
Instagram for Business - afshinmeh
https://business.instagram.com/
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davidhariri
But you still can't click a link in a comment or hit a buy button... Why? My
wife follows tons of fashion labels- it's a no brainer for her to pick up a
dress with Stripe in Instagram. Why not have users opt in to ads since they're
already following companies they love! Seems like a missed opportunity for the
company and the user, but perhaps I'm missing something.

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Fricken
My mom quite accidentally turned a hobby into a small business by
participating in instagram circles for homemade cheese, pottery and artisinal
yarn. Posting her own stuff she built a following, people started inquiring
about how to buy. She would announce her presence in an upcoming craft sale,
but by the time the sale started everything she had to sell was reserved on
instagram. Now most of what she makes goes straight to artsy shops in funky
shopping districts.

My sister is a tattoo artist, she too has engendered quite the instagram
following posting her work, which draws clients into the shop.

People participating in these sorts of communities enjoy the fact that
nobody's clubbing them over the head with a 'buy' button, and because of that
the level of engagement is much higher than it is on a site like Etsy, for
instance.

Instagrammers follow somebody for a few weeks or months, and when they're
ready to buy, they make an inquiry, and by that point they're willing to go to
any length to get their hands on the product. It's the diametric opposite of
impulse buying. The ongoing and intimate narrative is essential to cultivating
this, and the absence of a buy button makes it a very inviting place for the
types who are into that sort of thing.

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jdminhbg
> Instagrammers follow somebody for a few weeks or months, and when they're
> ready to buy, they make an inquiry, and by that point they're willing to go
> to any length to get their hands on the product. It's the diametric opposite
> of impulse buying.

Isn't this just because Instagram makes impulse buying nearly impossible? To
make a sale on Instagram, you have to cultivate a serious following who will
go to great lengths to buy from you, because it's so hard to buy anything from
an Instagrammer.

Upvoted nonetheless, because those examples of how people find business
opportunities through Instagram are great.

~~~
Fricken
It's really not that hard to get from instagram to a transactional interface
hosted on some other website. I don't think instagram never had any intent of
being useful as a marketing platform for certain kinds of small businesses, it
emerged that way organically. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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technotarek
Does anyone else feel like IG may be jumping the shark by pushing the business
angle so hard? This probably sounds ridiculous given their explosive growth,
growth that may seem unstoppable at this point. But, BUT, at what point do we
all stop and realize that we are choosing to stare at ads all the time?
Seriously, what portion of the posts on IG are either overt ads or veiled
(artistic) ads? That percentage seems to grow with every post. Remember where
IG started and what it exposed us to? I barely do.

~~~
flyt
Unfollowing is just as easy as following. If somebody chooses to follow an
account that ultimately posts too many ads then they can quickly and
painlessly unfollow.

The grey area is sponsored content that doesn't identify itself as such and is
incredibly common on celebrity twitter/IG accounts. As long as the
relationship is clearly identified (and not with an #ad hashtag buried in a
pile of other hashtags) I think it's ok.

~~~
technotarek
That grey area is largely what I'm referring to. That, and also hashtag feeds
that start as creative outlets and then get saturated with both transparent
and veiled advertising. For example, in DC, #aCreativeDC is a very popular
hashtag that is full of advertising of some form, albeit often artistic and
well done advertising. The same is true for other popular "lifestyle" hashtags
(e.g, #nyfoodies etc etc).

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MicroBerto
A bit offtopic but the switch to business.facebook.com has eliminated a ton of
wasted time in my life now that I hardly ever get stuck checking my personal
feed.

I don't have a personal Instagram - just a business one, but I'm definitely a
fan of them segmenting these services off away from the consumer stuff. Far
better productivity. Get in, do your work, and get out.

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qzervaas
Things I learned: ICQ still exists.

~~~
camillomiller
I was surprised by the same realization!

"By appearing in our featured clients section, ICQ proved it's still in
business"

Now that's a success story!

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csears
Interesting that they use Vimeo to host their marketing video. Perhaps they
need FB Video for Business as well.

~~~
batuhanicoz
Off topic but, Vimeo is cheap. Too cheap. ~150$ per year. Unlimited traffic.
One of my old clients is using their Pro Plus package as their CDN. They've
reduced their CDN bills from tens of thousands of dollars to ~350$ per year.
(Vimeo only shows the pricing in Turkish Lira's to me, so real numbers in USD
may vary.)

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niix
Side comment, but what are they using to randomize the CSS selectors and class
names? Interesting approach to further minification.

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Animats
"Inspire People Visually With Your Business' Story". In other words, this is
an ad system, not a collaboration system. The title gave the impression that
Instagram was planning to compete with Slack.

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jgalt212
I like how they try to sell on you on the fact that 75%+ of their users are
outside the U.S. as if that's a good thing.

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sandrojazzar
The World is a bit bigger than u think...

~~~
falsestprophet
Yeah but Americans and some Europeans have basically all of the money.

Look up ad rates in the rest of the world and see how lucrative that business
is.

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grimmfang
Surprised to see such a glaring grammar mistake on the homepage. Business'
should be business's.

~~~
spdustin
I wouldn't say it's a glaring error. It's a stylistic choice, though I will
agree that most style guides' guidance (yeah, I chose awkward wording because
emphasis) is that you should use the 's after the word if it's singular and
doesn't otherwise sound awkward with the extra syllable. Achilles' tendon, for
example, would sound awkward if written as Achilles's tendon.

I think the argument could be made that business' sounds better, since
business's could easily be confused with the plural form, and three
consecutive S letterforms looks awkward. In fact, now that I think about it, I
would've written it the same way.

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jds375
I think this will be very successful. The roll of storytelling in business is
becoming increasingly important, especially for consumer companies targeting
millenials. See: [http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-
the...](http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-the-biggest-
business-skill-of-the-next-5-years)

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jimmygatz
"I think this will be very successful. The roll of storytelling in business is
becoming increasingly important, especially for consumer companies targeting
millenials. See: [http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-
the...](http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-the...")

Agreed. I think this combined with Snapchat advertising could be the first
steps in the direction of changing advertising from the intrusive and unwanted
interruption of your daily life to something people actually browse through in
order to discover interesting stories and experiences.

However, I also think as social media has proliferated, the definition of the
word "brand" has expanded as now more than ever, people are seen as "brands"
\- often with hundreds of thousands of followers (more than many actual brands
and even media companies). As everyone becomes a brand, I believe increasingly
the line between marketing and storytelling will be blurred and marketing will
become deeply embedded into our culture. Product placement in movies,
celebrity endorsement, "native" posts: all these are the first indicators of a
culture in which everything is meant to sell something. Whether this is a good
thing or not is up for discussion.

~~~
SN76477
[http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-
the...](http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-the-biggest-
business-skill-of-the-next-5-years)

