While Instagram is a fun and new way to document my day-to-day life, the possibilities and opportunities for brands are endless. Below find Edelman Digital tips, considerations and recommendations for brands looking to take their photos – and their followers social experience – to the next level.

How does Instagram work?

After downloading and opening the Instagram app, users will be prompted to create an Instagram profile, including a username and profile picture. Users can include a bio and website URL as well. There are five consistent buttons within the app – Feed, Popular, Share, News and Profile.

The Instagram Feed is where images are populated based on who you are following. Think of this as the Facebook Timeline or Twitter stream. Anytime someone you follow on Instagram uploads a new public photo, it will show up in your Feed. There’s an option to “like” the photo (a small heart icon), comment or tweet the photo. You can also directly click back to the user’s profile from the Feed stream.

By clicking Popular, images will generate that have a high number of likes, comments or shares.

The Share button is front and center of the Instagram app. Users have two options when sharing an image; they can either upload a photo already saved on their mobile device or shoot an image directly from the Instagram app. Once the photo is selected, users can select from sixteen different filter options in order to transform the colors, border, mood and tonality of the image. A few examples of Instagram filters include the “Nashville” filter which creates a vintage-looking image with a photo strip border, the “Earlybird” filter which creates a faded color cast image with a white border, and the “Lomo-fi” filter which creates a high contrast image with vignettes and a soft focus. All of the filters can be viewed with the respective edited image below.

Think of the News button similar to Facebook notifications or Twitter interactions. This is where users can see when other Instagram users start following their account or like and comment on their photo when they are under the “You” tab within the News section. Users also are able to see news from the users they are following under the “Following” tab. The “Following” tab is very similar to the Twitter activity function; users can see when a user they follow likes a photo or begins following another Instagram user.

The last button on the lower right hand side of the application is the Profile. This where users can view or edit their own profile.  The Profile button is also the place to view all of the photos you’ve uploaded to Instagram to date and all other Instagram user photos you’ve liked.

The Profile section is also where users can find other Instagram users from the app by clicking “Search Instagram” and typing in a name, username or tag (similar to Twitter’s hashtag). Another way to find Instagram users is by clicking “Find friends” under the same section and importing users from your device’s contact list, Facebook friend list or Twitter following list. Instagram also populated suggested users that are similar to you or close to your location. Below are two examples of brand Instagram profiles; both Starbucks* and Kate Spade New York are active brands on the mobile photo app.

What is the future of Instagram?

In an interview with TechCrunch, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said,

By no means do we think of Instagram as just a photo-sharing service. It’s something that a lot of people lump us into, but we’d like to think of ourselves as a storytelling service. It’s the way you go out in the world and tell a story about your life, and it’s a new entertainment platform. You can open it up and see a story about what your friends are doing, but also [that] ABC World News is posting photos of someone in Japan reporting on the nuclear crisis. It’s really moving to see those things coming together through images.

A story-telling service, says Systrom. What exactly does this mean? The purpose of Instagram is to do more than just upload photos, but for each account to tell a story. Rather just spread a message through text, Instagram users have the opportunity to document life and connect with others on a deeper and more emotional level.

What are the implications and best practices for brands?

Brands have an opportunity to connect with their audience in a new way in real time.  Amy Cole, a member of Instagram’s business operations team, explains in an Ad Age interview that there are roughly 200 brands and organizations using the app to date. A few examples include Starbucks, with over 202,000 followers and Burberry with 151,000 followers. News organizations including The Today Show and NPR have also jumped on Instagram utilizing mobile photography as an additional way of telling the news.

Commonly, brands use Instagram to capture things their audience might not typically see. Giving your followers “backstage access” allows them to feel more connected to specific individuals within a company and the brand overall. Another way brands are using Instagram is to host contests and events. Levi’s* is hosting an open casting call on Instagram where prospective models can send their photo using the #IamLevis hashtag. Starbucks also hosted the #5More campaign asking followers to submit images sharing what they would do if they had five more minutes in the day. All images were generated to the Starbucks website. This is a key way to show appreciation for your fans and followers and in turn, obtain submissions for a larger project.

While many lifestyle and fashion brands are popular on Instagram, other types of brands can still be strategic and successful when tapping into their target Instagram audience. Take note from General Electric*, with over 34,000 Instagram followers. The company using Instagram to show their commitment to energy and transportation; they often post photos of engines and turbines. While this might not be interesting to the everyday consumer, enthusiasts are given the chance to see the inner workings of the giant global brand.

With every Instagram upload, users have the option to share the image on several different social media platforms. Previously, if you shared your Instagram image to Facebook, a thumbnail and link would show up on your profile. Instagram’s latest update allows you to seamlessly share images to your Facebook timeline in full size (example below). This provides a huge opportunity for brands given that Facebook has over 800 million users. Facebook users can re-share an Instagram photo that they see on a brand Facebook page which in turn, increases Instagram’s visibility and reach outside of the actual application.

Instagram is an easy and effective way to tell a brand’s story so honing in on what the brand’s point-of-view and perspective is key. The mobile app allows brands to “bring themselves to life” in a way that might not be possible on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. The brand’s that are most successful on Instagram are the ones who don’t underestimate the power of a photograph.

Edelman Digital’s Take

Instagram is free, so if you have a smartphone device, download the app and start playing. You’ll find that Instagram is very user-friendly and a fun way to peak into what’s going on in your favorite friends, brands and influencers lives. The Instagram team has a helpful resource showing you “notable users” for you to get an idea of who to follow. Start following other Instagram users and posting your own images to get a feel for what capabilities the app has. Share your images on social channels – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr – and take a peek at how people engage with your photos.

While Instagram is a very consumer-focused platform, there are several opportunities for B2B, tech, health and other industries. GE’s Instagram account is a perfect example; the company uses Instagram to give themselves “a consumer face” and offer their followers behind-the-scenes photos from their factories. For those who might not fully understand what General Electric does, the Instagram acts as bridge connecting the company with their target audience.

One popular tactic for brands to do on Instagram is to host a photo contest. The Instagram team shares a blog post highlighting the best practices for hosting photo contests on the app. It’s pretty basic – select a hashtag, call for content from your followers and begin tracking the users who submit photos with the specified hashtag. It’s a great way to kick-off a brand’s presence on Instagram.

The most important thing to remember is to not just use Instagram within the app, but to share all of your content across other social channels. You’ll be able to tap into your personal or brand’s larger community and instantly tie all social media efforts together.

Recommended Reading:

• Examples of How Brands are Using Instagram
• Instagram Hits 10 Million Users in 355 Days: A Brief Retrospective
• Instagram Shifting Focus to an Open Platform with API

Image credit: Potzuyoko

*Levi’s, General Electric and Starbucks are clients of Edelman.

Derek Sivers: How to Start a Movement

With help from footage from Pemberton Music Festival in BC, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two). We talk a lot about influencer engagement but to make a movement, the first followers are as important as the influencer.

Six Steps For Dealing With Detractors

Dealing with detractors is perhaps one of the biggest pain points for companies just starting and even well entrenched in social media marketing. Jason Falls points to Forrester’s classification of detractors and offers some advice.

The Real Life Social Network

On Facebook everyone gets lumped into one big bucket called your friends. In real life, you have multiple independent groups of friends that form around life stages (school friends, work friends, camp friends, neighbourhood friends, hockey friends). Furthermore, within each group you have strong ties, weak ties, and temporary ties).

Word of Mouth and Social Media: A Tale of Two Burger Joints

Sobleman’s has been a staple in Milwaukee for the last 12 years building a steady customer base through word-of-mouth. AJ Bombers also built it’s brand through word-of-mouth, but in a considerably shorter time. Social media was the accelerator. And AJ’s owner doesn’t measure ROI. “This is a restaurant built by social media. This is the only way we know it. We can’t say what it would be like without it.”

Tools To Measure Your Twitter Influence

I was a little reluctant to write this post because much of the Twitter community is fixated with follower count. I see many tweets, even in my own stream, of certain people announcing that they reached 500, 1,000, 5,000 Twitter followers as if it’s some sort of huge achievement like receiving a Grammy Award or something. Read more…

Tracking Twitter Trends

On any given day there are 750 tweets per second on Twitter for a total of 65 million tweets per day. With an overload of tweets daily it can be difficult to grasp what is really trending at any given moment. Use the tools below to quickly find current Twitter trends and trending conversations. Read more…

Visualizing The Web & Social Networks

Seeing is believing and visuals are powerful. I’ve collected a few visualization tools for Facebook, news feeds, and Twitter to let you view networks and conversations at a glance. Read more…

Advice For Future Interns

Even if the job market is booming, post-college internships are still important. Internships are a great way to learn more about a company or industry and help identify what you want to do as a career. Just like shoe shopping, it’s all about the right fit, and internships are a valuable way to find your fit. Read more…

Foursquare Launching Badge Rewards

What’s in badge? Many Foursquare users have been wondering whether or not acquiring all of those colorful circles would ever translate into something tangible, and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley arrived at the Mashable Media Summit Tuesday armed with an answer Read more…

Mashable Live-Streams Social Media Day

Mashable’s Social Media Day, a day to “celebrate the revolution of media becoming social”, brought social media addicts together in meetups around the globe. How did they compensate for the time zone differences? By using Ustream to broadcast several of the meetups as they happened. Unfortunately, Chicago wasn’t one of the streams offered. What’s up, Mashable?

Twitter Moms Care for Content Over Coupons

An important study done by eMarketer that shows moms care about more than getting discounts. They want to read relevant, useful information that they can retweet. Here’s a highlight:

Check-In Apps Make Entertainment Social Again

A new round of social networks is trying to connect users with similar tastes in entertainment. The most popular, GetGlue, allows users to “check-in” to certain activities, such as reading a book, watching a TV program, or drinking a bottle of wine. The aim is to share a history of your offline activities in the hopes of connecting online. These kinds of sites are still growing, but I expect interest from brands to be just around the corner.

Social Networking Makes You Want to Cuddle

In my favorite news of the week, a fascinating study proves that the same chemical is released in the brain when connecting socially online as when falling in love: oxytocin (the “cuddle chemical”). If there was ever a biological reason for companies to enter the social space, here it is.

Posterous On A Mission to Be Your Blog/Photo Sharing Service/Everything

Posterous is making a bold move to get more users from other services. A few days ago, it announced on its blog that it was going to spend 15 days making it easy to switch from 15 different “dying” platforms. Obviously this didn’t sit well with its competitors, some of which went so far as to announce legal action against it.

Originally posted on Travis Murdock’s Blog.

Guide to location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, for PR and marketing professionals.

I checked in on Foursquare as I arrived at a networking event the other day and I was greeted with a free drink if I showed my phone to the bartender. My excitement grew when Foursquare notified me that the restaurant across the street had a two-for-one dinner deal. I grabbed some colleagues to go with me. When we finished, I noticed that the bar across the street offered a free appetizer. So, we trouped across the street determined to follow our Foursquare adventure to its end even if we were already full. When we finished we had consumed drinks, dinner and appetizers all for less than $10 each.

As my experience shows, people are willing to give their location if they know they’ll get something for it. JiWire’s Insights report found that 53 percent of people are willing to show their location to get more relevant ads. Nielsen reports that 24 percent of Americans have a smartphone and we know that most of the new models have GPS. Foursquare has rapidly grown to 500,000 users and 275,000 check-ins in one day. Mashable reports that the other location-based check-in game, Gowalla, has about 100,000 customers. Additionally, nearly every user-generated review service is adding location to its mobile app because of its benefits to customers and the hope to attract higher advertising rates.

As a PR or marketing professional it is about time to add location-based services to your marketing mix and reputation management programs. Your customers are already mentioning your brand in these services and their comments are showing up in search results. It isn’t hard to understand that like other social media, location-based services need active engagement and monitoring. Chuck Reynolds daftly details the impact of these services on local search and search engine visibility in this blog post.

Although not sanctioned by the company, there was even a Foursquare Day last month on April 16 (4/16) that fans put together. I know you have a lot to monitor already in the fragmented social media fracas, so here are some tools that can make it easy to keep an eye on public comments on Foursquare and Gowalla. Both Check-In Mania and FourWhere allow you to search for your business and view the shouts and recommendations people leave.

I love to see the updates and advice from my friends as they check-in throughout their day. It helps me find better restaurants and gets me to try new businesses. As a PR person, I’ve seen it create real-time buzz around an event and drive longer-term search engine results. It’s time to check-in on your brand’s reputation before your customers check-out.

Disclosure: JiWire is a client.

By now, a lot of us are on a pretty huge number of different social networks. You might tweet while you Facebook, or Yammer while you Tumble, but we’re all spread out across networks, with different people and different types of interactions happening on each.

Managing all of these networks often presents two options: either set them all up to post to each other and get the same content and updates on every network, or spend an inordinate amount of time typing made-up words into your address bar.

If you’ve got the right tools in hand, though, your task becomes a little easier. There are a few great applications out there that will help you manage all (or at least some) of your social networks all in one place, making interacting and connecting much simpler and more efficient.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck started out as a Twitter-only client, but it has since integrated Facebook and LinkedIn – since, for many of us, those are the three most time-consuming networks that we’re on, TweetDeck is a perfect solution. You can post updates to one network (or all three at once) with just one click, and add columns from each network’s information right next to Twitter. It’s all your friends, all in one place.

Brizzly

Brizzly is just like TweetDeck, but works on the Web. You can see and update Twitter, or write on friends’ walls and update your status on Facebook, all with the click of a button. Brizzly doesn’t intertwine Facebook and Twitter quite as much as TweetDeck does, but it’s easy to switch between the two to keep tabs on everyone.

Seesmic

Seesmic is the most complete of all the solutions for managing your social networks, no matter how many you’ve got. Seesmic has a Web application, a desktop app for any operating system, and apps for your phone, all designed to keep you in touch. The really great thing about Seesmic, though, is that they recently bought Ping.fm. Ping.fm is a service that lets you post from anywhere (IM, email, text messages, the Web) to anywhere (just about any social network you can think of). No switching apps or websites—just update one or all, right from the application.

Yoono

Yoono’s killer feature is the ability to create essentially a social universe within a small application – either a desktop app for Windows, or a Firefox extension. You add your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, IM accounts and more, and can switch between them and do things like upload photos, chat, read updates in real-time, and share links across networks. It’s not the simplest interface, and you can’t do everything in every network, but it’s perfect for skimming all your networks every once in a while.

Pond

What Pond does is a lot like these other services—add a network, do the basics on all of them in one place—but it has one uniquely great twist: a universal contacts list. Let’s say you’ve got a friend who’s on Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter—Pond pulls all that information together and makes it a single contact, meaning you can see your friend’s updates on any social network, all in one place. It’s organized by person much more than network, which is a neat spin on social networking.

If you’ve got more social network accounts than pairs of pants, don’t spend all your time opening new tabs, logging in and looking around. Get one of these applications, plug all your networks into it, and get a lot more done much faster. Just don’t go Plurking in my Orkut.

Arguably one of the most compelling pieces of the broader social networking boom has been the ability to take a relationship built online and move it offline or, at the very least, “online” to “in-person.” It’s the flipping of that paradigm that makes the latest wave of location-based social networking services so interesting. Users take their physical, offline location and put it online. While there is often a gaming aspect to this decision (users get points and badges as rewards for various levels of engagement), the broader goal is to draw attention to that location as both an endorsement and an invitation for others to join. Foursquare and Gowalla have dominated conversation to-date, but today’s Friday Five is dedicated to a few lesser-known services and the nuances that set them apart.

My Town

My Town’s first iterations initially came across as a way to play Monopoly against yourself with properties in your own neighborhood. My Town 3.0 has retained the ability to “buy property” with equity built up from check-ins but has opened up to a much more social sphere. This hasn’t gone unnoticed — recent reports have My Town gaining 130,000 new users a week.

Tweetsii

Tweetsii’s check-in process is potentially among the more elaborate while still boasting straightforward usability. Users snap a photo and upload it, tagging the location where that photo was taken in the process, say, at a favorite pie shop. When that user’s contacts pull up the app, they’ll see that photo situated on a map, pointing to where that photo was taken and who posted it.

BrightKite

BrightKite, like Tweetsii, uses photos to paint a dynamic picture of its users’ experiences. However, the set-up of the homepage is closer to a Facebook newsfeed with streaming content appearing next to the users posting it.

Mobiluck

Europe-based Mobiluck takes the personal location experience a step further by giving Symbian and Windows mobile smart phone users the ability to chat with their MSN contacts. Rumor has it they are also working on a feature that allows connections to users from other platforms like Skype and Gchat.

Check.In

Check.In’s catchphrase is “One Checkin to Rule Them All”, a Tolkien reference used to sell a service that ties of each of a users various geo-locating services together, updating them simultaneously. While Check.In’s services do come at the cost fracturing a user’s identity across the individual platforms (points can’t be assigned the same way), those suffering from “check-in fatigue” could be relieved.

Another month, another visit to Silicon Valley – my home away from home – and, with it, another visit to the Googleplex in search of insights. This time I chatted with Karen Wickre, who oversees Google’s growing armada of blogs and Twitter embassies.

Google, perhaps more than any other company, has a culture of openness. Often a company’s culture shapes its communications strategy. And that’s certainly the case with Google. So social media comes naturally.

Karen first launched Google’s corporate blog back in 2004. Today the company has digital embassies for virtually every product. This armada spans dozens of blogs, Twitter profiles, YouTube and more recently Facebook.

Back when the Official Google Blog launched, posts were conservative. Wickre, a former tech journalist, told me over breakfast that early items were almost whimsical, focusing on the food at Google (which I can assure you, rocks).

While the blog still features some trivial fare, no one could call it – or any of Google’s other digital assets – a light weight. In fact, the opposite is true. Google uses its armada to take on hard issues like China, public policy and privacy. And it largely eschews press releases, unless they are financial or material to shareholders.

While Wickre doesn’t oversee all these embassies, she serves as a beacon for the teams that manage them – subject matter experts like product managers, engineers and marketers. Like a good coach, she provides templates and best practices and answers questions as they come up. Wickre, in the meantime, is turning her attention to how the company can strategically use its own Buzz product.

Wickre is one of an emerging breed of professionals that companies hire to manage/lead companies down the social media path. Not nearly enough credit goes to people like her. These individuals are often the ones who have to effect change – with the help of partners like us.

Google, perhaps more than any other company, is a model of social media success. One reason is that they tap into the three key trends that I wrote about earlier. They are real-time, visible and data driven. However, what they do best is embrace using multiple messages, formats and stories.

I subscribe to a fire hose feed for all the Google blogs as well as their Twitter and Facebook embassies. On any given day you will find a wealth of news, tips and stories that are tailored to specific interests. Only care about Gmail? There’s an embassy for that. How about policy? That too.

However, Google’s social media success goes beyond just having lots of teams engaged. Each venue slants the content to the reader/viewer’s needs and utilizes different formats – short form, long form, video, images and more. The end result is that Google creates massive surface area that make them hard to miss in an age where information choices are ubiquitous.

The takeaway here for companies is that, when possible, they should consider creating several blogs and – more likely – digital embassies inside existing communities. One Twitter presence might not be enough. The same goes with Facebook. (Note that this is just one approach and not the only one. Some advocate centralizing content into a single place. There are pros/cons to each.)

Businesses today need to consider having multiple streams that are mapped to high priority interests. This creates surface area and lots of entry points for stakeholders to get engaged. What’s more, the content should be “hand crafted“- eg tailored to each community. And these spaces should be managed by identifiable employees who are subject matter experts.

This is how I am tailoring my own content. I use Twitter for sharing/conversing around links and news. My new Facebook community is for discussions and sharing insights and observations. While my Posterous blog site is for essays, videos and the occasional digital doodles.

Now scaling might intimidate some. According to a recent Smartbrief survey, time is the chief obstacle to engaging in social communities. However, if a business makes social media a team sport, as Google does, anyone can succeed.

Fan Pages continue to be the space for brands to communicate with users on Facebook. As Facebook updates its privacy guidelines for personal use and fan pages, engagement strategies will become modified to suit the needs and constraints of the service.

Initiate and Drive Dialogue

Interesting fact: If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest with over 350 million users. Tapping into this consumer base provides brands with an opportunity to engage with consumers where they want and, more importantly, where they are. Facebook should not be viewed as a one-way content distribution platform — it’s about sharing exciting content, both branded and unbranded, listening to fans’ thoughts and opinions and continuing the conversation through appropriate responses.

While traditional customer relationship management (CRM) processes are still relevant and important for a brand’s success, social media has changed the way a brand interacts with its audience. From a CRM standpoint, Facebook allows companies to make it personal for the consumer by acknowledging their complaint and providing a solution in a timely manner.

Cost-per-click (CPC) advertising works wonders in increasing a brand’s fan base. CPC ads on Facebook are extremely cost effective, and can be targeted by geography, interests, age and relationship status among others.

Share Varied Content

Fans will turn a blind eye to pages that only share cookie-cutter brand messaging — “buy this, use that.” Brands have an opportunity to strengthen relationships by sharing relevant content with pass-along value, such as videos and photos. We’ve found that this type of content encourages fans to interact both with the brand and with each other, consequently fostering a community built around the brand’s presence on Facebook.

Facebook provides a variety of tools to make engagement interesting and keep fans guessing what the brand will share next. It’s important for brands to take advantage of these tools — sharing content through status updates, photos, videos, notes and polls – piquing fan curiosity and bringing them back to the page.

Connect With Online Communities

Facebook pages work best if they don’t stand alone. After all, the point of having a presence on Facebook and other social networks is engaging fans in their preferred venues. With this in mind, be proactive by alerting fans to other online spaces where the brand is represented such as the corporate page, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

Increase the knowledge of these communities by integrating media into the fan page. For example, post a link to the brand’s official Flickr page in the mini-feed, allowing fans to comment and “like” the content shared.

Monitor Growth

Facebook Fan Pages provide basic yet comprehensive analytics to measure interactions, fan growth, page views and advertising click-throughs, among other things. By closely evaluating the data, page administrators can measure growth against benchmarks, identify best practices and track initiatives that drive the most fan interaction.

Earn and Maintain Trust

Trust is hard to earn and so easy to lose. Fans are attracted to pages where the following principles are practiced:

Gabi Reynolds Edelman Digital, Chicago Follow on twitter @gmreynolds

Archana Ramachandran Edelman Digital, Chicago Follow on twitter @archana

The Guardian reports that U.K. traffic to the top three social media sites was down in January for the first time on record. Traffic to Facebook and MySpace was down 5% for each site, while traffic to third ranked Bebo was down 2%. The Guardian‘s story was based on data from Nielsen Online.

Setting aside whether Nielsen‘s “panel” approach actually yields reliable data, the idea that traffic to these sites has reached a plateau shouldn’t surprise anyone.

For one thing, their growth has been extraordinary. As The Guardian story points out, U.K. traffic to Facebook is up 712% since last July. Some flattening in growth from those levels is only natural.

And, as Neilsen analyst Alex Burmaster points out, “Real growth potential [in the future] lies in the niche networks, those based on a particular lifestyle or interest, such as travel, music, wealth or business.”

This is the crucial point. Social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo have already transformed the way that people communicate. Along with smaller niche sites, they are now redefining how people come together.

For three millennia, human beings formed communities largely on the basis of geography or proximity. The technology that drives social media now makes it possible for people to come together without respect to geography. Instead, they are coming together on the basis of shared interest.

So, whatever the traffic stats, and however they evolve in the coming months, social networks — big and small and on a variety of platforms — are here to stay. And that fact is driving the necessity for authentic communications in the U.K. and, indeed, around the globe.