The Social Media Lens

“1, 2, 3 … Facebook!” At least, that is what most adolescents are thinking as soon as their camera flashes. “Tag me!” has become the instantaneous reaction to every picture. This is the essence of personal visual branding.  Facebook already provides one of the best channels for sharing personal photos, but its recent billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram demonstrates the significant investment the social network has made in expanding the reach and scope of photo sharing for businesses.

Instagram’s filters allow users to edit photographs’ colors and contrast, creating hipster-esque framed images. With this technology, ordinary photos instantly become eye-catching, colorful, and unique. Beyond simple image enhancement, Instagram is also a social network of 50 million users, gaining five million new users each week.

For businesses, integration between Facebook and Instagram gives them the ability to bring the audiences that they have built on each platform together – providing both with content they would not receive through only one channel – and creating a greater depth of their own visual branding.  

Instagram provides companies with a channel to market their brand visually without the overt “hard sell” and create another community for followers to engage. For example, Ford’s latest campaign for the new Ford Fiesta asked Instagram users to upload photos associated with one of the car’s high-tech features tagged as #Fiestagram. 16,000 different photos have been uploaded since February 2012.

Fashion designer Marc Jacobs asked users to share family moments by using the hashtag #marcfam. The resulting 3,271 Instagram photos are showcased on the company’s website. 

Charity Water, a non-profit organization that brings clean water to people in developing countries, uses Instagram to showcase pictures of their efforts. With over 26,000 followers, the company has an eager audience to share photos of their water projects and the people who benefit from them.

Visual branding is an increasingly important component of building engaged communities. In social media today, companies are judged by the content they create online and the communities they build. By leveraging channels that give a brand greater depth and personality through compelling – and often user-generated – visual content, the community connection to the brand becomes deeper and the brand can realize increased visibility from the audience, who promotes those brands through their own social networks.