Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Since coming into existence in 2010, Instagram has given brands the opportunity to engage with their audience and tell their story through the power of visuals. The Facebook-owned app was one of the fastest growing major social networks in 2014, and is now home to more than 300 million accounts.

In addition to the network’s impressive growth, users are also highly engaged with the platform. Each day, half of all users use the app and spend an average of 21 minutes on the app. Top brands have quickly realized the potential Instagram presents. Simply Measured’s Quarterly Instagram Network Study (Q4 2014) found that 86% of Interbrand’s 2014 Top 100 Brands had an Instagram account, which was up from 71% the year prior. Instagram is quickly turning into the go-to network for brands looking to drive engagement.

Whether you’re considering joining, are brand new to the network, or need tips and best practices to get more out of the app, I’ve gathered 8 of the most common mistakes brands make on Instagram backed by the ones that are creating a memorable presence....

For brands on Instagram, Likes don’t just represent engagement, they represent permission! Consumers who are liking an image that a brand produces are, in essence, inviting the brand into their life and acknowledging the brand’s creativity. Ultimately, this helps to create a more emotional connection. In effect, your brand is now in a screen along with consumers’ best friends.

Given the power of the “double-tap” on Instagram, Curalate was interested in discovering which types of image characteristics may drive more likes. In order to do so, we looked at a range of image features across 8,000,000 Instagram photos — including lightness, color, texture and background ratio — and found a few interesting results (see below). And although our data says what and not necessarily why, we have a strong hypothesis on the reasoning behind some of the results…

For instance, we found that images with a single dominant hue performed best. This is probably due to the fact that when you’re viewing an image just mere inches from your face, the absence of chaos can help you focus. Additionally, the fact that textured images generated more engagement could mean that various ridges and shadows grab eyeballs and cause a user to stop and take a harder look at a photo....

Brands love Instagram, and now, Instagram is showing a little love back.

The popular photo-sharing app is making it easier for brands to experiment with visual storytelling with Layout, its first complimentary app for photo editing. Instagrammers have already been using third-party apps like Pic Stitch, InstaFrame, and PhotoGrid to edit and collage their photos for years. In fact, Instagram found that 20 percent of its monthly users were using other companies’ apps to compose shareable images. Now, Instagram hopes to blow the competition out of the water by providing users with the tools to be even more creative with their ‘grams. (As the kids call it....

Seen through the filter of Instagram, the world is a beautiful place: high-contrast blue skies; sepia-tinted sunsets; exquisite plates of food and raindrops sliding down windows in perfect formation. It may be a manipulated perspective on life, but 200 million people across the world now use the photo app, sharing 60m pictures a day. Yet for some users, Instagram is generating more than appreciative likes and comments as they document their lives, travels and eating habits on their smartphones.

From Nike to the Namibian tourist board, brands and organisations are turning to the most followed users in the pursuit of a broader and younger audience – and are paying handsomely for their services.

Cue the rise of the Instagram professionals, users who began using the app for fun but are now earning six-figure salaries and being flown around the world to take photos to share with their thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of followers....