The underlying framework and methodology driving social media development in 2010 was visual. In a social media landscape lorded over by words (think the original incarnations of Facebook and Twitter) 2010 saw both Pinterest (March 2010) and Instagram (October 2010) burst onto the scene with a focus on the insatiable human appetite for visual stimulation, via pictures and videos.

Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and is an online social networking service that focuses on mobile photo-sharing and video-sharing. It allows users to take pictures and videos and then easily and conveniently share them via a number of other popular social networking platforms such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr etc. Users are also able to apply a variety of digital filters to the pictures and videos they post.

Like many internet trail-blazers, Kevin Systrom went to Stanford University, graduating in 2006 with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Management Science & Engineering. His initial foray into internet start-ups was as an intern at a company called ‘Odeo’, a search and directory website for RSS-syndicated audio and video that allowed users to record, create and share podcasts with a Flash-based interface. You’ll be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Odeo. But you probably will have heard of what Odeo would eventually morph into. A little known company called, ‘Twitter’. 

After graduation, Kevin cut his teeth with a couple of very productive years working at Google, where he was tasked with developing Google Reader, Gmail and associated products as part of the Corporate Development team. 

Kevin has a longstanding love for photography, which he and co-founder Mike Krieger combined brilliantly with the launch of Instagram.

Mike Krieger, like his long-time friend, Kevin Systrom, also graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Symbolic Systems, specialising in Human-Computer Interaction. 

While doing his undergrad, Mike interned with Foxmarks (now Xmarks) as a software developer, and at Microsoft's PowerPoint team as a Product Manager. 

His Master's thesis was a brilliant discourse on how user interfaces can be utilised to support large scale collaborations.

After graduating from Stanford, Mike worked for a year and a half at Meebo as a front-end engineer and user experience designer, before eventually joining the Instagram team doing design & development.

In March 2010, Burbn Inc. (the parent company of Instagram) received seed funding of $500,000. This was seven months before the actual photo-sharing social networking service was made available to the public. 

In February 2011, a few months after the public launch, Instagram raised their series A funding round of $7 million from a consortium of venture capital funds. The company was valued at $25 million during this funding round.

Some 14 months later, in April 2012, Instagram raised another funding round of $50 million from venture capitalists, with a valuation of $500 million.

Immediately after launch, Instagram started gaining huge popularity and reached a registered user base of a 100 million people in April 2012. This was technically only one and a half years after the official launch. At which time the company was acquired by Facebook for a mouth watering $1 billion (paid via a mix of cash and stock).

This purchase was by far Facebook’s most significant acquisition and was a definite indicator of how important mobile and photo sharing were becoming to Facebook. An interesting parallel for this purchase can perhaps be drawn with Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube in 2006. In as much as it demonstrated an internet behemoth with expertise in a particular area (search, in the case of Google, social media in the case of Facebook) acquiring expertise in an adjacent (but different) area, via purchasing a fast-growing start-up.

This purchase was unusual for Facebook, as its previous purchases of other start-ups were modest by comparison.  

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired 
a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. 
But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook 
and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

Facebook CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg 

Instagram allows users to upload photos and short 15-second videos, apply digital filters to create colour and contrast effects, and then enables them to share this content through social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Instagram deliberately restricts images to a square shape, in a nod and a wink to those wonderful instant Polaroid photos many of us grew up with. Instagram users can interact with content posted by other members by ‘liking’ it, or by following the user that posted it. They can also search for content using hashtags.

The Instagram mobile app is distributed primarily through Apple’s App Store, Google Play and Windows Phone Store. The app is supported on iPhone, iPad, iPad Touch, Android and Windows handsets, while third-party Instagram apps are available for BlackBerry 10 and Nokia-Symbian handsets and devices.

Boasting 200 million active users in 2014, Instagram’s user-base growth over the years has been nothing short of phenomenal:

Other important milestones and achievements for Instagram over the years include:

• Instagram was declared the ‘iPhone App of the Year’ in December 2011.
• Instagram app for Android Froyo version 2.2 launched in April 2012 got downloaded more than a million times in less than a day.
  
• By July 2012, Instagram was rated more than a million times on Google Play, to become the 5th app ever to reach a million ratings. 
  
• As of April 2013, Instagram was rated more than four million times on Google Play.
  

A look at statistics from September 2013 reveals that a total of 16 billion photos and videos were shared via Instagram, with an average of 55 million new shares being made per day. At time of writing (August 2014) Instagram users are making an average of 1.2 billion new Likes per day.

According to another 2013 study, some 13% of all Internet users worldwide were found to be using Instagram. And some 70% of Instagram users were found to be logging on to the site daily, with 35% logging in more than once a day. 

A 2014 study revealed that the Instagram mobile app user base registered a 25% growth between December 2013 and May 2014. And as of March 2014, a total of some 20 billion photos had been shared via Instagram. It has also been reported that in 2014, an average of one thousand new comments get posted on Instagram every second.

Unlike something like Google + (where people sign up, but hardly ever use it), Instagram demonstrably shows us that people come back again and again to the platform to both post and interact with other users.  And it’s this interaction (much like Facebook itself) that allows us to see why Facebook valued the company at $1 billion in 2012.

As the following Statista chart demonstrates, Instagram has been found to be the 2nd most popular social media app among American smartphone users aged between 18 and 34:

According to a 2013 study, some 25% of the Fortune 500 companies were using Instagram as a social media networking platform. A 2014 study indicates that some 43% of the top 100 brands post daily on Instagram, with the average number of posts made by these (top 100) brands on Instagram per week standing at 5.5. Some 65% of the world’s top 100 brands had Instagram accounts (as at 2013).

In 2014, the average value of sales orders generated via Instagram referrals has been found to be a very respectable $66.75. In a late 2013 study, Instagram was also found to deliver the 4th highest (1.08%) conversion rate among all social media platforms and services, trailing only Facebook (1.85%), Vimeo and YouTube (1.16% each).

A 2014 survey conducted by Social Media Examiner reveals that Instagram is among the top 10 social media platforms used by online marketers.

According to the SocialMediaMarketingReport of 2014, some 28% of online and social media marketers use Instagram as one of their marketing channels. This report also indicates that some 42% of the marketers (that were polled during the survey on which this report is based) were planning to increase their use of Instagram as a social media marketing platform. As this report further indicates, a significantly higher number (49%) of B2C marketers are likely to increase marketing activity via Instagram than their B2B counterparts (32% of which said they will increase Instagram activity).

Interestingly, the same percentage of marketers (i.e. 42%) also expressed their willingness to learn more about Instagram as a social media marketing and optimisation platform.

To paraphrase the old adage from the W. P. Kinsella novel, ‘Shoeless Joe’ (popularised in the classic 1989 movie, ‘Field of Dreams’): ‘

And with more and more people flocking to this photo-sharing social network every day, it is not surprising that Instagram has emerged as one of the world's 'must use' platforms for businesses, online marketers and social media optimisers.

*******

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While still a ‘Job Description’ in its infancy, the requirement for a ‘On-Line Community Manager’ (who handles a company’s ‘On-Line Community Engagement’) no longer causes businesses to ask “What does an On-Line Community Manager do, and should I get one?” but rather “What makes a great On-Line Community Manager, and where can I find one?”.

However, as the role of ‘On-Line Community Manager’ has only existed in its present form in the last couple of years, the job description varies greatly from one organization to another. Below is a rough list of things you'll need to keep in mind to help ensure you hire the right person to successfully manage your on-line community engagement needs.

1. Your community must have a purpose, and this purpose can’t just be ‘so we make more money’. Rather it must exist to fill a need in the community you’re attempting to reach.
2. Use whichever tool or platform your members are most familiar with and most likely to use daily. In other words, don’t use something archaic like MySpace, just because you have fond memories of it. And by the same token, don’t use the latest shinny new web 2.0 platform, just because you want to feel ‘relevant’. As always, GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE.
3. Communities are about the people who populate them. So create lots and lots and LOTS of NEW, ORIGINAL CONTENT for them (and encourage them to comment on it, discuss it and share it with their friends). There is no other way to do it.
4. Build personal relationships with your community, and especially with your top web 2.0 contributors. Getting lots of ‘likes’ (etc) is driven by the quality and relevance of your content, and impacts greatly on their ability (and interest) in interacting with that content.
5. Encourage debate and do not be afraid to push the envelope with the content you post. Challenging / edgy topics get the most comments and likes and re-tweets, etc. So don’t become a prisoner to the PC brigade. Have an opinion.
6. Building an on-line community is a never ending process. So build it slowly and steadily and don’t expect to be the most popular kid on the block in only a few months. Anything on the web takes 6-12 months at least to gauge and chart growth. And community engagement (like trust) takes years.
7. Stop selling! There's nothing that'll stop people reading your blog or Twitter feed or Facebook page quicker than trying to sell them things EVERY TIME YOU POST. If you must push a product or service, try to keep it to 30% sales and 70% giving away or linking to information that is relevant to your audience. Keeping in mind that the information you post doesn't always have to be yours (though it's better if it is) because some of the best blog posts are ones that reference something somebody else has written elsewhere on the web, with you adding your 2 cents into the debate (based on your experience and expertise). But remember internet etiquette 101: if you use or reference someone else's content: always, always, ALWAYS link back to the source (thus sharing the Google love with those who deserve it). 
8. Give away free (relevant) information and content to your community at every opportunity to give them a reason to keep coming back. In the Small Business and SME space, People 'Like' /  'Share'  / Link To individual pieces of content, far more than they 'Like' / 'Share' or Link To a company or a brand. The more you give to your community (without asking for anything in return) the more inclined your community will be to come back or share what you've posted with their friends. 
9. Encourage members to recruit friends. The best way to grow an on-line community is by referrals. So create a referral strategy which rewards members who invite their friends and link to your content.
10. The web is a visual medium. And if, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. Then rest assured that, 'A video is worth a thousand pictures'. So populate your website and web 2.0 platforms with lots of video content as well as relevant, SEO optimized written content. Ideally every page should have a video, as this helps engage your audience. These videos should be short (1-3 minutes tops) and stick to a single subject or topic. The people in your community are busy, so spoon-feed them bite sized chunks of content.

To quote Spiderman, ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’. So never use your admin powers unless absolutely necessary.  Nothing is guaranteed to make people check out  quicker than an overpowering web 2.0 Administrator who deletes content that he doesn’t agree with.

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SEO, as defined by the industry, refers to the search results that appear on the left of your computer screen when you perform a Google search. These searches are ‘organic’ and are separate from paid or sponsored adverts.

There are two main facets to SEO: one is known as ON PAGE SEO and the other is known as OFF PAGE SEO. Both are complicated endeavours (though for different reasons). But as you can see in the SEO ICEBERG diagram I’ve put together above, the amount of effort that goes into getting your website optimized in a way Google will value, is only 25% of the total iceberg. With the vast majority of the SEO that matters happening AFTER the site itself is optimized. And, like on-page SEO, the off-page optimization is never ending, with its matrix by necessity getting bigger and more complicated over time.

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term that originally encompassed SEO, but is now associated and identified exclusively with PAID SEARCH. This can take the form of Google Pay Per Click advertising, Facebook advertising, Google adwords and adsense, banner ads, button ads or any other form of paid on-line advertising used to promote a product, service or website.

It’s important to note however that PAID LINKS (as opposed to PAID SEARCH) does not fall under SEM. Paid links are classified by Google as a Black Hat SEO technique and will result in a ‘Google Slap’ that will cause the website to be de-indexed from Google’s search results altogether. So never, ever do this. And if a so called ‘SEO Expert’ tells you otherwise (and there are many that still do) - hang up on them. Because the key, as always, to getting people to link to you (especially in the post Panda and Penguin Google world) is to AUTHOR GREAT ORIGINAL CONTENT that engages with your community and prompts them to ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ the content with their friends. But great content that exists in a vacuum won't get read. Which is where SMO comes in...

Utilizing an on-going social media strategy that connects with your audience via web 2.0 platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Google + etc) helps generate traffic to your website. But it does not traditionally help with your SEO, because - post web 2.0 - links from social media sites such as those mentioned above do not carry any ‘Google Juice’, so Google largely ignores them. 

Links from web 2.0 sites (which became classified by the industry as 'rel=”nofollow' links) take the user from site A to site B, but are not followed by the Google spider (and thus are not factored into your site’s organic page rankings). However, post Panda and Penguin (Google algorithmic updates that radically altered how search works) this landscape is changing. Links from these web 2.0 sites still do not carry any Google juice, but Google have now admitted that 'Social Markers' such as the amount of likes, re-tweets, etc, are being factored into their organic search results. Google is doing this because it now believes that people don’t just search any more, they search, socialize and share. And that a 'Social Marker' is another indicator of 'Quality Content'. In other words, thinks Google, why would someone 'like' or 'share' something if the content was rubbish? They wouldn't. Ergo the content they 'liked' or shared must be of value.

This factoring in of 'Social Markers' by Google is set to radically change search as we know it. Sure, the organic search landscape hasn’t changed all that dramatically yet for the end user, but trust me when I tell you that it is changing and that if you want to future-proof your business against the winds of change, you'd better get aggressive with an SMO strategy...and fast.

Allow me explain what I mean: in years gone by, Google followed a link from point A to point B, and classified it as ‘a link from website A to website B’. In other words, from one ‘entity’ (site) to another. But now, with the launch of Google + and their Authorship algorithm, Google are looking to follow a link from one PERSON to another. This is a very important and seismic shift in the way Google are looking to handle search. Done well, it will make your search results different to my search results because we each ‘trust’ authors (of web content), differently. Which means that, even if we’re sitting next to each other and type in the exact same Google search on identical computers, we will get slightly different first page search results.

That said, Google + can hardly be viewed as a success, so far. Sure, millions of people have signed up for Google +, but – unlike Facebook – only a small percentage of people actually use the site regularly. Whereas people spend more time on Facebook than they do on search, youtube and Google + put together. But given Google has spent untold millions on R&D to make these changes work, expect them to iron out the bugs sooner rather than later.

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

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