, though, they still exist and are just as helpful for some as problematic for others.

Mass following is a grey method of promotion and is considered grey marketing. It imitates ordinary user actions and generates traffic for selected profile. Some years ago it was considered an effective mean of promotion for the users but not for the market as a whole. The popularity of mass following is gradually lower than it used to be. Nowadays, people prefer communicating and sharing news and stories over visiting strays of questionable profiles which desperately try to sell them diet pills, phone cases, elastic stockings and whatnot. People started to manage their following themselves, making their profiles private so that ad profiles, which seemed to be more and more prevalent on the network at one point, would not follow them.

The way SMM people and traffic cheaters see it, they can create a user database so perfect for their clients, the moment those users see a profile which sells hand-made jewelry it will occur to them that they always wanted it and immediately buy it. In reality, most of those traffic cheats usually include follows by spam accounts, other sellers, people from other countries who probably would not be able to purchase your product but never potential clients. Neither product sales nor even general demand will grow with such methods. The promoters, however, will try to convince their clients that a lack of sales is temporary while focusing on the fact that obtaining such massive pseudo-following somehow improves brand’s image.

But in reality, black and grey marketing creates a lot of problems for reasonable and official promoting methods. The aforementioned methods manipulate their audience and trick them, their long-term efficiency is vague but the damage they do to companies is very much real. People will not come back to targeted ads from the company that just the other day irritated them with mass following. Finally, Instagram itself condemns mass following and takes action against profiles who use mass following for their promotion: mass following leads to profiles getting suspended, pessimized or shadow banned. After that, no target ads will recover brand’s reputation or relevance.

How Instagram fights against automation services

In 2017 Instagram moderates and intervenes in automation services’ work, prevents mass following, auto-posting and auto-liking. For owners of those services and their clients this is nothing but bad news. And it all started in April 2017, when Instagress, one of the biggest automation services, has been shut down. It caused uproar amongst American users because the service had immense popularity in the US. According to Instagress itself they were forced to close their website by request of Instagram.

A month later other automation and promotion services, such as Peerboost, Instaplus, Fanharvest and Massplanner, also stopped their work. None of them disclosed any details on why they ceased their work but all of them referenced requests from Instagram themselves.

Those services were easy to terminate because they were working on the US territory and were affected by the US law so Instagram had no problem with them. It is speculated that Instagram does that with sole purpose of turning more people to targeted advertisement which, consequently, results in more revenue for the company. For small companies targeting is too expensive, however: right now only large companies can afford official advertising on the platform. Small business still lives on automated promotion from smaller services that are not as popular to be shut down directly by Instagram.

Some automation services are more precautious than others so when Instagram decides to change something those services already know how to handle the changes and adapt to them without losing their business. Such services will keep functioning until Instagram finds a way to shut them down. For automation platforms operating from Russia and some other countries the situation is still uncertain due to the fact that Russia does not fall under the jurisdiction of the US, therefore Instagram cannot shut them down on legal grounds. On many forums Russian service are already known as “Russian Offshores”. Hopefully, Instagram will be more considerate towards Russian automation services and that they will be able to keep functioning.

How Instagram became the largest advertisement platform for small, medium-sized and large businesses

Instagram promotion platform grows tremendously, in part due to a decent start, but also on account of new features being added constantly plus by making promotion easier for both small and large businesses. Advertising on Instagram can be described as fast, convenient and accessible. This is why according to recent surveys, 34% of America’s largest ventures prefer Instagram marketing for their brands.

Instagram combines Facebook’s most advanced advertising technologies and allows to focus on different segments of consumers. The ad targets users of certain interests, age and locations. Instagram constantly develops the functionality and regularly implements new advertising tools, staying among top largest advertising platforms for all businesses. With Instagram ads it is possible to notify your clients about new products and services and even conduct deals without leaving the app. For the most part, advertising on Instagram was mostly suitable for large businesses with established names and recognition. Later on the developers updated the system to be more small-business friendly with additional options such as:

– adding long promotional videos;

– adding panoramic images and videos for carousel ads;

– a premium Marquee feature

By constantly adding new features for more comfortable advertising, Instagram managed to create stable income which grows even bigger the more popular the app gets.

How can thousands of advertisers create the audience and make money on Instagram

A popular account on any social network and in particular on Instagram is a long-term investment which is helpful for when you decide to start your own business. The economy is uneasy at all times, and the fear of downsizing and unemployment enables people not only to create their own businesses but also effectively promote them via Internet – the best promotion platform in this day and age. Instagram is the most efficient way to help you with that, but, why Instagram exactly?

Remember that your Instagram profile is your personal space and you can do whatever you want with it: according to Terms of Use, you are responsible for any activity that occurs through your account. Since Instagram most certainly is not going away any time soon, your ownership is practically indefinite which means the opportunities are endless as well. The problem of effective Instagram promotion is on many companies’ minds: for some the promotion is already potent, others have only just started their long way to become Instagram famous, and for some it is easier to let companies, created specifically for Instagram promotion, to handle it. Instagram offers huge prospects and it still has a long way to go, unlike many social networks. More and more companies now try to start their Instagram profile promotion and make it lucrative as soon as possible.

Your course of action:

Work on a theme and develop your message. For many advertisers it is important to reach wide audiences by offering them something to relate to: not too personal but not too general, something that holds attention and is actually interesting. You decide on the message you want to spread to your audience, be that wide masses or small customer demographics. Your main goal in developing your social network profile is to define your target audience.

You can combine defining your target audience with attracting more followers to your page. If you want to get more followers naturally you need to be active on your profile and outside of it, upload frequently, like and comment both your followers and random people. Alternatively, you can use automation services to grow your followers count.

Keep your account active at all times and be regular with your publications. Maintain a schedule, balance between frequent and seldom posting. There are various activity charts created by more experienced advertisers that allow you to define the best time for publications and maintain your timetable better.

After a while, when the goal of creating your page is more or less fulfilled and the income from it is stable, you may hire an account manager for further promotion and keeping your profile active. Hiring a manager is important for entrepreneurs who value their time and can manage passive income.

For many advertisers one of the biggest dangers is the suspension of their profiles. If you do not want all your work to be for nothing, always be careful with what kind of ads you publish. For example, promoting alcohol and tobacco products is usually very risky. For each ad there must be thorough overview with background checking and knowing exactly what type of product is being advertised.

There are different general methods to grow your follower count. Some of them are:

Follow different communities of people and public pages. For more efficiency you need to be especially active on Instagram, engage in discussions, like and leave comments, follow people and so on. Your profile will be more recognized and attractive for people to visit. The downside is overwhelming amount of posts in your feed after following a lot of people.

Be more active in communicating with users. Many new users engage more with those who are genuinely interested in them, you can express that interest by liking and leaving original and nice comments. With such comments users will be motivated to visit commenter’s profile so it is better to have an already established and developed profile.

Always respond to comments in time and do not leave any comments without answers. For real people it is essential to be genuine, answer their questions, thank them for compliments etc. The sincerer and more interesting discussions you have on your profile, the more users will be curious to follow you. Think of your comments and consider every detail before posting them.

Think of interesting questions and conversation topics for your followers. Any popular profile has to keep users involved. For any publications that do not include advertisement, and those publications you must have, come up with thought-provoking text and offer your followers a follow-up question which they would want to discuss in comments.

Integrate your profile with Facebook profile. With connecting your Facebook business account you can double your traffic and viewership which results in getting more followers on both platforms.

Bio is essential. Whenever your visitors see informative and thorough information about your business they get to know you better and trust you more.

Take nice and unique photos, make them colorful and charming. Discovering something new and memorable is always great so if you want to stay relevant keep your photo bank diverse, put a lot of effort into your photography and do your best at resonating with viewers. Having said that, the amount of selfies should be as minimal as possible.

Business accounts usually make decent income starting from 2000 real targeted followers without including bot followers, spammers or other business accounts. From that point the success of your profile is up to you and your personal approach.

The growth of Instagram over the years

In 2017, Instagram reached 700 million monthly active users. Comparing to previous years almost 100 million users joined to the usual growth ratio in 2017. To put this in perspective, from the launch in 2010 the platform with all its popularity managed to reach 100 million monthly active users only by February 2013. In March 2014 the amount of users reached 200 million and afterwards it kept growing with a ratio of 100 million people more for each 9 months. The trend changed in December 2016 when Instagram reached 600 million users and then it took only 4 months to get 100 million more and reach the milestone of 700 million users by the end of April 2017.

In terms of functionality Instagram constantly develops and adds more and more functions with regular updates across all mobile phone OS. A recent Android update added an offline more for the world regions without constant Internet connection. It is more than likely that in the following year the amount of users will grow once again and finally reach 1 billion mark.

According to the statistics, only 22 million of Instagram users are from Russia.

What Instagram features were added in 2017

In 2017, Instagram introduced more features and released more updates that ever before. Most of those updates made Instagram even better and easier to use. Common users are always intrigued by new types of content and for entrepreneurs they are helpful in expanding the range of promotion tools.

Instagram Stories were introduced on summer 2016 and made Instagram even more popular and serviceable. From there on out Stories received several updates, developers constantly add new features and quirks to it without any signs of stopping.

Here is how content promotion on Instagram changed in 2017:

As a part of Instagram Stories, live video functionality was added, allowing users to broadcast themselves live while other users can leave likes and comments to the video. Additionally, a viewer count displays the amount of viewers. After Live feature was introduced it received further updates, which included saving live videos to your phone and adding previous broadcasts to Stories where users can watch them in case they missed it live. A lot of customers really enjoy live broadcasts and they can help you with establishing a better connection with your audience.

Gallery feature allows to create a single post with up to 10 swipeable photos and videos in it. It was first introduced in 10.9 update for Android and iOS. The update was very well received by users.

In 2017 more new features and tools were added to Stories which allowed to attach augmented reality stickers, use brushes, add temperature, geolocation and timestamps to them. Other features include: