Now Presenting: Our FIRST of Many Case Studies on Instagram – a Teaser for the Upcoming Book

Kim

Nov 08 2012

We are thrilled to announce that Krista will be releasing a book on Visual Social Media Marketing – primarily focused on Instagram, Infographics, Pinterest, and Images – within the next few weeks! After the success of Krista’s bestselling book The Social Media Field Guide, she knew she had to create a book on the hottest new addition to social media – the visual revolution. After getting tons of requests from clients for help with visually-focused sites like Instagram and Pinterest, and seeing that there was barely anything out there yet to help, Krista decided to create an online Instagram training program and write another book. We’ve done a lot of case studies and talked to dozens of companies that have found success with Instagram. Here is a teaser on one of the first professionals we interviewed. Enjoy it and keep an eye out for more blog posts about Krista’s upcoming book!

Background

Illeana Douglas, a famous actress, director, screenwriter and producer is the star of a web-based show called Easy to Assemble.

Easy to Assemble is an award-winning original comedy that follows series writer-creator-producer and star Illeana Douglas as she goes to work at IKEA in an attempt at a normal life. When friend and fellow actress Justine Bateman shows up to start an Internet talk show called 40 and Bitter on the floor of IKEA, Illeana realizes she can’t escape Hollywood and soon a rivalry begins between the latest IKEA coworkers! Now in it’s fourth year and Presented by IKEA©

For the premier of the 4^th season, social media manager Rick Yaeger knew that photos from behind the scenes of the premier would be a great way to drive engagement, build awareness and generate excitement from fans.  Rick couldn’t be at the premier himself, and he thought that the celebrity appeal of the cast might be a way to increase the appeal of the images taken at the event.

Rick also knew that if he required the cast to use a new tool, or to upload to more than one site, he wouldn’t get a lot of participation.  Fortunately, most of the cast was already using Instagram.

Rick turned to Instagram and a social media tool called IFTTT (If This Than That) to create a live stream of stunning images on Facebook.

Action

Rick created a process using Instagram, IFTTT and Facebook to create a live stream on Facebook of photos taken by the cast from the premier.  This created a great inventory of images for Facebook and other social networks, gave fans a look “behind the scenes” and built awareness and buzz for the premier.

The pitch to the cast members was simple: since you will be taking pictures anyways, give me permission to follow you on Instagram, and anytime you take a photo during the Premier I will automatically share it on Facebook and Twitter.

To achieve this, here is what Rick did:

1. Rick reached out to the cast to find out what tools they used to take photos on their phones, and most of them were using Instagram.
2. He had them add him to their Instagram account, so that he had access to their photos.
3. Some cast members were not on Instagram yet, so he showed them how to use it.
4. On the Facebook page, an album for the Premier was created so that all of the images would be in one album and easy for fans to find and view.
5. He used IFTTT and created a workflow whereby if a photo was taken by a cast member during the hours of the premier it would automatically be uploaded to Facebook in a specific album created for the premier.
6. During the premier, as the cast members took photos, the photos automatically appeared on the Fan page creating live and relevant content for fans, and increasing the exposure of the show.  The photos were also pushed to Twitter to drive engagement on Twitter as well.

The effort of getting photos from the cast was successful because they didn’t have to do anything that they were not already doing.  Most of them already taken and shared photos on Instagram – all they had to do was give access to allow their photos to be used on Facebook to promote the show.

Result

The result of this effort was that 32 images from the premier were uploaded onto the Facebook Page for Easy To Assemble, giving fans a behind the scenes look at the premier and the cast with essentially a Live Image Feed of the event.  All of the photos have likes and many have comments and views.  Since the photos were taken by actual cast members, the authenticity of the images increased their appeal with the target audience.

This experiment allowed Easy to Assemble to test the concept of creating a real-time photo feed from Instagram to Facebook, which can be used in the future and promoted at other events.  The cast members were empowered, without having to learn anything technical and it didn’t detract from their enjoyment of the premier.

Takeaways

Here are the key takeaways from how Easy To Assemble used Instagram:

• If you want people to do something, make it easy, don’t require them to upload to different places, etc.
• Use social networks that people are already using.  Since the cast was already on Instagram it was a no-brainer.  Interestingly, the one cast member who wasn’t using Instagram yet got a tutorial before the premier, and ended up taking the most photos.
• Use automation to help social networks to talk to one another.
• Social media content can be repurposed and posted to multiple sites – in this case Instagram, Facebook and Twitter
• Behind the scenes and authentic photos are more sought after than standard stock photos or poses on the red carpet

You can learn more about Easy To Assemble and see behind-the-scenes pictures on their Facebook page:  Facebook.com/EasyToAssemble

Be sure to check back to our blog in a couple days for a brand new case study on a new company that has used Instagram to build awareness!

 

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