Instagram for Business
business.instagram.com
business.instagram.com
You also have to ask where does the buying cycle and Instagram intersect: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/buying-cycle-and-triggers/
The reality is that the ecosystem just isn't there to fully support cost per acquisition based transactions (the name for what your suggesting) in a way that satisfies provider (like Instagram), Brands (like Nike), Platforms (Like amazon, etsy), and Payment processors (this list is huge).
My sister is a tattoo artist, she too has engendered quite the instagram following posting her work, which draws clients into the shop.
People participating in these sorts of communities enjoy the fact that nobody's clubbing them over the head with a 'buy' button, and because of that the level of engagement is much higher than it is on a site like Etsy, for instance.
Instagrammers follow somebody for a few weeks or months, and when they're ready to buy, they make an inquiry, and by that point they're willing to go to any length to get their hands on the product. It's the diametric opposite of impulse buying. The ongoing and intimate narrative is essential to cultivating this, and the absence of a buy button makes it a very inviting place for the types who are into that sort of thing.
Isn't this just because Instagram makes impulse buying nearly impossible? To make a sale on Instagram, you have to cultivate a serious following who will go to great lengths to buy from you, because it's so hard to buy anything from an Instagrammer.
Upvoted nonetheless, because those examples of how people find business opportunities through Instagram are great.
The grey area is sponsored content that doesn't identify itself as such and is incredibly common on celebrity twitter/IG accounts. As long as the relationship is clearly identified (and not with an #ad hashtag buried in a pile of other hashtags) I think it's ok.
I got my Instagram account hacked a while ago and found myself following all kinds of irrelevant people; but after you unfollow a few dozens in a row, unfollow functionality just stops working. So, every time I try to get back to instagram, login, unfollow as many of these assholes as I can, run into this limit and then just give up.
I don't have a personal Instagram - just a business one, but I'm definitely a fan of them segmenting these services off away from the consumer stuff. Far better productivity. Get in, do your work, and get out.
"By appearing in our featured clients section, ICQ proved it's still in business"
Now that's a success story!
Look up ad rates in the rest of the world and see how lucrative that business is.
I think the argument could be made that business' sounds better, since business's could easily be confused with the plural form, and three consecutive S letterforms looks awkward. In fact, now that I think about it, I would've written it the same way.
Agreed. I think this combined with Snapchat advertising could be the first steps in the direction of changing advertising from the intrusive and unwanted interruption of your daily life to something people actually browse through in order to discover interesting stories and experiences.
However, I also think as social media has proliferated, the definition of the word "brand" has expanded as now more than ever, people are seen as "brands" - often with hundreds of thousands of followers (more than many actual brands and even media companies). As everyone becomes a brand, I believe increasingly the line between marketing and storytelling will be blurred and marketing will become deeply embedded into our culture. Product placement in movies, celebrity endorsement, "native" posts: all these are the first indicators of a culture in which everything is meant to sell something. Whether this is a good thing or not is up for discussion.