Instagram and the photo booth business, part 1.

It seems like every 6 months there is a new social media platform that the business gurus are telling everyone to join, currently Snapchat is the hot app.  How can you determine which social media sites are worthy of your valuable time as your work to promote your photo booth business? I believe most photo booth owners have embraced Facebook, but are you utilizing Instagram as well? I’ll be the first to admit, I was very late to the Instagram party, I just didn’t get it at first.  But as they say, “better late than never”, it has quickly become one of my favorite ways to promote my photo booth business. 

According to Wikipedia, Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them either publicly or privately on the app, as well as through a variety of other social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. In reality, Instagram is the app that millions of people use to post selfies, food pics, and to follow their friends, celebrities, trends and favorite channels and companies. The app is less bulky than Facebook and Twitter as it is completely centered on photos.  Since we are in the “photo” business, is there a better place to advertise and promote a photo booth than on a site that is all about photos? The app is designed for phone and tablet use only but most millennials access social media exclusively on mobile devices so Instagram is perfectly poised to be a great advertising venue for your photo booth.   

Setting up an account is as easy and quick.  Be sure to set your account to a Business Profile and use your company logo as your profile pic. When users scroll through your photos, they will come to recognize your logo and associate your company with the fun, quality photos you will post to the site. Include your website and phone number in the profile as well, space is limited.  As you build your Instagram profile, start by “following” your existing friends and clients, Facebook, which owns Instagram, will pull in your friends list and start suggesting them to you.  The site will recommend other users to follow and many of those you follow will follow you in return.

So where do you start with this app?  Post a few of your favorite photos that are from your photo booth.  Next, follow local businesses, especially those in the wedding and event industry.  Follow all the venues, caterers, DJ’s, florists, tent rentals, hair stylists, bridal gown shops, cake decorators, photographers, video-graphers, other photo booth companies and so on.  Your profile will be recommended to users who follow other profiles and you will benefit from great exposure to clients searching for event planning resources.

As you follow these local businesses, take note of the #hashtags most often used by those in our industry and utilize those same hashtags in your posts; users who follow specific hashtags will find your profile and hopefully love what they find.

Lastly, be a prolific Instagram user and “like” and comment on other photos and posts.  Not only will this increase your Instagram presence but, if you comment intelligently, you will quickly gain followers and exposure.   When someone “likes” or comments on one of my posts, I can’t help but check out what they are about, people will do the same to you. 

That’s the basics of starting with Instagram, much more to come on this topic, stay tuned!  If you’d like to be the first to receive these articles, delivered straight to your email inbox, sign-up below for my newsletter.