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How Instagram can be used as a tool in social networking marketing

Article · September 2014

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How Instagram Can Be Used as a Tool in Social Network Marketing

Lim Sook Huey 1

Center for Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) Programs
HELP College of Art and Technology
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
sookhuey_lim@hotmail.com

Dr. Rashad Yazdanifard 2

Center for Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) Program
HELP College of Art and Technology
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
rashadyazdanifard@yahoo.com

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Abstract

Social network marketing is becoming a popular marketing strategy for many business people. Follow after the
well-known social media network such as Facebook and Twitter, Instagram has joined in the trend in 2010 and
provided another favorable marketing platform for marketers to interact with their customers. Instagram is a
worldwide used social media network, which has been used as a marketing tool by many global business
companies. It is a significant marketing tool that allows business communication to take place. Through
Instagram, marketers are able to interact with their customers by sharing photos and videos and leaving
comments as a way of sharing information; receiving comments and likes as a way of gaining feedback from
customers. In this paper, discussion on how Instagram can be used as a marketing tool in social network
marketing will be done.

Keywords: Instagram, Social Network Marketing, Marketing tool

1. Introduction

Marketing is a well-improved method or action that frequently changes the rules based on the requirement of
promoting and selling products and services (Saravanakumar & Lakshmi, 2012). Unlike the past, traditional
marketing strategy such as television commercials and newspaper advertisements do not give much impact to
the customers these days (Or, 2010). People in the present day are likely to attach to the online services. Today,
social networking is said to be an important part of our life. As technology improve, we are most likely to
engage ourselves more to electronic devices. Now, with the invention of smartphones, we are in the time of
mobile social networking (Bergstrom & Backman, 2013). Moreover, according to Edelman (2010); Kietxmann,
Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestres (2011) (as cited in Kontu, Nobbs, Montecchi, & Duffy, 2013, p. 71) the
rising of these new technologies does not only affect our living style but also created a new marketing strategy
for marketers to promote and sell their products. As social media is getting more popular, marketers have to
quickly adapt to the social networking space to be able to interact with customers (Fanning, n.d.).

Social media, an online community that target to provide a space for people to communicate has now become a
well liked channel for brand marketing (Hassan, 2014). Following after social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter, Instagram came in 2010 and in January 2014, there are already 150 million people using
Instagram (Costill, 2014). These social networking sites do not only provide user to expand personal network
but also provide a platform for the business people to interact with potential customers (Blackman, 2009).
Hence, social media is affecting the phenomena of marketing.

Currently, there are many different industries are advertising their product and services through social media.
Through social media, big business can do better and small business can become better known without putting
much investment on advertising (Zarrella, 2009). Social media has turn to one of the most favored marketing
strategy used by the business people around the world (Hird, 2013).

2. Social Network Marketing

A social networking site is a site for one to connect with people from their offline network and also people they
know through an online community. Looking at the opportunities gained through social media to interact with
potential customers, social networking sites have become a hot issue for marketers (Zarrella, 2009). Social
network marketing has included both the traditional and the non-traditional sense of marketing strategy
(Cowden, 2014). Cowden (2014) also stated that social media has not only allow the companies to interact with
their customers, but also allowing the customer to interact with other customers. It is also used to convince
customer that the company’s product or services are good (Neti, 2011).

To conduct successful social network marketing, it is important to first determine who are the target customers
for that business. After determining the target customers, one can look into the most suitable platform to
communicate with the targeted customers. It is important to pay attention on what the customers want and not
bury them with excessive information and resources (Endres, 2013). Endres (2013) also mentioned that many
businesses make a mistake on demanding on the quantity of their followers instead of understanding who are the
people that are interested in their business.

Social network marketing is a marketing involving online communities. The communities in the social
networking sites are large and the gathered users often share similar interest (Jadhav & Kamble & Patil, n.d.).
Unlike the traditional marketing strategy, social network marketing require marketer to be more attentive to

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customers to build a better image and relationship with customers (Erdogmus & Cicek, 2012). Many
international companies acknowledge that social network marketing is a potential marketing platform (Neti,
2011).

According to the study, “The State of Small Business Report,” done by Network Solutions, LLC and the
University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, 75% of the small businesses have a company
page on a social networking site (Neti, 2011). This has showed a significant amount of the popularity of social
network marketing among the business people. According to Gorfhamer (2009) as cited in (Erdogmus & Cicek,
2012) customers these days are busier and more powerful, so social network marketing can help the company to
be more approachable to the customers at anytime. In the social network marketing, the large number of social
media users has given the advantage to the company to get better known in the market (Chianasta & Wijaya,
2014).

Although social network marketing is a potential marketing strategy, there is still disadvantage for it. As the
social networking sites will allow customers to comment about your brand – whether it is good or bad; often the
comment of the customers are more influential and convincing (Jadhav & Kamble & Patil, n.d.). On the other
hand, social network marketing does have advantages such as marketing can be done at almost zero cost, create
huge exposure to businesses, increasing sales and rising the popularity of the brand (Neti, 2011).

3. Instagram

Instagram is founded in 2010 (Bergstrom & Backman, 2013). It is a mobile application, which allows users to
share their photos and videos to their followers (Dubovik, 2013). According to Instagram (2014) as cited in
(Dennis, 2014) Instagram first started off with providing functions on editing and sharing photos and later on
added in the functions of sharing videos and photo messaging directly to another user. Instagram allows users to
snap photo or video anywhere they are at anytime and share it with their followers nationally and also
internationally (Jadhav & Kamble & Patil, n.d.). According to Otto (n.d.) as cited in (Bevins, 2014), users are
able to take a 15 seconds long video and 13 artistic filters are available for user to edit their photos.

According to Systrom (2010) as cited in (Maravic, 2013) Instagram started to develop when Kevin Systrom and
Mike Krieger want to focus on the HTML5 check-in application named Burbn, which allow the function of
location check in, earn point upon meeting friends and post photos. However, they decided to focus on the
application’s photo function after some confusion on the application and soon they renamed Burbn to
Instagram. Instagram is a word combination of “instant” and “telegram”. In 2012, Facebook have offered
$300m cash and 23 million of its shares to Instagram and the deal was finalized very soon after the offer (BBC
News, 2012).

Instagram is said to be the third most popular social network among the college students in the United States
(Salomon, 2013). Following the press released from Instagram (2013) cited in (Maravic, 2013) in the year 2013,
Instagram has 100 million monthly active users, 40 million photos were uploaded per day, 8,500 likes and 1,000
comments gained per second.

According to The Pew Internet and American Life Project as cited in (Tekulve & Kelly, 2013), 13% of the
Internet users are also an Instagram users and following the results of survey done by the Pew, individuals who
show positive interest towards Instagram are adults at the age between 18-29, African-Americans, Latinos,
women and the urban residents (Duggan & Brenner, 2013).

4. How Instagram contribute to social network marketing

Many companies are now commonly using social media to promote their brands and to maintain a friendly
relationship with their customers (Saravanakumar & Lakshmi, 2012). 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
(Tekulve & Kelly, 2013). According to an article published on BBC News (2012), study has said that a large
amount of the top brands around the world are using Instagram as one of their marketing strategy.

Instagram can help a company to promote their products or services (Bevins, 2014). The point that makes
Instagram different from other social media is that Instagram is applying a visual based strategy (Hird, 2013).
Everything about Instagram is about photograph (Linaschke, 2011). Instagram marketing is an effective way to
advertise a product as it is said that a picture speaks a thousand words (Silva & de Melo & Almeida & Salles &

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Loureiro, 2013). 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 (Herman, 2014).

According to Barnes (2014) as cited in (Dennis, 2014) Instagram has provided a function known as “hash tags”
– (#) for the convenience of indicating the relevant photos and videos to the products of a 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.

Moreover, social media also provide the marketers an easier way to understand their customers. In the case of
Instagram, leaving comments and receiving comments on the photo posts can gain more feedback from the
customers on the product. Followers are often interested to see the interaction between the organization and the
users, so being attentive to the comments would help in improving the relationship with customers (Dennis,
2014).

Furthermore, Instagram has included a function known as direct messaging. This function could give the VIP
customers another way to communicate and interact with the organization (Herman, 2014). Herman (2014) has
stated that the direct message function allows the user to send message that only receiver can view and each
message can send out to 15 users each time.

5. Instagram terms of use and privacy policy

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 (BBC News,
2012). The changes made have received many negative responses from the users, as users were not satisfied
with their decision. BBC News (2012) 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 (Babb & Nelson, 2013). 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 (Nelis, 2013).

Users who are aware about the changes have shown disappointment and some decided to quit Instagram (BBC
News, 2012). 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 (Gross, 2012). Following the strong negative responses, Instagram has changes back the terms to the
original version that had been launched in 2010 (Geron, 2012).

6. Discussion

As the marketing strategy trend move from the traditional marketing strategy to social network marketing
strategy, many companies have started to participate in promoting the company’s brand through various social
networking sites. In this era where everyone is always busy, many customers would prefer looking at visual
based advertisement such as pictures and videos than advertisement filled with words. Therefore, the social
networking site that best fit the marketing strategy is the Instagram.

The popularity of Instagram is rising day by day. Besides being well known among the young people who is
active in using social media, Instagram is also getting more popular in the business industry. Many business
people uses Instagram as their new platform to market their products and services. The functions of Instagram
do not only attract the attentions of all the social networkers but also the marketers.

This research paper discussed that Instagram is one of the favorable platforms to market a product or service. It
allows user to upload photos and videos, to like other users’ photos and videos, and also to comment on other
users’ photos and videos. Marketers could like other users’ photos and videos to attract the attention of other
users and to get the company’s name better known. Next, Instagram allows users to comment on each other’s
photos and videos; hence, marketers could identify the audience that can be targeted and also interact with
customers who are interested in that certain product or service. This method also helps the marketers to gain

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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, every social networking site does face privacy issue. In the case of Instagram, they have been
through a controversy on the changing of terms and conditions in 2012. They updated their policy to make it
easier to share information with Facebook but it has brought in a lot of negative responses from the users. Due
to the massive negative responses received, they have decided to revert the policy back to the original ones.

Although Instagram was shown to be a very useful marketing tool in the new era, there are still disadvantages to
be possibly gained by using Instagram as a marketing tool. The customers’ information could not be fully
protected and the interaction between customers and marketer are always through a media platform, so there are
probability of the marketer for not knowing who are their customers because fake identity may be created for
online businesses.

7. Conclusion

Instagram is now one of the popular social networking sites used as a mobile application. It helps in getting
people interacting nationally and globally. Instagram have gathered all the people around the world who are
interested in photography, as it is an application focus on photographic functions. Moreover, it has now become
a new marketing tool in social network marketing. Online marketing is not something new to the business
industry and social network marketing has been actively applied nowadays. Recently, there are many companies
that use social networking sites to sell and advertise their products and services. Among the social networking
sites being used, Instagram is widely used through mobile devices as an application. It has created a different
platform for marketers to interact with the customers. In addition, Instagram can be used free of charge.
Instagram is a strong tool that is different from other social networking sites in social network marketing. It
provides a better visual based platform and have make it convenient for the people to interact with each other.

Yet, there is always risk when one is using a platform owned by others to perform certain activity, so it is very
important to clearly understand the terms and conditions of the social networking sites before engaging in any
business activities through the online platforms.

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