“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Paul McCartney penned that line some 50 years ago. But it feels as relevant as ever for today’s marketers on social media.
Because let’s face it — the world in 2018 is a loud and contentious place. Between the trolls, the fiery hot takes, and the fake news, it’s getting harder and harder to make a statement about your brand without unintentionally stirring up fire and fury in the process.
Which is exactly why all of us need more Instagram in our lives.
Exploding as a platform, and pacing toward a billion users in 2018, Instagram is proof that a simpler, more visual platform wins the day. Not only are more young people using IG, but — more importantly — fewer trolls are as well.
Most importantly, Instagram is one of the last true happy places on social — a consistent safe harbor for good vibes. A channel where your stunning photos of #campuslife are more likely to invite encouraging replies like, “Gorgeous!” or “Love this!” than cynical riffs on the latest news item of the day.
In short, IG is where your brand can share — and feel — the love. So let’s talk about three newer ways to use this channel for creating smart, fun campaigns in 2018.
Tell Your (Instagram) Stories in Real Time
We marketers love talking about how we’re “storytellers.” Well, the growing Instagram Stories feature provides us with a perfect opportunity to prove it.
One of the most common complaints we hear from our friends in admissions is, “If I could just get prospective students to campus, I could win them over.”
With Instagram Stories and Instagram Live, you can have a similar effect in real-time. Try short videos of campus tours or quick chats with students and professors to put your prospective students or faculty recruits at the true heart of your campus.
For example, Arizona State University uses quick, fun video posts to answer common questions about the school, such as “How is the weather?” (Even better, they have their students do all the talking.)
Highlight Your Best Moments
Instagram Stories has been hot for about a year now. But new tricks and updates are making the feature more and more popular every day.
Last month, Instagram launched Story Highlights, which lets you gather and collect your recent stories into collections on your profile page. At first, this may not seem like much of an update. But it’s actually a little feature that adds a ton of versatility — a great way to get more mileage out of your live Stories (see above) and keep them visible to first time or returning visitors.
Highlighting stories lets you present more sides of your brand’s personality — showing prospects more of what makes you authentically you.
We dig the way University of Oregon is using this new feature to aim a spotlight on individuals around campus, and then is anchoring the stories to their profile. Smart stuff.
Use Hashtags that People Will Follow
As of December, you can also follow hashtags on Instagram, which opens up a whole new range of opportunities to put your school in prospective students’ feeds. We’ve already talked about the importance of using popular hashtags to tap into relevant conversations. With this new feature, you can use popular tags like #collegelife (or, for a more targeted admissions campaign, #campusvisit), to make yourself more visible — more frequently — to prospective students who follow them.
As trolls run wild on Facebook and Twitter, positive vibes are still flowing over on Instagram. Between posting Stories and following hashtags, we suggest giving IG more of your marketing mix, and your heart, in 2018. We truly think you’ll see that love returned.
After all, Sir Paul is never wrong.
