It’s hard out there for a brand, on Instagram

Hey, what about the brands? With more than 200 million users, Instagram has become a mega social media hit, but they haven’t been so quick to make things easy for brands to join in on the fun.

We’ve already shared how companies can build a successful Instagram content strategy, but the most popular girl on the social media block is playing hard to get with brands. To start with, Instagram hasn’t launched any publishing application program interfaces, which means the posting process remains manual.

So what does this really mean for your brand?

–       Social media companies can’t build software to enable Instagram publishing on a large scale

–       Brands can only publish from a phone

–       Users can’t publish in advance, so if posts fare better on the weekends, that’s when individuals have to post

–       Marketers can’t get strategic insights like when is the best time of the day to post specific content, or the most popular filter

–       Employees have to log out of their personal accounts to post for the brand, which could result in accidental personal posting

So is change inevitable and coming soon? A spokesperson for Instagram commented, “Our highest priority is to maintain the community experience on Instagram, while evaluating the tools and metrics that will help brands be successful on the platform – whether that’s building through native interfaces or providing via API access.”

If your brand needs help developing a social media strategy, give us a call.

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