For this week's module, we're going to talk about Instagram advertising. And we're going to talk about how the platform compliments Facebook and where it's different. As you recall from our previous lecture, Facebook and Instagram are linked into one central app platform. That added platform provides you the ability to do advertising across both platforms in a way that's unified. That being said, Instagram has some unique features that make it special. So let's talk a little bit about Instagram and how you can leverage it today. So what's interesting about the Instagram platform is that it is still growing. We see that all other social media platforms are slowly decaying and dropping a percent or two year-on, year-out. But Instagram still grows. So I think that's probably why Facebook acquired Instagram, and it is one of the great promises of the platform, is that it is vibrant. People engage on the platform. They consume content, they post content, they make comments. And more people tend to be using it all the time. Instagram is adopted by younger folks. Yes, Facebook is the most popular social media platform, but Instagram is very popular with younger demographics. In fact, it is neck and neck with 18 to 24 year olds. It's 75% of that demographic actually using the platform in the United States. I think it's interesting to see that Instagram is more popular with the younger demographic than Snapchat. Even though Snapchat is really heavily skewed to younger audiences, Instagram still reaches a slightly broader slice of those younger age groups. So what makes Instagram different when compared to Facebook? One of the big differences is this idea of Instagram influencers. So there are many Instagram influencers that kind of live on the space and create content on the space. Their content is curated and desirable because it's hard content to capture. In this case, look at these food examples. You can see that these are delicatessen, that are perfectly cooked, photographed with HD photography and Photoshopped to the nth degree. This type of content drives people to the platform because it's interesting, it's compelling content. And as a result, these influencers have a lot of influence over the Instagram space. There's been many different articles on who is an Instagram influencer and what types of Instagram influencers are there. But I'm going to provide a list here that I think captures the majority of those types of influencers. So we have influencers that are interested in food, and blogging about food and creating food, eating food, making food. We have Instagram influencers that are obsessed with fashion. We have Instagram influencers that have specific identities, whether based on an ethnicity, or an identity such as an occupation such as being a firefighter. Or an identity such as being a military officer. Instagram provides an opportunity for influencers to represent a specific type of person. There can be a guitar player that represents a swath of guitar players. There can be a celebrity that represents a specific type of individual. Finally, their interests on music and health care and travel as well. We'll look at plenty of examples. But here's a travel influencer. This influencer travels across the world to exotic remote places, photographs it, videos it, and puts up compelling content for consumers to consume on the platform. As a result, this person is thought of as knowledgeable in the travel space. And companies that are associated with the travel space may pay this influencer to actually seed content. So for instance, to visit their destination, or to use their camera equipment, or to use their backpacking equipment. So this class really isn't designed to teach you how to seed influencers or to get influencers to post content about your product or service. But it is one valuable and emerging way to market your product. It's interesting to know that influencers don't come cheap. You can see that the average Instagram post for a big celebrity Instagram account could cost two to $3,000 depending on what type of content you want them to make. Of course, those costs get more reasonable as we look at what we call nanoinfluencers, or influencers that have a few thousand followers and it slowly goes up as the follower count goes up. The intuition is that as an influencer gets more followers and their engagement numbers go up, they're worth more money. So why would a marketer want to go after an influencer as opposed to just sending a traditional ad via Instagram landscape? Well, tends to be that influencers are cheaper than major celebrities, and they also tend to have a really good understanding of who their audience is. So if you seed the right influencer, it may very well overlap with your target audience. So here is an account associated with glamor and Parisian lifestyles. So if you're a brand that wants to become a part of the luxury Parisian lifestyle, this account is definitely one that you might want to seed to accomplish that goal. [MUSIC] You can see here is an influencer that is focused on playing guitar, and does so, in my humble opinion, at the 99.99% of all guitar players. He has a exceptional connection with his target audience in regards to music as particular the style of guitar he plays. So really, the people that are following him really trust his opinion on guitar. Were he to recommend a guitar or recommend a accessory associated with playing guitar, there's a high likelihood that his followers would believe him in the promotion of this product. In general, influencer content seems to be more authentic and genuine than traditional ads. While influencers definitely manipulate photos and try to make sure that their content is exciting and as engaging as possible, they certainly don't go to the same levels that an advertisement might, right? If someone takes a photo of a food dish, it's generally what the food looked like. This is certainly a family-style influencer or even a mother influencer, and she is doing a really good job with her content. But her content doesn't feel like advertisements, right? It feels more like genuine content that you might see from other social media accounts such as your friend. So if you're excited by this and you can think of or conceived of influencers that would fit your particular target audience, you can just contact influencers. Microinfluencers especially are amenable to direct messages or just even sending them an email via their little contact button on their website. Don't be afraid to reach out to them. If you'd like to do more of an influencer campaign at scale, public relations agencies are becoming experts in actually handling this and managing this for you actively. And digital marketing agencies also have the ability to find influencers and seed them in ways that you don't have to worry about. But an influencer approach isn't without problems. So there's many different issues associated with influencers. And the number one thing is this idea of an imposter influencer. That is, that an influencer isn't actually influential with an audience. Maybe they have a lot of followers, but their engagement rate is too low to actually be meaningful. It's also harder to build a strategy around influencers. It's one thing to have an influencer once endorse the guitar that you are selling. But it's different to have an influence or create a series of content that can have a long-standing range of buzz. It's also really hard to build an influencer campaign that has sustained engagement. So it's one thing to find an influencer that really matches the style of guitar that you would like to sell, and have that person play a song on that guitar and promote it. And that may provide a one-time kind of lift in the buzz that you generate on social media. But creating a campaign where influencers regularly do this is a lot harder to sustain, right? And influencers are often one-time bumps to sell products and not longtime campaigns. That being said, also the social media platforms themselves are always changing, and a result of that change could mean that an influencer who has good engagement and good impression numbers today may actually not have effect tomorrow. By the time you've actually paid them and had them film the content, there's no guarantee that their reach is going to be what it says it is. And this, again, goes back to our Facebook lecture where we know that social media platforms in general love to limit the organic reach of users as a result of having them not pay. And in fact, Instagram itself is trying to come up with ways in which influencers posts can be amplified. And that's a kind of shot across the bow out influencer saying hey, your organic reach may not be great in a few years, so you may have to actually start to pay to have your content promoted just like every other type of advertiser. Why do I talk about influencers in a lecture dedicated to Instagram ads? The main reason is because the content expectations of consumers on Instagram are largely shaped by this type of content. I'm just following a random hashtag here related to the late great musician Stevie Ray Vaughan. And you can see that the hashtag is full of posts, a bunch of maybe micro to very, very micro influencers, super nanoinfluencers, trying to become the next big influencer in guitar. This really is exciting for the consumer because they get to see a lot of really cool guitar playing, and it really shapes the use case for using this. If you're a guitar player and you use Instagram, odds are you like to seek out these types of videos. And here's my broader point. Instagram isn't used in the same way that Facebook is. Facebook is for strong ties, for family and friends. Instagram is more for watching content, viewing cool photos, watching exciting videos. Yes, people still share content with their friends on the platform and they still engage. That's a part of social interaction that really makes every social media platform enjoyable. People don't really seek out Instagram to make new friends. People don't seek out Instagram for news. They instead use it for content. So Instagram ad revenue is growing, and that's not something that's likely to change any time soon. You can see that the incremental growth from year to year is slowly declining, and I think we will eventually reach a stabilization point. But we're not quite there yet. People are finding use and real value in Instagram advertising.
