What's the next instagram?
Hi fellow indie hackers - would love to here your thoughts, ideas, experiences on this:
Brand Background:
Currently in the pre-launch phase of my brand. Product is in the female hygiene area, target group females, 18-45 living in Europe.
Instagram Observations:
Started instagram to built an audience ahead of kickstarter etc. and noticed how hard it is to actually get it starting (I know ha ha ha).
Noticed also how many bot steered accounts are around and how crowded the space is: There are more brands trying to get a message, product etc across than interested users - I feel. Not a surprise cause Instagram is around for some time and together with the monetization it might have shifted from a social network to a huge display ad network.
Questions:
So I wonder - should I put in the effort of creating content and trying to built a followship? Or should I move on and invest time and effort somewhere else to built an audience?
Is there another social network on the rise?
Back to facebook?
Just post product and campaign pics on instagram and if it picks up fine - if not ok too?
Or: play along, get a bot myself and play by the "rules"...?
Hey Julia
I'm also in Berlin and work with Instagram Analytics (likeometer.de is my side project). It's really hard these days to start from scratch and i see a lot of brands struggling. Most of them use hashtag-bots (nobody buys followers in 2018 anymore) or using unfollow-bots, but in my opinion, they are not really sustainable. I'd recommend you keep your hands off it. Instagram is still a great place for marketing (IMHO better than Facebook), but it really depends on your audience.
Just posting product and campaign pics can be boring, it's always more engaging when people see a face/person in posts. I would recommend to work with 1-2 influencers or "brand ambassadors", if you have a little budget for this. Or just meet them for a coffee and see what they think!
Beside Instagram: Any forums/Facebook groups where you can join the discussion? Where are your customers looking for more information about female hygiene? Not sure if they really looking for this topic on Instagram (i'm a guy, i don't know), but I would focus on FB, Blogs, YouTube.
Good Luck :-)
hi Ben, solide Seite!
I'm curious, were there any reasons for focusing on DACH?
Greetings from ZH
Merci, Simon! 🇨🇭
I started Likeometer last summer - first, it was just a little list for me and my friends. After a few weeks i noticed there is more traffic every month, so i was a bit surprised.
Adding more countries would raise my monthly costs for servers etc. (currently it's around $150/month).
I'm still freelancing and just have like 1-2 hours per day left to work on Likeometer, so it's also about time. The directory is hand-curated, it's important to know the country a bit (who is a celebrety, who a singer, who "just" an influencer etc.)
Hope I can invest more time in the future :-)
interesting, good luck with finding a way to monetise properly and grow!
HI Ben,
cool tool! I give it a try!!! Like the microinfluencer option!! Only looked briefly but would it be possible to look for influencers using certain hashtags or standing for a specific topic?
Yes, facebook groups are super powerful for initial engagement! Youtube too. And yes, probably the way to go is influencers and communicating with them/through them to the audience...
thanks a mill for your comment!!!
Yeah, hashtag search is coming soon :-) Hope next month!
Post email conversations with your users on https://www.fwdeveryone.com (our service) and then use Reddit / Facebook / Twitter for distribution. In terms of time invested per unit outcome, this will be a much better strategy than instagram. Especially since instagram is a largely visual platform so it doesn't really make sense for this market.
Hi there, not sure if I get it, but what would be the advantage of posting on your platform? Reddit is not really a thing in my market tho...
So the functionality provided by our platform:
Making it easy to discover the most interesting conversations within your inbox.
Formatting email conversations to make them look beautiful
Making sure that conversations are SEO optimized, so that they rank well in search.
Making it easy to request permission, make redaction, and anonymize users
Making it easy to embed content within other social platforms. Mainly Reddit and Medium, albeit the former you've said isn't especially helpful for your specific demographic.
In terms of how to use this as part of a larger marketing effort, that's really where your own effort and judgment would come into play, although certainly I'd be happy to chat if you send me an email.
One application I can imagine is publishing customer support queries on the Q&A section of the website... Will keep the tool in mind :)
Data protection in Europe is on another level with gdpr so giving a third-party tool access to a business email could be something that would have to get consent by the other party... Might be tricky...
If you want to access the European market would recommend checking gdpr as this might come up a lot by business users....
With the possible exception that I haven't yet explicitly listed myself as the GDPR contact on our site, we're compliant.
Giving a third-party tool access to an email conversation isn't an issue, as long as the tool itself is GDPR compliant. Otherwise, for example, it would be illegal for blind people to access their email using screen readers.
Hey Julia!
I'd start where it's less crowded:
A few years ago, I was listening to a podcast where someone built a huge (500K+) Instagram following, and even then they said they had to work full time to do it. It was all about engaging with others and posting lots of high quality content.
Instagram is setting itself up to be around for quite some time, so I think it's a safe platform to build an audience on.
PS: As far as I know, the only "new" social network is Mastodon, but I don't know if it will take off. And even if it does, your target market probably won't be there for a while.
Hi Mark, thank you! That is great advice... Really appreciate it!
Where people fail on Instagram is they try to just post content and expect the account to pick up.
What I've seen success with (around 800% increase in profile visits) is engaging with other profiles under a thread from an influencer in my space (hence the people commenting there would also be in my niche) and leaving thoughtful comments and bringing my worthy $0.02 cents.
We did a vlog on this
Also drop me a line if you want more details, I have some more insights and data the filming of the vlog!
thanks that is a good point! cause like this you have true engagement which is probably the most sustainable...
give it a go ;) search for "Gary Vee $1.80 strategy"
Instagram is certainly very crowded. However with massive user base, I still consider it a great platform for marketing, paid or organic. Pinterest is also one worth looking into as it drives a lot of traffic and is more search-oriented, meaning people are putting in keywords to try to find inspirations/products and it might be a more direct route to sales for you.
Streaming video has gotten a lot of traction recently, with Twitch leading the way. Tik Tok is a short-form video social network that's also quite popular. YouTube continues to be a big one imo - and because it's also very search oriented, I think it can work really well for certain products.
thanks for the reco! highly appreciated...
we have a similar thing in germany - musical.ly - but it is mostly for teens... is tik tok used by adults too?
germany is usually a bit behind when it comes to social media/ads/online everything....
Musical.ly was acquired by Tik Tok and I think they've been moving people to Tik Tok instead now. I am not familiar with Tik Tok enough so not sure about their demographic, but social media tends to start with a younger crowd in general imo.
ohh true and true... I will have a look into the demo - might be worth it...
thanks :)