Summary
Instagram organisation is an online platform which users can use to share photos, videos and for the purpose of social networking. It enables all the users to take pictures and record videos then they can decide to share them publicly or privately using the application or by the use of other platforms of social networking such as twitter, Tumblr, Facebook or Flickr. The purpose of this organisation is to act as an efficient medium through which businesses can be conducted and it delivers high quality content. In social networking, the platform allows the user to bring their personality and individual together where they can check in on a regular basis than any other users of social network. For the purpose of business, the service allows business owners or entrepreneur and their clients to interact easily. What makes it preferable is that it is a visual medium of communication. Businesses that wish to sell physical products use this medium to show off their current and other upcoming commodities. It allows business owners to think outside the box where they utilise this platform to show their offices, staff and workers, production processes and other special events an aim of convincing the buyers that their products are real.
This proposal aim at revealing how Instagram can develop its own consultancy such that it can build an integral page on its own for companies and or people who use it for social networking. That way, the company does not have to partner with other social media consultants to improve on companies’ content and communication on their page. The result will be that the organisation will save on the part of the funds it shares with the other consultants. To achieve this the proposal would need support in terms of money with a budget of $54,000.
Introduction
Instagram development started on the idea of focusing the check-in multi-featured HTML5 project on the photography of mobile. The platform was founded with a funding of $500,000 in 5th March 2010, but by that time the software was already in the process of development. By the end of January 2011, hashtags were added on the Instagram platform with an aim of helping user to discover each other and photographs. This organisation was acquired by Facebook social media company in April 2012 for a price of around $ 1 billion in stock and cash. By that time Instagram had been in operation for less than two years and had not earned revenue. But by the end of December 2014, the company had gained a lot of value and it was worth close to $35 billion dollars.
The mission statement: Developing an Instagram that will allow users to experience good moments in the lives of their friends through pictures and videos as they happen.
Instagram is a social network platform which is used also for the purpose of business communication between buyers and sellers. For the social purpose, it has been a great innovation where people can interact with their friends, family members or their workmates. The service also allows the users to take photos and record videos which they can store up or share the photos with those friends and family members. However, it makes money from advertisement that are added on its webpage by businesses or individuals who are looking to show case their products to potential customers. It draws its strength from its devotion and growth in base of mobile users. It has been able to reach 400 million active users monthly and it is continually evolving with time. Advertising on this platform is getting sophisticated as the level of introduction of new online technology is improving. New features that are being introduced give advertisers the chance to show their products in slideshows and they can even be able to connect to sites outside of Instagram. It has new colour advertisements make it possible to bring on board the potential of campaigns involving multi-stage print to the mobile phones with an added allowance of directing people to a particular website to get more information. Such advertisements, whose aim is to build brands but not driving the clicks, are sold the basis of per-impression rather than ion the basis of per-click. More over our platform is able to attract the attention of people through the advantage of getting on average 20 percent of the time that people use on their mobile phones especially in the United States. Thus our financial records shows that the organization has been making progress towards set goal and the mission statement. It started with an idea of fun without a clearly set out path to making profit. But with time the organisation has been able to build a goal towards which all the activities and ideas are directed. Since this platforms fundamental service is sharing photos, it acts as a natural podium for branded advertising. Many iconic organisations which have brands that can be recognised visually immediately have been eager to always come to this platform with new products and their efforts have not gone unrewarded in terms of wining over customers. Being among the first original mobile social media application has seen it gain a lot of benefits. As current computing is moving away from desktop in terms of all the demographics, having a solid space in mobile will fetch a lot of dividends. Thus the population targeted by this platform is one that is conversant with social media especially the Millennials.
III. Needs/Problems/ Product or Service
Although the advertising companies can visit the Instagram page and create an account, customers may not find out about the presence of the in the platform. Even where they find the company, there is no assurance that they will continue visiting or monitoring the page on a regular basis. Thus a business requires a strategy where it will develop the page, build on it and maintain it there and then attract the right customers. Thus the problem has been keeping the companies on social media. The graph below shows a general view of companies posting on Instagram.
Accordingly, the number of company posting on Instagram page is increasing with time but the issue at hand is how to make the target population, that is, the millennials to keep monitoring their page.
Thus for Instagram to provide consultant services to companies, it will have to develop a new component, Insta- build. This will help connect companies with a team of experts and thus provide a top quality content and communication for their page. This will provide packages that will guarantee an improvement in results while trying to get future customers to be aware of the companies Instagram page especially the customers they would not reach out to before.
Instar build will consist of two packages from which the companies can chose from that is Platinum and Black. The platinum package will consist of engaging captions or hashtags, promoting services such like give ways ,deals and photo shout outs and also on call personnel services from 9 am to 5 pm. For the Black package the extra services to be offered include allowance for three post a week, professional photograph and video editing, engaging captions or hashtags, collaborative promoting like give ways ,deals and photo shout outs. These additional services will ensure that will be an increase in visitors’ traffic on the page of the advertising companies and more so it will guarantee organic 10,000 boost on the followers. The other service will be to provide companies with a way to engage customers over the year but this will require the companies to first subscribe in order to use the service without interruption. Thus for the platinum package the offers that will be accessible by the advertising companies will have increased. They will be able to access a page where they can post daily on the goods and services they want to provide to the visitors and the page will provide a 24 hour callassesstance, an ad sponsor space on the home screen and a guarantee of acquiring 25000 more new followers. The package will also include a 3 person development team that will ensure that the advertising companies are able access the web page without any hitches.
The cost that will be incurred to launch ‘build’ into the market will not involve a lot of expense for the advertisement to be placed on the Instagram’s page. This is because there are qualified personnel that are already working with Instagram in this particular field. The qualified personnel in the company who can assist in building and creating the company number around 40 to 50. However the most costly aspect that the company will be incurring in this process will be the training of the consultants. This is because the average consultant will work for about forty hours a week and when this is translated into yearly and all the consultants are include the cost will be quite significant. Since there is an addition of two new packages, each will come with an additional cost in terms of monthly fees. The monthly fees for the Black package will be $1,500 and for the Platinum package the monthly fees will be $2,500. However, since Facebook Company is the affiliate of Instagram, a joint consultancy for social media can be done for the both companies and this will result to a $1,000 premium on top of the selected package. Another additional cost will involve the need to purchase more chairs, desk, phones and computers and the cost estimation is $54,000. However the resulting benefits arising from offering the additional consultant services will by far outweigh the costs incurred here.
Since Instagram is a subsidiary entity of Facebook, it will not a lot of competition other than the internal competition from Facebook itself. The advantage that will enable Instagram to have a competitive edge over its rivals is its many followers of over 400 million. This makes the competition easy to beat,
The projected return on investment will breakeven and get better due to low costs. There will be no need for another factory head quarter since there is already one in San Francisco. The distribution method will be very minimal since there is no hand on hand product.
References
Max Robins, (2015) features most people don't know exist in Instagram. Retrieved from: http://uk.businessinsider.com/hidden-features-in-instagram-2015-9
Andrew Waber .Instagram advertising: What’s Working? Retrieved from: http://marketingland.com/instagram-advertising-whats-working-157977
