Instagram is a ubiquitous name in successful social media campaigns. Most lifestyle brands love Instagram for publishing sponsored content. It was only a matter of time before brands started announcing Instagram press releases and campaigns. Although not many are aware of it, Instagram has exclusive rules and requirements for PR. You need to refer to an established guideline that will help you in creating press materials that can be directly released on Instagram.
What is Instagram’s take on press releases?
At Instagram, people work with a simple mission “Capture precious moments and share them with the world”. Instagram has made it incredibly easy to share special moments that define a brand’s name, value and history. While personal accounts recollect personal memories, business accounts usually curate special campaigns, achievements and adventures that build brand value.
Instagram has always inspired the users to see the world from a different perspective and their press releases are no different. The policies and guidelines ensure that the PR campaigns and press releases bear the unique Insta-taste.
Here are a few requirements for all press releases going on via Instagram:
Language guidelines for all Instagram press releases:
- There should not be the use of Instagram in the headline or subhead or lead in a sense that propagates the idea that Instagram is announcing the news along with your company.
For example, your press release should not state, “XYZ company and Instagram announce a new campaign today…”
- Your company should not use any Instagram team contact in the press release.
- Language guidelines for a press release – any words like partners, partnership, strategic, exclusive, collaboration cannot be used to refer to the relationship between Instagram and your company.
These are basic language guidelines that all press releases should adhere to, to find a place on the platform.
Press release strategies to increase your reach -
Quite a few other strategies have proven successful over the last few months:
- Using “Instagrammer”, “Instagram community” and “Instagram members” instead of simply “users” or followers for Instagram brings more attention to the press release.
- If you are referring to specific Instagram users, it always works better to use their username.
- You can use hashtags to refer to specific events, trends and products in your press release to filter your target audience.
Instagram’s own style requirements
Just like always, Instagram is also about style. There are specific style guides that you need to follow for your press release –
- You need to refer to photos in “photo/video feed” and “Instagram feed”.
- Use “News Feed”, “Photos of You” and “Photo Map” in uppercase only.
- Always remember, hashtag is one word. So it username.
- Filter names should always be in uppercase like Rise, Mayfair etc.
Fixed quotes for fixed services
Instagram is not liable to supply a custom quote for your company press release or even blog post. All the statistics related to this social media platform are usually updated periodically. If you want special, regular, real-time updates, you can check out social media listening tools like Hootsuite to listen in on social mentions. Using Google Analytics is also a wonderful way of staying in touch with your marketing reach and statistics reality. You can easily include the same stats in your Instagram press release, but make sure you refer to the source of the statistics in your post.
You are responsible for your own popularity -
Instagram does not take any responsibility of distribution or reach of the press releases on their platform. You are usually responsible for your own publicity. The response on each of your post will depend on your hashtagging and filtering skills. Instagram is never likely to conduct any press outreach on a company’s behalf.
You can now include adverts and press releases inside your Instagram stories. The only downside to this is, no one will be able to reply to the stories and they will remain visible for only 24 hours. Therefore, either you will have to create new stories every 24 hours or keep reposting old ones for increased reach every day. About 150 million Instagrammers are currently engaged in check daily updates, stories and blogs on Instagram. Press releases are by far less common, but it is a trend that is still catching up after Facebook acquired Instagram.
Added points
For better reach always, create a business profile for your brand. These are quite easy to make and make sure that you link your Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts to your Instagram account. You should also provide your own website address with each post and press release so people can perceive these social accounts as the same entity.