Selling on Instagram in 2018: Regrams and Product Tags

Collaborating with influencers and publishers on Instagram is about to change for Shopify stores.

It’s coming. Sharing someone’s post on your story is a new feature that Instagram will soon roll out for everyone. I believe this will completely disrupt the way influencer marketing currently works on Instagram, so being ready for it will help you improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).

I think many marketers underestimate completely what’s coming, so maybe this post may help inspire them with collaboration opportunities and ways to anticipate the change using the right tools. In case you missed the news, this was the TechCrunch article:

Instagram tests resharing of others' posts to your Story_Instagram purposefully lacks a "Regram" button to promote original sharing, but it's easing up on that philosophy when…_techcrunch.com

You can see the feature in action here:

Regrams open many types of opportunities that weren’t possible before, new giveaway mechanisms, exposure on the explore tab and easier mechanisms for influencer shoutouts are just some of them.

Giveaways

Remember the Sunny Co. Clothing campaign that went viral and ended in an utter chaos? They did a “free product + pay shipping” promo for everyone who shared their post.

Why Your Entire Instagram Feed Was Flooded With Red Swimsuits This Week_Have you seen this swimsuit? It's red. It's low in the back and emblazoned with a tiny, white seahorse. It and the…_nymag.com

Get ready for more of them! This time, it’ll be a “share this post on your story”.

Exposure on the explore tab

I liked how Maja put it: “The Instagram explore algorithm is a very complex creature”. However, it’s no secret that your feed contains many posts from accounts that the people you follow liked or engaged. That’s why accounts use engagements pods.

Engagement pods help accounts collaborate with other accounts with similar audiences. I believe the most reliable platform for this is Hey Influencers, run by Gretta Rose van Riel. Also, besides connecting influencers with similar audiences, they also connect them with brands.

Collaborating with other accounts using regrams to bring more views, traffic and engagement will help you gain a spot on the explore feed.

Easier mechanisms for influencer shoutouts

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/14/instagram-sponsored-posts/

Influencer marketing takes a big chunk of any brand’s strategy. Currently, shoutouts only work by tagging accounts (plus the “Paid partnership” disclosure to comply with FTC regulations).

This means that the only tappable call to action to engage is the handle tag, which is a very weak one. Also, influencers and brands need to be really creative and personalized with the content being shared. The shoutout content is something that the influencer is posting, not the brand.

Regrams change the game, as influencers and publishers will be able to use the brand’s content and only need to endorse the brand’s post on their story. Regrams have an engaging and prominent CTA (“See this post”), compared to a simple mention with the handle. Just like the image below:

Influencer shoutouts + amplification with publishers and ads

Influencers help brands gain trust from consumers. They also help them get discovered, depending on their reach. The secret is to collaborate with smaller influencers and amplify their voice. Influencers gain exposure and brands gain trust. It’s a win-win.

• If you’re targeting a small niche

Connecting with influencers on that niche and amplifying their voice with targeted ads will help you get discovered and gain trust. Targeting is 10 times easier when the audience is clearly defined on that niche. You should target friends of people who engaged with the post, as they’ll see the comment or like from their friend.

I couldn’t agree more with Nik Sharma’s tweet: “Gone are the days of poor data and imprecise targeting.” Recommended thread:

• If your audience is not clearly defined and narrowed

You might find it really profitable to collaborate with publisher accounts. Just to clarify, it’s important to note the difference between influencers, celebrities and publishers.

Celebrities

The value of a sponsored post is highly intangible and will not bring immediate results. Only big brands have access to these kinds of deals.

Niche Influencers

While they don’t have a large following, collaborating with niche influencers help brands gain trust from that niche. The account could bring high conversion rates if the product is a good fit.

Publishers

These accounts publish content related to some kind of theme or parody. It’s non-targeted traffic, but it’s cheap. This is because most of the content is not created or owned by the owners of the accounts, they just clearly mention the author.

This post is not about the importance influencer or performance marketing. You already know that. It’s about how it will change with regrams.

On Twitter, a very cheap way to amplify the voice of an influencer is collaborating with publisher accounts. The collaboration is basically paying them for retweets. This is a very cheap way to reach a massive audience. If you ask many publishers to retweet the same tweet, it’s pretty easy to make it go viral. You can achieve really high CTR if you also amplify that same tweet with programatic and targeted ads, targeting friends of people who engaged with that tweet. Regrams enable this strategy on Instagram.

The average pricing for regrams has yet to be decided by the publisher community, but I’m sure it’ll still be highly profitable. It’ll also be interesting to see how will Instagram fight this type of collaboration (if it will), just like Twitter did a couple weeks ago, suspending hundreds of accounts and banning bulk tweeting with Tweetdecks.

Selling on Instagram with Product Tags

Shoppable tags enable Shopify stores to tag links on Instagram posts. Just like this (only works on the Instagram mobile app):

This month, it was rolled out to all Shopify stores, although the Instagram account needs to pass through an approval process. Instagram is adding new ways to add links to Instagram posts, which means that you’ll soon be able to link a ClickFunnels checkout directly into it.

The whole purpose of this post was to help you understand the power of combining all these new Instagram features. They will definitely change Instagram marketing in 2018, so the more prepared you become, the better.

How you can get ready for it

While regrams haven’t been rolled out to all business accounts yet, these are three ways you can get ready for it.

• Enlarge your influencer and publisher network

Scheduling campaigns with influencers, publishers and combining them with programmatic ad-buying to create viral loops is not that easy. You probably already have your network of influencers and/or publishers, but they’re not necessarily the right ones.

We’ve worked with many influencers and publishers and concluded that the only way to estimate the conversion of a sponsored post is with trial and error. Sometimes the audience of an account is too saturated or full of bots. Sometimes a small account with a really engaged audience may convert better. You may find Dovetale highly useful if you’re looking for niche influencers. If you don’t know the platform, check it out here:

Dovetale - Work better, together_Dovetale is a data focused marketing platform that helps companies of all sizes grow on social media - from small…_dovetale.com

• Start using new tools

How are you going to track conversions broken down by influencers? How are you going to communicate with your influencer network? How are you going to do your programmatic ad-buying to amplify posts? There are many tools worth mentioning, so I’ll save them for the next post!

• Connect with us

We make Shopify stores increase their sales by at least 20%. Also, we’re working on new tools for your Shopify store. Do not hesitate to reach out at [email protected].

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Thank you for reading! I hope you found it useful.