Book summary “Instagram Power”: summary

Introduction

You face a difficult challenge when trying to market your business on fast-moving mobile social networks. Traditional desktop strategies fail to connect with audiences who consume visual content on smartphones. You need a proven method to capture attention in this crowded mobile environment.

Jason G. Miles explains how to harness Instagram's explosive growth to build a dedicated tribal community and drive real business results. The author presents the POWER framework to help you master profile optimization, emotional marketing, advertising, and influencer partnerships.

You will discover precise answers to several core questions as you read this book:

• How do you optimize your profile real estate to attract followers?
• What emotional triggers drive users to buy through images?
• When should you transition from organic tactics to paid advertising?

1. Prep for Success

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram on October 6, 2010, backed by 500,000 dollars in initial investor funding from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. They reached 1 million users two months after launch and 10 million users by September 2011. Facebook acquired the platform for 1 billion dollars in April 2012. Statista reported 1 billion monthly active users as the community scaled through mobile-first photo sharing.

Your Instagram profile functions as critical real estate that must immediately communicate your identity, purpose, and visual offerings without repelling prospective followers.

A poorly crafted profile can actively repel prospective followers and hurt sales. A professional profile must quickly communicate who you are, your purpose, and what visual content followers can expect. Poorly designed pages can backfire, much like failed historical marketing campaigns.

The Yo Quiero Taco Bell campaign featured a Chihuahua, which was popular in the late nineties, but company tests proved it reduced sales by 6 percent due to negative associations. You must respect the 150 characters limit in the Instagram bio.

You can set up your presence using specific profile elements:

• A professional headshot or nicely formatted corporate logo.
• A clear statement about who you are—and what you care about.
• If it's a corporate/business account, include a clear statement about what your company does.
• A credibility indicator, an award, honor, or claim to fame.
• A description of the types of images you'll share.
• A link to other Instagram accounts you manage.
• A link to your most appropriate website or content.
• Your business phone number, added in the business profile section.
• Your business email address, added in the business profile section.
• If you have an office or retail location, include the street address.
• The category your business operates in.
• A call to action button.
• A set of Story Highlights that answer top-of-mind visitor questions.

Core Functionality

Instagram offers three primary ways to publish content: the Feed, Stories, and IGTV, each serving a distinct structural and ephemeral purpose. The Feed is the original permanent photo and video sharing area located on the Home tab, Stories is ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours unless saved to highlights, and IGTV is dedicated to vertical long-form video. Instagram Stories reached 400 million daily active users by the summer of 2018, compared to 190 million daily active users on Snapchat for the same period. Whole Foods uses Stories effectively to engage users.

You can manage your account and content using basic navigational actions:

• Access the Home tab via the house symbol to view the Feed, access the Story Camera, or open Direct messages.
• Use Stories for temporary 24-hour content.
• Utilize IGTV for vertical long-form video content.

The Explore tab helps users discover new accounts and trending topics through popular images, search queries, categories, hashtags, and geographic locations. Getting an image to the top of the Explore tab depends on factors such as early engagement velocity from followers, real-time competition, and the proportion of likes coming from existing followers rather than nonfollowers.

You can navigate discovery features through specific interface steps:

• Tap the magnifying glass icon to open the Explore tab.
• Search for specific users, hashtags, or locations using the search bar.
• Browse content by specific categories like Automotive, Humor, Music, Style, Sports, Fitness, Comics, Animals, and Art.
• Search by places for geo-located content.

2. Wow Them with Effective Marketing

Marketers must weave deep-seated emotional buying triggers into images and captions, run high-impact contests, and utilize direct selling tools to drive action.

People respond to emotional narratives rather than technical brilliance. You can use proven direct-response triggers adapted from historical mail-order catalogs like the 1905 Sears Wish Book.

ModCloth images gathered 13,200 likes and 353 comments by prompting public desire and community wish-listing.

• Learn to identify the common buying triggers and weave them into your work.
• Practice using them in your posts.
• Learn to identify your own emotional resistance to using selling triggers.
• Build your followers strategically so it is not an uphill battle.

Emotional Triggers and Contests

Running contests and offering free products or digital items dramatically accelerates account growth and engagement compared to traditional discounting. Contests generate significantly more comments and followers than regular posts, while offering free items avoids training customers to wait for sales and protects profit margins. Tailwind notes that accounts holding contests experience 70 percent faster follower growth. Contest posts achieve 64 times more comments compared to normal posts. In fact, 91 percent of Instagram posts with over 1,000 comments are contests. Holding a contest with another brand generates 79 percent higher engagement. Only 2 percent of Instagram accounts conduct contests.

Pixie Faire runs a weekly Mod Doll Monday contest using an embedded RaffleCopter widget, achieving 29,477 entries. Their catalog contains 2,400 PDFs, and a typical freebie Friday yields 10,000 to 13,000 copies downloaded.

• Comply with Instagram's Promotion Guidelines and avoid forcing tags on people not in the photo.
• Include a liability release statement disassociating Instagram from the promotion.
• Use the No purchase necessary phrase to avoid illegal lottery violations.
• Have official rules posted online describing the sweepstakes or skills-based criteria.
• Have a public start date and end date.
• Include age and residency restrictions and the Void Where Prohibited phrase.
• Encourage participants to disclose they are posting for a chance to win a prize.

Direct Selling and Copywriting

Instagram provides powerful direct selling options through native shoppable tags and third-party link-in-bio redirect solutions. Approved business accounts can tag products directly inside image posts or carousels, allowing up to 5 tags per image post and up to 20 tags per carousel post. Accounts that do not qualify for native tags can use third-party tools like Curalate or bio-link managers to replicate product feeds.

J.Crew, Hobby Lobby, Lulus, and Raymour Flanigan use Curalate with like2b.uy links in their bios.

• Ensure you are using a Business Profile and sell items complying with merchant policies.
• Create a Shop Catalog on Facebook or via Facebook Business Manager.
• Enable Facebook and Instagram as a sales channel if using Shopify or BigCommerce.

Adapting classic direct-response display advertising principles to Instagram creates high-performing, non-boring promotional posts. Good display ads combine compelling product photography with crisp copywriting, focusing on simplicity, audience likeness, humor, and curiosity. Luke Sullivan discusses portable copywriting and art direction crafts on page 36 of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Hollister ads showed 18-year-olds without shirts while Mop & Glo ads featured 35-year-old women mopping.

• Find a great image and build a story around it.
• Ensure the message is simple, direct, and completely communicated at first glance.
• Use bio-link expanding tools like Linktree, LNK.Bio, or Tap Bio to manage multiple campaign links.

Successful Instagram marketing combines off-image metadata and on-image copywriting to create a logical flow that guides prospects toward purchasing. You can use profile names, captions, and comments off the image, while leveraging descriptions, pricing, launch dates, and branding directly on the image using tools like Stories apps, Photoshop Elements, or screenshots. Pinterest pins containing pricing information saw a 36 percent increase in likes compared to pins without it. Joe Sugarman made millions from TV ads featuring BluBlocker sunglasses using classic copywriting techniques. You can reference page 97 in Sugarman's The Adweek Copywriting Handbook regarding logical flow.

• Make it in Stories using the text and image overlay options.
• Use third-party apps like Color Cap to add text to an image.
• Use Photoshop Elements for complex edits.
• Take a screenshot of an ad or website image to add it directly to your phone's photo album.

3. Expand with Advertising and Influencers

Scaling your reach requires mastering organic tactics before deploying paid advertising, running multistep campaigns, and collaborating with strategic influencers.

Multistep Campaigns and Ads

Multistep campaigns break the classic AIDA marketing formula across multiple serial messages over an extended period to engage customers naturally. Instead of a hard-sell, one-and-done post, marketers unveil details and messages gradually to capture attention, pique interest, create desire, and drive action. This approach provides multiple low-pressure opportunities to talk about an offer and adds real leverage to marketing efforts.

The Burma-Shave company used six brief roadside signs sequentially from 1925 through 1962 to reveal a complete advertising message to passing drivers. Catalog marketer Fred Macey first wrote about the four-step AIDA plan in 1899 for a Bissell carpet sweeper contest. Jeff Walker pioneered adapting the AIDA model into a serial format for internet product launches, breaking long-form sales letters into unique messages that build toward a release.

Marketers must prioritize mastering organic Instagram tactics before spending money on paid advertising to ensure optimal campaign performance. Jumping straight into paid ads without strong organic foundations causes campaigns to underperform. Advertisers should run numerous low-budget tests to find winning combinations, maintain strict spending budgets, and evaluate customer acquisition against long-term customer value rather than chasing vanity metrics like follower counts.

• Master organic marketing tactics before focusing on advertising.
• Scatter lots of seeds by running many small ads with a minor budget, such as $5.
• Establish daily, weekly, and monthly advertising budgets to avoid unchecked spending.
• Avoid wasting money on vanity goals like buying profile followers.
• Allocate a consistent percentage of top-line revenue to advertising as you scale.
• Calculate long-term customer value to determine how much you can afford to spend on customer acquisition.

Instagram offers multiple ad formats and granular audience targeting options that can be managed directly in-app or through Facebook Ads Manager. Advertisers can choose from photo, video up to 60 seconds, carousel, story, and slideshow ad formats.

Working with Influencers

Influencers are categorized into five distinct tiers based on follower count, and compensation ranges widely from noncash freebies to thousands of dollars per post. The industry categorizes influencers into nano influencers with 10 to 1,000 followers, micro influencers with 1,000 to 10,000 followers, macro influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers, mega influencers with 100,000 to 1,000,000 followers, and celebrity influencers with more than 1,000,000 followers. Nano and micro influencers often work for freebies or reciprocal marketing, while larger influencers charge substantial fees per post or per engagement.

Captive8 cites that Instagram influencers with 100,000 followers can command $5,000 a post. Independent UK notes that influencers with less than 10,000 followers earn $75 per post, and HYPR reports that a reach of 500,000 to a million costs $5,000 to $10,000 per post. Tapinfluence shows an average monthly earnings of $763.50 for an influencer, with engagement rates priced between 25 and 75 cents per post engagement.

Marketers can find and vet Instagram influencers through manual platform searches, hiring researchers, or using dedicated proprietary marketplaces. Utilizing dedicated influencer marketplaces acts like an electronic matchmaking service with built-in escrow systems and campaign filters. Tomoson founder Dan Fernandez explains how brands register, set budgets, post campaigns, and use escrow systems to securely pay influencers upon task completion across a network featuring 90,000 influencers.

Smart marketers must protect themselves against fake followers and bots by using verified marketplaces, audit tools, and running minimum viable tests.

Because buying fake followers is easy, marketers should use platforms with built-in safeguards, run accounts through auditing tools, and always start with small, minimum viable test campaigns before scaling up. You can use free account audit tools from Influencer Marketing Hub and HypeAuditor to verify follower quality and check for bot activity.

Marketers can engage influencers through various creative activities, ranging from discount codes and takeovers to long-term ambassador roles and giveaways. Giving influencers unique discount or affiliate codes helps track sales attribution directly. Alejandro Reyes notes that brands love content distribution campaigns where influencers reshare digital assets, providing long shelf life and great return on investment.

4. Refine Your Instagram Efforts

Optimize your ongoing operations by deploying robust software tools, mastering hashtags, repurposing pillar content, and leveraging continuous training.

You need a robust ecosystem of third-party applications and software to schedule posts, manage social inboxes, analyze data, and clean up ghost followers. Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Later, and Tailwind automate scheduling and cross-platform publishing. Analytics platforms like Iconosquare and INK361 provide deep performance metrics, while follower utilities help remove bot accounts. Crowdfire and InstaFollow are highlighted as applications that allow users to delete ghost followers, monitor follower ratios, and track unfollowers.

You can also transform digital Instagram images into physical merchandise, extending social media engagement into tangible products and customer gifts. Various web services and apps allow users to convert photo feeds into printed books, canvas art, stickers, greeting cards, magnets, or even large-scale hashtag mosaics and pillows. Services like Shutterfly, Canvaspop, Blurb, Greetabl, and Instagoodies let users print physical books, cards, and stickers directly from their Instagram photo galleries. Connecting Google Analytics to a website provides critical quantitative data regarding mobile traffic, conversion rates, and the economic value of Instagram visitors. Google Analytics allows marketers to measure how many visitors come from Instagram, view their pageviews and bounce rates, track their conversion paths, and compare Instagram traffic performance directly against other social channels like Facebook and Pinterest.

Content Strategy and Tools

Invented by Twitter user Chris Messina and popularized during the San Diego wildfires, hashtags allow users to tap into keywords for discovery. On Instagram, clicking a hashtag opens the Explore tab with three specific views: Related hashtags for discovering similar niches, the Top view displaying content with the highest likes and comments where successful older posts can persist over time, and the Recent view showing the newest posts at the top. When looking at the top content for #instagrampower, users can still see posts from the initial book launch of the first edition in 2013 by scrolling down slightly, even though it has been used over 1,500 times. Platform data shows 95 million pieces of content shared on Instagram each day, and you can include a maximum number of 30 hashtags on a single Instagram post.

A professional Instagram content strategy relies on choosing consistent topical themes, establishing a visual style, and utilizing diverse publishing methods. The content blueprint consists of three core components: topical themes, visual style, and publishing methods. Lewis Howes organizes his Instagram content around the themes of Grow, Share, and Encourage, while Gary Vaynerchuk continually expresses 25 to 47 themes in his content. You must implement the following content blueprint rules:

• Commit to two or three recurring content themes.
• Establish brand consistency across name, logo, tagline, color palette, and typeface.
• Apply photography and videography fundamentals like composition, lighting, and simplicity.
• Build a content strategy for every individual Instagram publishing option.

High-impact content producers can scale their reach by taking a single piece of pillar content and repurposing it into dozens of micro pieces distributed across multiple platforms. The GaryVee Content Machine model involves producing high-value pillar content, having a team chop it into short-form micro content, distributing it broadly across tailored social platforms, listening to audience feedback, and publishing a revised second round of content based on engagement metrics. Gary Vaynerchuk's team transformed a single keynote address into 35 million views across 20 different platforms using this repurposing method, creating 30 smaller content pieces daily from pillar content to engage his 3.9 million Instagram followers using his 86-slide presentation deck.

Community and Growth Actions

The Follow-Like-Comment-Respond method is a foundational, proactive tactic to organically grow your Instagram followership.

By intentionally following target prospects in small batches, liking their pictures, and leaving sincere comments, you increase the likelihood of them reviewing your profile and following you back. You should execute these specific daily community actions:

• Post at least one picture.
• Post one boomerang, and turn these posts into a thematic Story Highlight over time.
• Do an Instagram Live, Story video, or IGTV video.
• Follow 40 to 50 people.
• Like 100 pictures.
• Leave comments on posts that use a top hashtag you are following.
• Unfollow 25 people who are not following you.
• Respond to any comments you receive and like them too.

Leveraging top influencers through sponsored posts modeled after their highest-performing content can rapidly drive traffic and new followers. You locate a top influencer in your niche, identify their most liked post, recreate it in your own creative style with a clear call to action directing users to your account, and pay the influencer for a shout-out. John Koch, marketer on the Tomoson platform, used this exact strategy with his Bible verse account (@theholydose) to secure affordable shout-outs and grow traffic. You must follow these specific steps for this influencer strategy:

• Find a top influencer in your niche by looking at relevant hashtags and top posts.
• Find the most liked post in the influencer's account.
• Redo the post in a similar way in your own creative style.
• Figure out a simple caption with a call to action that benefits you.
• Reach out to the influencer via DM to pay for a shout-out and provide payment, image, and caption.
• Finalize the influencer posting details.

To maintain a competitive edge, you must continuously learn through quality blogs, online training courses, and industry events. The author recommends exploring established industry blogs and online learning platforms like Udemy because they offer affordable, reviewed, and frequently updated courses compared to expensive alternatives. You can engage with these continuous learning practices:

• Check out recommended blogs including Social Media Examiner, Influencer Marketing Hub, Buffer's Social Blog, Sprout Social, and Hubspot.
• Explore Instagram marketing courses on Udemy.
• Consider attending social media conferences such as Social Media Marketing World, which draws 7000 attendees annually, Social Media Camp, and Content Marketing World.

5. Specialized Strategies and Team Building

Nonprofits and service providers can succeed through local geotagging, while businesses can scale operations by delegating tasks to teams and outsourcing to experts.

Local and Nonprofit Tactics

Instagram connects people by both interests and locations. You can use this dynamic to build long-term relationships through visual storytelling and community engagement.

Ninety-nine percent of people use Instagram to capture everyday things, making the platform naturally local. You can deploy specific tactics for local reach:

• Set up your location via Facebook using the seven-step help process.
• Organize photo walks that start and stop at your local establishment.
• Include participants in special events by having them share images using a hashtag.
• Run local contests and give away free items on specific days and times.
• Offer a freebie to an influencer in exchange for a social mention.

A San Diego kayak tour shop named Everyday California used Instagram to promote the Southern California lifestyle, successfully translating their brand into a popular clothing line. Charity:water secured 385,000 Instagram followers through compelling visual storytelling.

Service providers sell both expertise and relationships. Freelance photographer Sydney Paulsen posted daily photos of American Girl dolls starting in 2013. By 2015, small doll clothing companies began commissioning her, and in 2017 she worked with American Girl and AMC TV for The Walking Dead promotion using Funko Pop! dolls. You can secure similar contracts by following concrete steps:

• Post consistently and build a recognizable body of work.
• Reach out to admired brands directly via DM and email with a customized portfolio.
• Wait a week and use backup persistent contact methods if there is no immediate response.
• Refer back to past client work when pitching prospective new customers.

Staffing and Outsourcing

You can scale your Instagram operations by delegating tasks. Options for support teams include:

• Online assistant.
• Student or intern.
• Local freelancer.
• Employee.
• Instagram influencers.

Vasily Kichigin started his Instagram service business in 2015 after growing his tennis coach's mat business account by 10,000 followers in four months, leading to over $45,000 in sales. His team of 15 people now handles account optimization, targeted engagement, content creation, and vetting influencers to avoid fake engagement and bots.

10 Key Ideas

1. Your Instagram profile functions as critical real estate that must immediately communicate your identity, purpose, and visual offerings without repelling prospective followers.
2. Marketers must weave deep-seated emotional buying triggers into images and captions, run high-impact contests, and utilize direct selling tools to drive action.
3. Holding contests and offering free items dramatically accelerates account growth and engagement compared to traditional discounting by generating significantly more comments and followers.
4. Instagram provides powerful direct selling options through native shoppable tags and third-party link-in-bio redirect solutions to guide prospects toward purchasing.
5. Multistep campaigns break the classic AIDA marketing formula across multiple serial messages over an extended period to engage customers naturally.
6. Marketers must prioritize mastering organic Instagram tactics before spending money on paid advertising to ensure optimal campaign performance.
7. Smart marketers must protect themselves against fake followers and bots by using verified marketplaces, audit tools, and running minimum viable tests.
8. High-impact content producers can scale their reach by taking a single piece of pillar content and repurposing it into dozens of micro pieces distributed across multiple platforms.
9. The Follow-Like-Comment-Respond method is a foundational, proactive tactic to organically grow your Instagram followership by intentionally engaging target prospects in small batches.
10. To maintain a competitive edge, you must continuously learn through quality blogs, online training courses, and industry events.