Having revealed last year that sponsored posts would soon become a reality, Instagram is beginning to roll out paid-for adverts here in the UK.
Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, and since then the social network has imprinted its personality on the popular photo sharing app. Facebook has long been an advocate of sponsored posts, and now Instagram seems set to follow suit.
The feature has already rolled out in the US, and Instagram has pledged to ensure that sponsored posts are as natural as possible so as not to clutter users’ feeds. ‘Our aim is to make any advertisements people see as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos they enjoy from brands who are already using Instagram,’ said spokesman Will Guyatt.
This move is the latest in a line of strategies intended to monetise social media marketing. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks feel as though they’re missing out by allowing brands to market their wares for free, and so seek to implement premium services to charge companies for more effective targeted marketing.
With paid-for social media marketing becoming increasingly prevalent on all of the major social networks, brands that refuse to pay for premium services will need to work harder to make their voices heard. However, free social media marketing has one advantage over paid-for advertising: subtlety.
Sponsored posts are marked as such by Facebook and Instagram, whereas posts made privately by your brand appear far more organic. The best way to reach users is to share high quality content that they’ll actually be interested in engaging with. That’s where we come in. Crowdbait is a content marketing agency capable of creating compelling, organic content for your brand. If you’d like to get the most from your social media marketing efforts in future, contact us today.