Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Meet Frank, the cheeky Instagram persona of the Australian skincare startup Frank Body.

Frank likes to casually call you "babe," jokes about wanting to get in the shower with you, talks about your buns, and doesn't go more than five hours without popping up on your feed. If you were to meet him in a bar, you might find him a bit of a sleaze. But as a social media personality? Frank is hilarious.

According to cofounder Erika Geraerts, Frank's been crucial in helping Frank Body, which is known for its coffee-based scrubs, build brand awareness around the world. "We were essentially dealing with a product that looked like dirt in a bag," Geraerts says. "We wanted to cut through the beauty industry jargon—be it scientific, flowery, or hippy—and speak to our customer in an honest, direct, and frank way. From here our lovable character of Frank was born."

Frank Body has used Instagram as its primary marketing tool. "It allowed us to take risks and to connect with our customers directly without the costs of traditional advertising," Geraerts says. In three years, the account has garnered 682,000 followers, and Geraerts says this has been crucial to driving sales.

The company has managed to sell over 1.5 million products across 149 countries since its launch. It is now so popular in the United Arab Emirates and Russia that the company is planning to set up local operations in those countries. "It took time, consistency, and dirty work," she says....

This is a big statement from MDG Advertising: Instagram may be the single biggest opportunity for social media marketers next year. Can it be true?

We’ve heard plenty this year from Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, as their uses and back end business deals fluctuate, but Instagram has been the steady social platform not making too much noise. But that just might be what makes it 2016’s winner. Its consistency has made it the fastest growing platform around right now, and MDG has gathered fresh data to prove why marketers everywhere should be factoring Instagram into their budgets.

A few key takeaways from the infographic....

Are you wondering how to use images and short video to enhance your customers’ experience?

Have you considered creating a brand profile on Instagram to make your brand visible to a new market?

Getting started on Instagram is fairly straightforward.Simply sign up for an account (e.g., use the same name as your Twitter handle), add a profile photo (e.g., brand logo) and a link to your website, connect your account to Facebook and let your followers know they can follow you there.

It’s what to do next that presents a difficulty for many brands.

What follows are 26 tips and brand examples, an A-Z guide, for capitalizing on a business presence on Instagram....

A new report on prestige brands says that Instagram is the Superman of social media, especially in terms of engagement.

“Instagram has demonstrated more traction than any other platform in 2013, and it registered the strongest year-on-year growth among mobile apps,” says Scott Galloway, founder of L2, a think tank for digital innovation, in its report. And with its clear strategy for monetization and “continual innovation, it's an obvious choice for consumer brands.”

The survey of 249 luxury brands finds that 93% are currently on Instagram, up from 63% in July of last year. And while it is just one-tenth the size of Facebook (which acquired it back in 2012), it has 15 times the level of user engagement that Facebook does. And Pinterest, about a third of Instagram’s size, has only about a third of the level of engagement that Instagram users do. All that “makes Instagram arguably the best tech acquisition of the past five years.”