Blog - Watch

By Amy Mullins, PR Account Coordinator (Social Media)

Instagram is a social media success story, a fairytale, if there ever was one. First released in October 2010 on the iTunes App Store, it gained more than 1 million users in three months. As of December 2011, it had 14 million registered users and continues to grow and evolve. To cap off a truly outstanding year, Instagram cemented its place in the digital hall of fame when Apple named it ‘iPhone App of the Year’ for 2011.

So what exactly is Instagram?

Instagram is a free photo-sharing application for iPhone (though an Android app is currently in development). It combines the best of Twitter and Facebook, whereby users are able to follow and be followed, as well as ‘like’ and comment on photos. Recent photos posted by users you follow will automatically load into a visual feed to scroll through. And those handy push notifications will let you know when somebody likes or comments on your post so you don’t have to keep checking it like a paranoid social media addict. Note: I might (definitely) have been guilty of this pre- the existence of push notifications.

In practice, Instagram connects friends, acquaintances and strangers across the world with each other and allows them to instantly share snapshots of their life and what captures their imagination. Any person can be creative with Instagram, though I’m a little skeptical about the urban myth that claims you can never take a bad photo with Instagram, I’ve taken a few ordinary shots in my time.

Instagram is really about sharing your world and how you see it, visually. The natural correlate to this is that Instagram builds intimacy, connections, insight, closeness, understanding, curiosity, involvement, respect and ultimately leads to an investment in relationships.

Its efficient functionality and ease of use has been key to its success. You can post a photo on your account simply by completing these steps:

Step 1: Take a photo or select a pre-existing photo

Step 2: Preview photo with a selection of 17 filters (below is an example, but is missing the new Sierra filter)

Step 3: Choose the final look and write a caption

Step 4: Upload to your Instagram feed and automatically distribute through personal social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous and Foursquare.

And now, the hook… why should your business be using Instagram?

On the surface, it would seem that Instagram is only a personal photo-sharing platform, but that’s just not the case. For any business, Instagram can play an essential role in building relationships between its staff and its potential customers by appealing to their shared humanity.

It seems obvious, but the most successful businesses recognise that some values have universal currency and that they are generally based around our humanity and experiences of it. By taking this into consideration in real life business conduct, these savvy companies build a reputation as a friendly, caring, reliable, loyalty-creating and customer-focused organisation. The same thing can be done online with a visual social media platform, like Instagram. It is the one simple tool that can soften and help bypass the ugliness that is the harsh transaction of commercialism. I’ll show you what I mean…

To illustrate just how powerful Instagram can be for a business I have chosen Melbourne’s The Hungry Workshop as a case study.

The Hungry Workshop, initially based in Brisbane, moved their letterpress printing business to Northcote, Victoria towards the end of last year. How do I know that? Because I’ve been following ‘thehungryworkshop’ on Instagram for a year now and saw the relocation process, including the cranes required to lift some remarkably old and heavy printing presses, via my Instagram feed.

Each day, Jenna and Simon Hipgrave enticed me and their 513 other followers with the business cards and wedding invitations they were designing and printing. They took photos of fluoro yellow paint blobbed onto a spatula, or some metallic plum-tinged rollers, or a moth camouflaging itself on the wooden windowsill of the studio, or some quirky new Valentine’s Day cards they had just printed and put up for sale on their website. This simple, intimate and artistic sharing of moments demonstrates how ‘Instagrammers’ can begin to feel, to some degree, part of each others’ lives. This is how I felt about The Hungry Workshop and when I realised it, I was certainly surprised.

I often think about ordering business cards from The Hungry Workshop just so I can have my own piece of art to hand out to people I meet. It has taken a gigantic amount of self-restraint and the reluctant recognition of my budget to stop myself. That said, I can’t help but share my enthusiasm for their work with friends, designers and businesses.

And this is what I like to call, ‘The Instagram Effect’; that true and often subconscious investment in a person or business from following their Instagram feed, that causes gushing excitement and prompts a person to share and recommend them to their friends.

I’d bet you a blog post on MySpace that you’ll feel the same way about The Hungry Workshop too.  Take a look at a selection of their Instagram photos and tell me you don’t drool over the thick grainy card and that debossed inky perfection.

In all seriousness, Instagram isn’t about pictures, it’s about people.

The way he took that photo of the Empire State Building peeking over the top of some dilapidated shop fronts in New York City and then filtered it through black and white fascinates me. The fact that he saw an intimate moment between a couple on the Paris Métro and framed the shot so that their intensely expressive faces were the only visible part of their bodies. That her golden retriever puppy means so much that she takes photos of it as though it were her child. And that a picture of an orange sunset over the ocean sums up the warm and admiring feelings a Londoner feels towards their new summery home, of Melbourne, Australia.

Businesses can, in fact, do the same. Take our shared icon.inc and icon.pr office, for example. The people who design your marketing and advertising material and the people who devise and implement your PR strategy are a diverse bunch of people with interesting personalities and hidden talents. These people care about each other and they care about their clients. I know this because, among other things, I work with them. I have a drink with them every Friday afternoon and funnily enough, I follow their personal Instagram accounts. But how could other people come to know this?

What if your business had its own Instagram account that shared with its followers those funny, beautiful or memorable moments that happen in the office, at the work Christmas party or on the way to work? Instagram photos can even offer insights and glimpses into the behind-the-scenes energy that is required for a pitch, the crazy ideas that come from a big brain-storming session and the effort and heartache that goes into designing a shiny new logo that represents a company in just the right way.

"Look at the magic Luke, our print designer, just weaved on InDesign with his Pantone colour charts. Guess which soft and mischievous baby canine just visited our office? It's official, Penny makes a mean sundried-tomato cous-cous salad. Check out our funky new hand-painted boardroom table. And look who just turned up to work wearing mismatched high-heels to work (the identity of that person shall remain unknown – though I’m sure they found it just as funny as we did)."

For the most part, a business is its staff and that is the rationale behind Instagram for businesses. It personalises a company and enables anyone looking to buy from or request the services of that company to feel confident in, reassured by, and even invested in, the people who work there.

Instagram isn’t for every business and personal discretion can be used to figure that out, but it can be the essential layer of social media, fed through Twitter and Facebook, that shows the human side of a brand or business. Common sense tells us a major commercial motivator is that people buy from and support people or businesses they like. Instagram is one un-tapped way businesses can embrace the digital age of social media to connect with and relate to people locally and globally.

In the meantime, check out some Instagram photo’s Rom Anthonis, ‘romnine’ on Instagram, our resident photographer has taken of the recent Melbourne "summer" weather…

A special thanks to Simon Hipgrave of The Hungry Workshop who gave us permission to reproduce a selection of their Instagram photos in this blog post. Thank you also for the personal inspiration they have given me.

You can follow them on Twitter: @HungryWorkshop

You can like their Facebook page

You can visit their website

And of course, you can follow them on Instagram – search ‘TheHungryWorkshop’

Photo credits (in order of appearance): Instagram Filters - created by Jessica Zollman, Instagram Workshop Photos - taken by The Hungry Workshop, and The Melbourne Rain - taken by Rom Anthonis.

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We are very excited about an upcoming fundraiser concert. At 7.30pm on the 26th of March, the Collingwood Town Hall will play host to a variety of Australia's best 1980's talent including The Models, Jack Howard and Cal McAlpine.

The Women Helping Other Women concert aims to raise awareness about the lack of breast cancer services, equipment and education in Bali.

The founder of Women Helping Other Women, Sara Van Hecke survived breast cancer herself, after a trip to Bali in 2009 she became acutely aware of the lack of treatment options for Balinese women who were diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was then that she saw an opportunity for Australian women that were in a more fortunate position, to help their Balinese counterparts.

The night will be MC'd by Brian Nankervis of Rockwiz fame and will feature auctions and raffles with great prizes. What's more, all the money raised through the event will go towards helping the Prima Medika Hospital in Bali for education about breast awareness and equipment for early detection of the disease.

As event sponsors, icon.pr and Icon.Inc have 2 double passes up for grabs! It's going to be a great night in the name of a great cause, so if you're interested in winning a double pass please email us your name and postal address by clicking here.

Tickets are $40.00 and are available at www.trybooking.com
For more information about Women Helping Other Women or the concert, please visit www.whow.com.au or email info@whow.com.au

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icon.pr is eagerly awaiting the latest dance masterpiece from Chunky Move. Following the sell-out international success of Glow and Mortal Engine, the latest show, ‘Connected' is sure to be visually extraordinary.

In his last show as Chunky Move's Artistic Director, Gideon Obarzanek collaborates with American kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin, to animate both the body and the machine through a physical connection between the dancers and Margolin's string suspended sculptures.

The performance will begin with simple dance movements, and hundreds of tiny sculpture pieces. The dancers will construct the sculptures throughout their performance, demonstrating how simple elements can evolve into intriguingly complex structures through movement and dance.

Connected is part of Dance Massive 2011, and will run from the 11th - 20th of March.

For more information, please visit www.chunkymove.com

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