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INSIDE THE IGLOO The #1 Content Marketing Show for Peeps Who Like Winning with your
Host Wes Ward
Wes: Welcome back to another edition of Inside the Igloo. My name is Wes Ward. And as usual,
our superstar, Mr. Agency himself, all the way from across the pond in
Columbus, Ohio; it's Nate Riggs. How are you Nate?
Nate: Good Wes. Thanks for having me again.
Wes: I'm all wide and fired today; three coffees in and 6 AM start, you can probably tell by
the rapid speed of my voice. Very excited to be on the show today to
have you here because we are going to talk about an important part of content production
and that is images, as content. And I was actually just blogging last night on
Content Igloo and it just became so imperative that you even have an image just in the blog
content because when you go sharing it around, all the Facebooks, the
Twitters, the Google Plus; like occasions where you post a link, they grab that image
and display it, and looks really, really engaging.
Nate: Yeah, it's fascinating and, you know, at its very base level when you drop an image
into the stream, it pushes everything down below; other things down below
the fold. So that's why a lot of people pay attention to images because they just take
up more screen space or real estate. And if you think about it, you know, search
engines, that was always the goal of search engine optimization; try to bury, you know,
everybody else under the fold. Now you can do that with your images on things
like Facebook.
Wes: And I just love that; I just think that being out to push people down and actually
creating something engaging that people wanna click on. Like I just looked
at the latest blog post of The Great Audience Shift; as soon as I dropped it in, the image
took up, you know, a third of the page or a third of the stream so you
cannot miss it. And it was a lovely photo; I just bought it off [00:02:33.09] just to
save myself some time. But yeah, an engaging photo is really attractive and I
think to the average Joe, that may not be on your list yet. I think it's a really, really
good start; images work, I think.
Nate: It's fascinating too because you look at, you know, in 2012, you know, we had the
release of Facebook Timeline. And everybody was kind of skeptical as to, you
know, what was going to be the response from consumers upon the release of the timeline
and you really didn't have a lot of pushback. I mean, there's always a
percentage of people who don't, you know, aren't happy with the way that the change
has gone. But for the most part, the things that you heard about Facebook Timeline
which was very much one of the first, you know, shifts to being image-based, got a lot
of positive sentiment from the general audience. And now suddenly you're
starting to see a lot of other sites kind of take hold of that; even from LinkedIn.
If you go to your LinkedIn context now, you can kind of scroll down and see these
little, you know, they almost look like Trello cards of various different contacts that you
have; and it's kind of that bottomless scrolling thing, that scrolling
activity that I think that's really, really well with image viewing.
Wes: Well it's really, really interesting because, you know, Google have been in the
image game for a little while. They're always playing catch-up to Flickr who I
think were the dominant social media image-based platform in the early days, and Google came
out with Picasa. And to the average Joe who knows a little bit about the
tech world and the marketing world, let's say "Oh yeah, there's no point doing a photo
sharing service because, you know, Flickr is all over it and even Google is all
over it". But all of a sudden, you know, a little app comes along called Instagram and
it sort of changed the game all over again and got immediately popular to the
point that Facebook bought it. And obviously they think image is important based on, you
know, using timelines like you've just suggested. Let's start our conversation
today about Instagram. I know you've done a lot of work in this area and so you know
it really, really well. I'm just fascinated; I love the product, I use it a lot
and I just love how we can create engaging photos quickly. But just to start off, I find
it amazing that photos are clearly ubiquitous but they just came from nowhere
yet there was all this existing brands out there such as Flickr and Picasa.
Nate: Well, you know, it's fascinating because I think there's even, you know, outside of
the technology and obviously Instagram is a huge driver of this changing
human behavior. Ask yourself this; how many photos did you take before something like
Instagram or before there was, you know, Facebook apps for photos? So because of
multiple devices, now suddenly everybody has a camera all the time; and it's been that
way for years. But before, you would essentially take a picture with your mobile
phone and you would have that picture probably "low res" quality to look at on your mobile
phone. But you couldn't really do anything with it, even just getting the
photos off your phone is a real pain the butt. Now suddenly, instantly, you could put those
photos in front of friends; you can go to your own Facebook page, or your
own Instagram profile on the web, and look at those photos. So suddenly, the behavior
of taking photos has become ingrained in us as internet users. And I think when
you look at things like Instagram, that's really what was so valuable to a company like
Facebook in terms of the acquisition price that they paid for Instagram. But
mind you, at the time of that announcement, it was only a two-year-old company that wasn't
generating revenue; so why is that so valuable? Well Instagram essentially
with the idea of driving photo sharing to the consumers, operates on the same thing
that Facebook does; emotion. Facebook is a very emotional user experience because
it's our friends, it's our memories, it's all these images that we're trying to.., and
that's what creates that deep engagement; that habit that we go back and visit
every single day. And I think Facebook realized that when they saw Instagram; this was gonna
be something that became very habitual to the general users.
Wes: That's a really, really good point. I think, you know, the fact that we're all taking
photographs before Instagram is just an inherent behavioral trait that
we're already doing and the smart companies are the ones that put themselves in front
of the everyday actions. And the fact that, you know, they married up the mobile
which is where the camera is at and the distribution point, is why it just leapfrogged the services
of, you know, Flickr and Picasa. But more importantly if, you know,
you look at the demise of someone like Kodak, you know, they've been around for, I don't
know, a hundred, 120 years or something like that and then they're just filing
for bankruptcy protection; or they completely.., I am not really familiar with U.S. bankruptcy
laws but it looks like they're doomed.
Nate: Yeah, you know, talk about disruption; I mean when your entire industry or entire
business is based on film and you own that, and suddenly film goes away, what
do you do? And who was it; it was.., they brought a CMO who was a small business entrepreneur,
I forgot the gentleman's name now but he was the guy who kind of
introduced the idea of the Kodak Zi8 which I thought was a brilliant product and a really
good innovation for them to kind of move away from the idea of film. But
obviously, you know, I think it was a little bit too little too late; how do you keep up
with change when an entire, you know, consumer behavior shifts in what's only
a few small years.
Wes: And it's interesting you said that; I actually own one. And I bought one just before
the 4S came out, and I haven't used it ever since because I know the
quality is just about as good on an iPhone 4S and the issues of audio management are
still the same on the phone as they are in Zi8. If they made it easier, I would
have probably stuck with it but I've got a nice little camera there that I don't use.
And just interesting that it probably is a bit late in the game but if you're
gonna sit around and just protect what you've got, you're dead; that's really what it's
saying. And I think that's a really good lesson for everyone listening to this
podcast today is that, what you've already earned is gonna be re-earned tomorrow because
there's always someone nipping at your heels. It may not happen overnight at
warp speed like it does in the text base, but it will happen. And, you know, look at
Kodak; who would have thought that, that would just crumble at the weight of, you
know, basically a computer manufacturer who's moved into the telephone space. It's just,
you know, 30 years ago they would say that's impossible but here they are and
they're out of business. But not really what we're talking about; it's about images and
it's about Instagram, and how it can help businesses, how people can use it,
how they can create content, distribute content. But most importantly create engaging content
that your new audience loves and wants to share so you can build your new
audience; I think that would be the highlight of Instagram and you're seeing a lot of that
over there in America at the moment.
Nate: Absolutely, it's you know, it's one of those things where it's not much different
than other social networks that have come before it where you have a few of
the larger brands who have already kind of taken the leap and dove into Instagram, really
trying to be those people that are getting there first. Because one thing
that we've known is when a new platform suddenly comes and gets the hype cycle, and gets really
popular, it's the brands that get there first. They get the halo effect
of traditional media because they were the ones to get to the social media first then
suddenly there's articles about them, and so on and so forth. So we've seen a
couple, you know, promotions from big companies; Delta Airlines did a promotion with the NHL,
the National Hockey League in the U.S., and they sent a bunch of
Instagramers. So that's...
Wes: So what's an Instagramer? Just for the people who are just picking up on this, what
would be your definition of an Instagramer?
Nate: So an Instagramer at current day is basically one of the early adopters of Instagram
who have already been able to secure a very, very large, or considerably
in terms of how new Instagram is, a large network. Some of these are people that I think
maybe have stumbled on it by chance by selecting really, really good at
@names. Some people there, one of my favorites is a guy named @tonydetroit who's a photographer
out of Detroit, Michigan who does a lot of architectural photography.
But these are people who typically have some type of a photography background and had just
built a following of 100,000+ or more users on Instagram. So in the
framework of this network, these are the new influencers. These are people that a lot of
brands are going to be going after because I think there's too many ways that
brands will be working on Instagram in the future; one is through their own participation.
And you see companies like Red Bull already doing a great job with sending
people to photograph things from the actual Red Bull Instagram account on location at
different sporting events, things like that. The other way is to tap into the
influencers, much like every other social network out there; and we're already seeing
some brands kind of go in that direction. What's missing today in terms of
Instagram for business, is that the metrics have just not caught up to the point where
we have any meaningful way to show whether or not what we did on Instagram moved
the needle. Not to say the brand shouldn't get involved in Instagram but they need to
do so with the understanding that this is still a fledgling network; it's gonna
take a while before meaningful results come out of this. And yes, you will have an advantage
by giving in and building your presence early; we know that much from
other networks and other brands we've seen, be successful. But in terms of, you know,
if you're asking the ROI question and trying to figure out how to explain that to
a CEO around Instagram, it's simply not there yet.
Wes: And it's interesting because while you're talking, I was thinking "Okay, an Instagramer
has an account and it may have 50,000 followers". Are they, you know,
if I was an advertiser looking to reach, how do I know that they're even worth reaching?
You know, I suppose if an Instagramer has built their account around a
particular topic and is just that rock-solid and on point the whole time, then it makes
sense because you could probably say 80% of the audience is interested in, I
don't know, architectural design, something like that or even more niche, you know, Chicago
architectural design. It makes it very difficult to explain that ROI
scenario if you don't really know what the audience is; is it just a couple of casual
users that have an interest maybe if they share it, I suppose that's the
advantage. But I suppose that could have been the criticism of Facebook especially early
days is that people aren't there to do commerce but it's a powerful medium and
it's an emotive medium, and it's more sort of demographically or psychographically driven;
I would have thought. How do you do it? You just, I suppose it's just
more.., the campaign is really experimental at this stage just because it's still early
days.
Nate: Yeah I think it's very experimental and it's also about channel growth. It's,
you know, much like a lot of other social media, Instagram is going to be a
medium where you're going to have to put effort, dollar, time, you know, ideas into securing
an audience. I mean, that's the general rule about social media in the web
right now, is that traditional media channels are already built for you. In the U.S., we
can go on NBC, or ABC, or PBS, and these are all channels that have had
millions, if not billions of dollars dumped into securing an audience through programming
which is essentially the content that then makes advertising space;
essentially what generates the revenue valuable. It's the same thing online with social media;
you can build a Facebook brand page but if you only have 10,000 likes on
your page or 10,000 fans, you're not going to get the same results that you would if
you had 100,000. It's the same thing on Instagram; where brands are going to
struggle early on trying to come up with what is the content that's gonna resonate the audience,
that's going to be attractive to the audience and get them to, you
know, start to interact with that content. One of the ways to do that is to tap people
who already have an existing audience. But the other thing to consider is that
the demographics for Instagram skew very, very much towards the 12 to 17, 17 to 24-year-old
demographics right now.
Wes: Yeah.
Nate: So if you're a brand, and this is data; if you give me a second, I can pull up the
exact study. But just to plug some research from friends of mine; Edison
Research, Tom Webster, Jay Baer, Jason Falls, and [00:15:16.15] really good research that's
been done in June of this past year called The Social Habit. It's The
Social Habit...
Wes: Right.
Nate: So this is, you know, numbers out of there is saying that Instagram users are predominantly,
overwhelmingly, 12 to 17, 17 to 24, and that is I think because of
their natural gravitation towards mobile devices. These are kids who are growing up with smartphones
in their hand from the time they're, you know, out of grade
school. So suddenly a technology like Instagram or Twitter that's really built for a mobile
UI and if you'd go back to [00:15:51.11] statements you know, that is the
intention of Instagram; it's for the mobile device. That's going to bring a much younger
audience, and that's gonna be very valuable to a lot of marketers out there.
Wes: I think also where it's really, really working is because it was built for mobile
and images are taken as you're out and about; always, you know, you don't sit
behind a desk and then try and figure out photos, you know, you still got to go and
capture those experiences. And I think with images, it is that experience captured
to tell that story. And I'm just wondering, you know, are you using.., I know you're using
Instagram yourself personally; are you seeing examples of where businesses
are using it maybe in conjunction with what they're already producing? And what came to
mind is, you know, when I was posting a blog post last night, whether to insert
an image that I just upload to my website or do I place an image that's from my Instagram
account, or even Pinterest account? And would there be any benefit in that,
does, you know, from an SEO point of view or whether, you know, outside of visual gratification?
Is there any sort of online benefit to inserting and using those
services outside of, you know, maybe they click on it and go to your Pinterest account
and follow it? I don't know; are you experimenting with a few ways and means of
incorporating Instagram into something, or other channels and other mediums that you're
using?
Nate: Well I think that's an opportunity that definitely needs to be explored. I know a
lot of people on Pinterest are doing that right now. And there's a lot of
great studies; one of the tool companies for Pinterest, Curalate, has a lot of really good
case studies in terms of brands going out and putting creative on Pinterest
to gauge how the audience shares, interacts, and spreads that content, and then taking
that data and working it back into using that creative in terms of everything
from direct mail, to Facebook, to other online, you know, catalogs, and things like that.
So I've heard of a lot of studies like that, in terms of...
Wes: Yeah, was that Curalate.com, was it?
Nate: Yeah, Curalate.com; C U R A L A T E.com. It's a very interesting tool because it is
one of the.., I think is the first and best analytics tools for the visual
web. Now right now they are.., they predominantly, they only work on Pinterest in terms of tracking
and providing analytics. I've been on about three or four demos at
this point and it's a very, very solid software; I'm merely impressed with what they're doing
at Curalate.
Wes: Are you using it?
Nate: I have used it in the past when they had the beta version available but that's
no longer available. So...
Wes: [00:18:29.21] and it's quite expensive, isn't it?
Nate: [00:18:33.08] and it's.., their pricing is over the board but it is, let's just say
that their pricing has gone up over the past, you know, 12 months. And
rightly so, there's a lot of development work that's gone into it and it's solid software.
But I would see them eventually having plans to take in something like
Instagram and start to run analytics on those images too because the tracking technology
that they're using is based on pixel tracking and not necessarily looking at
URL tracking. The challenge with Instagram is you have to think again back to the user
level. Yes, there's a case for user-generated content and its value to a brand
but that's a tricky, you know, it's one of those things that if you've got user-generated
content that already exists and it's favorable to your brand, you can find a
way then to leverage that in your marketing. What's more difficult is to figure out a way
to generate the user-generated content and create that in a way that's not
organic. And that's where I think a lot of brands are really gonna struggle, is how do
we teach people the types of photos we want them to take about our brand and put
on Instagram knowing that most people are just gonna take the photos that they take
and put them on Instagram. And if your brand's a part of that, it's because your
brand has done something very well at the customer level and you have a happy customer.
So in a sense, is Instagram a reflection of affinity for a brand or is it
something that can be engineered to build affinity for a brand?
Wes: Well, when you were speaking, I sort of thinking that, you know, events are really
logical places and spaces for photographs. And, you know, events are also
very good in the framework of marketing for a business because, you know, having an event
to market to, it gives people a deadline, you know, whether they're customers
or internal; it's really, really important to have something to market to, or an event
to work towards. And I'm just thinking about rock concerts if you, you know,
Bruce Springsteen is coming out early next year and everyone is really, really excited
about that but in order to enhance that brand experience, they could be doing
something like, you know, having people Instagram and hashtag that to create user-generated
content to make the Springsteen brand more universal, more ubiquitous,
etcetera, etcetera; which may or may not help forward sell tickets for future shows in other
countries as he moves through Asia, or goes to Europe, or back to the
States. I'm thinking that event-based material would be really good if you're trying to create
some sort of campaign strategy around using Instagram; that would be an
interesting way to try and generate user content at a U2 concert about two or three years ago,
they were engaging via SMS with the audience and people could SMS and it
come up on the screen, etcetera. I just think that, that application of photo-sharing technology
could be really good from a campaign level. But where would be
interesting and you touched on it, was how could you implement user-generated content
into your other forms of marketing? I'm not sure whether you're seeing any of
that activity, how could that go, or whether it's literally just cut and paste the Instagram
photo and paste it on to your blog post, or internal email, or on to your
Facebook? I don't know.
Nate: What's fascinating is, ironically, the Obama for America campaign, the recently re-elected
president of the United States was tapping Instagram user-generated
content on one of their main sites. So they were pulling in some type of a feed of Instagram
photos that were tagged with Obama for America or Obama Ohio and they were
pulling that into displaying that content on the homepage; which I think, you know,
makes for a very visually interesting feature on a website, you know, and it's kind
of need but then again, you know, it's more of a "Okay, well here's [00:22:28.12] the
general sentiment". And you have to wonder; did they have a mechanism in place to
be able to control that, you know, to prevent maybe any pictures that weren't displayed
up to at least decency standards? Because a lot of times you do find, you know,
some, how we say very risqué pictures on Instagram.
Wes: It is a note to all the teenage fans out there.
Nate: [00:22:50.05] But it's, you know, you bring up a really good point and in terms
of the events, that's kind of what we've seen already happen, you know, in a
few cases with bigger brands; again, back to that Delta Airlines-NHL case study. What
they did was they went to Madison Square Garden and they sponsored, Delta
sponsored a kind of, they hired six Instagramers; I believe it was six, all of which who were
considered Instagram influencers, sponsored them at the event, gave them
special access to places in the arena that fans normally wouldn't get to go and then
all of those pictures were produced and aggregated in some way with a hashtag. So
really interesting event, you know, and I think it did get a lot of content out there
but the challenge was, and again I stress back to the idea of metrics; what I
read about the analytics and reporting was that they basically said "Okay, there were
x amount of pictures generated by our team of Instagramers at the event". And
then they took the total followers of those Instagramers, i.e., you know, each one has
100,000+ followers and then multiply that by the total number of photos
produced; and that was reported as the number of impressions that the event from the promotion
generated. And obviously there's, you know, if you just kind of work on
that Math in your head, there's a lot of huge gaping holes in that.
Wes: And what they're really saying is they're taking a theoretical audience size of let's
just say, six Instagramers and they have each got 100,000 followers;
they're taking a theoretical audience of 600,000 and saying "We banged out content, this many
times to 600,000 people".
Nate: And the problem with that too, and that's exactly what it is; the problem with that
is that you can even, like on Twitter, you can say "potential impressions"
knowing that you may follow x amount of people but not everybody's gonna see your tweet so
there's a potential for somebody to have that impression. But what that
formula in terms of reporting the success of Instagramers doesn't account for, is that
there might be people that follow off six of those Instagramers and are seeing
all of those photos, and there might be people that are following all six of them and seeing
none of them. So it's just.., that's what's missing, is that right now the
analytics that are there are Instagram system analytics and you can get a feel by manually
going through and counting the number of comments, or likes, or looking at
shares, or things like that. But the real hard data analytics will come hopefully, you
know, maybe in the first or second quarter of next year once some of these
software companies kind of catch up with what's happening on Instagram. Now that's also kind
of, you know, changed in the mix because now suddenly Instagram and
Twitter are no longer integrated. Have you read about that recently?
Wes: Yeah, I've heard a little bit about it but I just think you better run and get me
up to speed as well as everyone listening today.
Nate: As far as I understand, basically you can no longer automatically display Instagram
pictures on Twitter; there's no automatic integration.
Wes: Yeah.
Nate: And that does not mean that you still can't open those links but they won't automatically
display on Twitter. Obviously Twitter has now launched their own
version of a photo-sharing service with filters built in, which is interesting because we've
been sharing photos on Twitter for years but without that visual display,
it never took off. Here's the interesting point about all this is that "Okay, obviously
there's a relationship between Facebook and Instagram, and that makes sense",
but Instagram kind of built that fast awareness from Twitter integration. So it secured a
lot of its user base because Twitter integrated with it and got it out to the
masses very, very, very quickly and we've seen that with a lot of software companies
that have come up, you know, and new social platforms that have come up in the
last couple of years. So my question is, what is Twitter shutting off Instagram going to
do in terms of inhibiting Instagram's organic growth? Is Instagram now solely
dependent on Facebook for growth? What's your.., what's kind of your opinion?
Wes: Well, I always assume that it was Instagram shutting off Twitter because they've just
been bought by Facebook, and then Facebook didn't wanna share any sort of
data or help Twitter out anymore. But if it's the other way around, well then, that makes
sense too, you know, they got to earn a living and then they're just helping
build up everyone else's business. They took, you know, two percent of all these startups
and grew into multi-billion dollar organizations; they'd go alright if
they're part of that organic growth but I just assume that Facebook shut them off. But,
is that the case or it definitely was Twitter shutting them off?
Nate: You know, we'll have to go back and dig in to this because at this point I'm not
sure. What I know is that neither, the data is not being shared anymore and
I'm not sure who was the one that instigated that.
Wes: Because from that point of view, you know, from a data-sharing point of view, I
know that Google doesn't have access to Facebook; Facebook have said no and so
that puts a gaping hole in Google's data which is fair enough, you know, they're entitled
to do that. I'm just wondering whether that was how Facebook decided to roll
out and just said "Well hang on, we do our live streams and feeds now" and it's just
a competitive retaliation, "We now own the hottest mobile image service going
around. We want to tie that up to make our data/advertising, offering more compelling
just by due to the fact that the others can track it, or rank it, and find out
about it, and then still advertising metrics off the back of it". That was my assumption,
it doesn't mean it's true but that was my immediate thought and just logical
conclusion, doesn't it? It doesn't mean it's actually factual or just have to put up a
link in the show notes where we do find something. And if anyone's got any
comments out there, [00:28:36.02] I'd love to hear from them down below so make sure
you make it noted. What's really coming up for me as a business owner with
Instagram; I love it because it really is visual gratification. And I think that, that
is, you know, when you're putting out content that's relevant to your target
audience, having it look better, is just good for your brand. And I think if all it does
is create a click to your blog post; it's done its job. And so another way to
look at some of these metrics is to, you know, how can we engage with our audience deeper?
Whether it's a share or whether it's just coming back to the website, I
think it's really, really important not to lose sight of that and that it's very easy
to be able to set this up. And that, you know, we're talking some pretty deep and
high-level stuff here and for the average business owner, they might be going "Well
that's just well over my head". I'm thinking that, you know, let's just make it
what it is; what it is that has made it successful is that you got images that just look really,
really good and they're very conveniently shared. That would be my
approach for a business owner; for the sort of medium term, it's going "Okay this is just
gonna make my pictures look better". The other one is around this idea of
events which really what we mean is community; you sort of, you can form micro-communities
around an event, you know, I went to the Bruce Springsteen concert, "Yeah,
saw someone else's pictures in.., yeah, so do I here's my photos. Yeah, here's mine".
And then all of a sudden you got like a micro-community around an event; might
not last very long, it's short term in nature. But I think a good branded company, non-branded,
can really leverage that aspect that they could be out on event; they
could sort of newsjack it in a way and then just start connecting with people who were
there as well, sort of little micro-community management from where I see it.
What do you reckon?
Nate: You know, I think it is.., what's interesting though is that you don't see a lot of actual
big dialogue going on inside of Instagram other than one or two-word
responses. It's very similar kind of to the type of responses that you might see on YouTube
but very, very shorthand comment. So in terms of like real, kind of deep
conversation inside the community, I just don't see a lot of that happening. But in
terms of a lot of appreciation type of commentary or recognition in the form of
those one, or two, or three-word likes, or even to the opposite side of, you know, people
who have this taste for what you've put up, that does happen; and I think
we're starting to see more people engaged with that. And the brevity of the comments
is probably related to the fact that again, it's a predominantly mobile platform.
So...
Wes: And it's a visual communication, not a textual.
Nate: Yeah, I agree with that.
Wes: Yes, I still think it's highly relevant even though the metrics aren't there; there
are simple metrics there in terms of click-through. So, you know, if
there's a comment and then leaving your web address in the comment or certainly optimizing
your profile so that if people wanna know a bit more about you, they know
where to go. And it's that sort of analogy of throwing people over the fence, getting
them back to your own platform which is your own website and making sure that,
you know, there's engaging content there that's really gonna help them out, you know, it's
that visual stimulation that starts the whole process. And as long as it's
relevant to who you're targeting, it's got a long way to go. But I'm really excited with
Instagram; it just made an average, average photographer like me, look
passable, acceptable at least.
Nate: Yeah, same for me.
Wes: Yeah, and it's.., love it. Well is there anything more on Instagram that you'd think
it really.., really stepping out right at this moment that, you know, you
can see the patents for next year arising because like I said I know you've done some
work with Karcher Group in this area, is there anything obvious outside of, you
know, there will be a lot more photos getting taken and people will share it or it's just
that's what it is? You take your photos, you share it, and it's visual
gratification; and that's pretty much 80% of it, you know, we don't need to think much
deeper that really what it is.
Nate: So I think we're gonna see three things happen in 2013 with Instagram. We're gonna
see, you know, obviously adoptions are going to continue to rise. With that,
we'll probably see some, a little bit more development on the web interface which will
be interesting in terms of how people view that and obviously integration;
deeper integration between Instagram and Facebook. From the marketing perspective, you know,
I expect probably in the first quarter, maybe the second quarter we'll
start hearing some press about companies that are jumping on the analytics for Instagram
bandwagon. Again, that may be affected by, you know, Facebook's ownership and
what they allow them to do. We could even see Facebook integrate Instagram Analytics
into Facebook Insights which would be interesting, you know, and hopefully, you
know, that would at least provide it some free resource that will allow us to take a
peek at that. And I think we're gonna see the rise of the Instagramers; I think
we're gonna see more and more people start to build significant influence because they
are the ones sharing those really interesting photos. And because of that, it's
going to give birth to a new form of Instagram celebrities or internet celebrities who obviously
are going to be immediately recognizable because they're not just
writing blog posts, they're showing their face, they're taking pictures and people are
knowing them visually and not just through their, you know, written word. And
that's gonna be huge; it'll be interesting to see how this all develops.
Wes: Well that's exactly what happened with YouTube; there's a lot of people, they're
just out there putting out content and you know, there's young teenage girls,
you know, showcasing makeup or clothes and all of a sudden they had a powerful medium
but people latched on to those early adopters. So really, if history is something
we can learn from, then the rise of these Instagramers because they have been now bought
into the establishment; they're owned by Facebook so they're not going
anywhere soon. That could be an important take out as an early-adopter trend for business
in marketing, is maybe not do anything too crazy at this stage but just do
what it was designed to do; get the photos, build an audience right there just about relevant,
visual content that people want, which is related to your business. So I
think that, you know, in a year from now if you've picked up 25,000 followers on Instagram,
that's not insignificant in terms of audience reach and building a direct
relationship with audiences. It'll be interesting to see where it's played out but I certainly
believe that it's not going anywhere, as is Pinterest but outside of
that, I'm not so sure. But I suppose that's what predictions are for; is to find out what's
gonna happen.
Nate: Yeah, look back next year and see that you're probably half wrong and half right.
Wes: Yeah exactly, it hasn't gone away and nothing else that we said there was true but
all you can do is take your best guess and learn from history, and also use
our common sense. And I think it's just a fabulous medium; it's working because it's
on the move, it's designed for mobile. I'll be looking at incorporating my
Instagrams more into my website and into my blog; I'll sort of figure that out and I'll
certainly let you know once I have. But I just think, you know, polishing up
and making your content experience so much better, just nice and easy, is the way to
go. So I think we just about exhausted Instagram for today, do you think?
Nate: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been a good discussion so thanks again for having
me.
Wes: Yeah, that's good. Now I know you've got to fly and so do I. So what I'll do is
I'll just put all the places, all the brands, etcetera that we've mentioned in
the show notes down below. If you have comments about what's working or what's not, there
may be some people out there that have used Instagram successfully for
marketing, or business, or just building up an audience, or even using them at events;
we'd love to hear more about that and share that knowledge with our community
because it's an early-stage platform and what works will be jumped on and you could be an
authority in your space really, really soon. Nate, thanks once again; I love
our Tuesday morning discussions which on Monday afternoon, your time. Next week, we'll just
see what's coming up. I haven't.., I can't recall, we may be starting to
look at Facebook; goes definitely in the next couple of weeks and we'll see how we'll go
from there. But thanks again for coming on board, and any final comments?
Nate: No, thanks again for having me Wes.
Wes: Absolutely, alright well you've been Inside the Igloo; the number one podcast show
for people who like winning. I'm Wes Ward and today's guest was Nate Riggs
from the Karcher Group in Columbus, Ohio. Please visit our website for the show notes.
Check out everything you need to know there; make sure you'd become a VIP. And
also check out Content Igloo magazine in the iPad Newsstand. My name is Wes Ward. Thanks
very much for listening. Bye for now.
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