Social Listening Blog Post

Social Listening

Why I am Interested

I chose Instagram as my brand because it's something that I use almost every day and recently it's been in a lot of headlines for having a better pace than Facebook for market growth. Since I am someone who is interested in how brands connect to their users and customers, I want to explore and find out how Instagram is being talked about by others.

Background

Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world in today's world who is owned by the company Meta. They originally launched their site in 2010, and their value proposition has changed over the years. They went from just being a platform for short videos and having conversations with people online, now the platform has expanded tremendously, and their new value proposition is to connect people through online storytelling and to empower their creators to monetize the content they post.

What People Are Saying

On other platforms online people are always talking about Instagram and especially their semi new shopping features that they released and their short stories format that they have. Some examples of this would include a user on X who said," what is going on with my page it's been giving me log in issues for a month now your help links do not work! Meta doesn't help with nothing on my page isn't hacked it was a minor app download mistake and ever since I can't get back in this is not cool" (@kassMarie5). Another example would be another user from the platform X who tweeted out, "i rarely go on Instagram bc too many ads, sponsored content, recommended content, etc. To hold my attention span (i just wanna see my friends) but every once in a while I will go on just to post something and i finally set up featured stories or whatever" (@mylifeisaplague). Another example of Instagram having good marketing strategies would be when a man tweeted out, "when did Instagram enable locked reels this is gonna be so good for influencers and engagement" (@AMITNKARLA). All of these comments about provide a reflection of concern, excitement, and strategic insight about what Instagram is doing with their platform. People are now starting to understand that Instagram is blending entertainment with shopping, however they are also starting to lose authentic content.

What Is Instagram Promoting?

Instagram is promoting products, creator tools such as monetization, and lots of brand partnerships. These posts often are targeted to show the new features such as drops, reels shopping, and creator marketplaces. These features are very visually polished, and they are focused more on lifestyle purchases.

Instagram Critique

Instagram has over 700 million active users across the world. Their content is mainly reels, doing collabs with their creators, and showcasing off products for sale. The frequency of the app is crazy high with most people having daily posts and sometimes even multiple posts a day. Their engagement levels are also crazy high with most big accounts getting thousands of likes, comments, and shares per post. What is Instagram is trying to do is balance commerce while still being authentic. The challenge they face though is trying to keep users engaged with their platform without overwhelming them with too many ads. Instagram is succeeding in the department of having lots of sales, however they are risking losing users who only enjoy the old vibe and design of the platform.

Customer Response

Instagram very rarely responds directly to individual comments on their platform, but they do give out new updates if they collect enough feedback from their users on certain ideas. An example of these ideas would include the new feature were users can have more control and personalization of the ads that they see on their page. I do think Instagram should be more involved with their users about privacy concerns and just as a whole being more interactive and making it seem like they care about their users thoughts.

What I Would Do

If I had any say in what Instagram does to their app some things I would do include creating a more behind the scenes aspect of reels, showing how their algorithm works and a guide for users on how to control their feeds better. I would also launch a campaign where I would try to get some of the smaller creators to go and bring back some of Instagram's old vibe and charm because that a reason that some users downloaded the app in the first place. Another thing would be outside of the app, and it would just to try and get deeper engagement from the users by sending out emails and creating community forums so that we would know what the users want.

What I Learned

I learned that social media is a constantly changing to adapt and appeal to their users and how they adapt to the new marketing strategies and market. I also learned that social listening is very important because it shows what people say and how the people feel. I also now understand that Instagram's shift toward commerce is very heavy, but they need to make sure that they still care about their user's experience. Most importantly though I learned that Instagram is growing every day and I don't think that anything they do to change their app is going to stop the constant growth of their platform.