Instagram case study

  Organizational Background  

Organizations are created on the dedication and hard work of select individuals who want to better the environment and market with their product or service. Instagram founders, Keven Systrom and Mike Krieger, created a revolutionary idea that combined increasingly available pictures with the ease of connecting with people through social media (Lagorio, 2012). In 2010, Instagram was available to the public via a free download. The creation of Instagram revolutionized how social media organizations are structured. Instagram utilized the strength of a flat organization to leverage the ability of its members to be open and creative while maintaining collective direction. Flat organizations often lead to an environment of innovation and creativity. The culture on Instagram is a reflection of the structure throughout the company. This combination of culture and structure allowed Instagram to create an app allowing users to connect via a platform of picture sharing and location services.

Today, there are more than 800 million users, which places Instagram as one of the most popular social networks worldwide (Instagram, 2017). One of the greatest advantages of having a presence on a platform, such as Instagram, is the ability to tap into the growing social media network and directly communicate with over 800 million active users from around the world. Instagram created a strategy to focus on certain aspects of the market and target users based on identifiable similarities in the way people communicate (Larson & Draper,(2017). Instagram’s strategy mirrors the Porter focus strategy in that it creates a specialized service in a limited market. Instagram is a fantastic place for individuals to share ideas, connect with foreign worlds, increase humankind’s knowledge, and increase diversity. Instagram provides an important advantage for individuals using such a vast network to continuously learn new ideas and communicate them to an ever-present community.

In a World of Social Media: A Case Study Analysis of Instagram

 

Because Instagram is used by 800 million active users (MediaKix, 2017), it allows people to manipulate their photos to their liking, and now it has a feature similar to Snapchat’s through which a user can share a “story” for 24 hours until it disappears, along with the infamous face filters. It has also adopted Facebook’s direct message feature. Privacy concerns can be easily addressed through Instagram’s private/public feature. Interestingly, Instagram started out as a mobile photo-sharing application and quickly turned into an advertising platform for all companies in social media. Now, companies utilize Instagram more than ever. When scrolling through Instagram, you might see a sponsored advertisement, and it allows you to tap on the screen and reach the product instantly and effortlessly. Our SWOT analysis identified one potential major issue: photo copyrights. Copyrights become an issue on Instagram because people can steal your photos/ideas, and call it their own. When you are business, this could be detrimental to your brand.

Additionally, the analysis showed that Instagram should be available on more devices than just Android and iPhone. In fact, this reality is a limitation of the organization’s growth. Being mobile-dependent, Instagram is challenging to run the application through a web browser, and only one device can operate an Instagram account (Wilkerson, 2018). With that being said, Instagram is known for being innovative, being the first social media application to have a picture-only feature. Thus, Instagram is well-positioned to dominate its current competitors with revolutionary thinking. In fact, Instagram leads their market by understanding their current and future users. For example, many millennials are connecting better with Instagram than other social media platforms like Facebook due to the photo interface. Within the library community, Instagram’s adoption has been strongest in academic libraries with the highest number of Instagram users being college-age patrons (Wilkerson, 2018). With that type of forward-thinking, Instagram may be able to sustain their current rate of growth.

Furthermore, Snapchat may be the best competitors to challenge Instagram’s domination of the social media category. Snapchat is used by 100 million active users (MediaKix, 2017). With the second most used application, Snapchat is a top competitor with a lot of features. Snapchat is an instant picture-sharing application that allows people to share pictures that disappear in a matter of seconds along with the instant messages. Snapchat originally had the infamous face filters, but that is now on Instagram as well. Snapchat offers control to their users in a fun, virtual way. Although Snapchat consumers can tailor their stories to the public or viewed by followers only, privacy issues arose when people were informed that their ten-second pictures were not disappearing like they thought. One major threat that Snapchat faces is imitation, as evidenced by Instagram now having the face filters and insta-stories. Businesses have started utilizing Snapchat for advertisements. Advertisements pop-up when viewing friends’ stories, ‘the featured’ stories, shows, our stories, and daily stories. When viewing a story on Snapchat, an advertisement will pop-up mid story and allow you to “swipe up” to access the product instantly, which is a great way to reach a target audience. However, consumers can skip advertisements by tapping their screen, and that is not beneficial to companies paying Snapchat to promote their products. Just behind Instagram, Snapchat is a great advertising platform, but should not be used primarily for advertising and marketing.

75 million people use Pinterest, and the vast majority of those people are women (Beese, 2017). Pinterest has a diverse user group and promotes itself as a web and mobile sharing application. With Pinterest, consumers can search the web on a much more focused scale. Free access, virtual bulletin boards, bookmarking, and user-friendliness are just a few features that Pinterest has to offer. It can be used for marketing and advertising in several ways, including using keywords in titles, embedding pins in blogs, using your blog for business as an analytics tool, and having pinnable images on every post published. However, SWOT analysis indicates that Pinterest could be seen as more of a woman’s preference than a gender-neutral site, which is a potential weakness for the app. Pinterest has several marketing and advertising tools for companies; however, it should not be a primary contender because Snapchat and Instagram are better platforms. They can all be used as complements to each other to reach different audiences, nevertheless.