Week 8 Part A - How to Expand Your Reach on Instagram by Using Hashtags

https://www.instagram.com/cisco/?hl=en

    Hey reader, aha, welcome back! As the title might suggest, I’ll be looking into similar business’ Instagram territory and scoping out their use of hashtags. Hopefully, I’ll cull some ideas for Revolution from their examples.
    Seamgen (@seamgen) is a local, small business in San Diego. They have a mix of software development and cloud service, IoT and emerging tech; in scope it is like my fake business, Revolution. I was really excited to find a small, local(ish) business in the same tech space, until I checked the post dates on their Instagram. To Seamgen’s credit, at least they have an Instagram account; which is dissimilar to many other local, small software development and cloud service businesses that I looked at. Their last posts were May 2020. Since that’s the case, I’d say Instagram doesn’t work effectively for them, but I think they had good posts (before the start of the pandemic.) They had a variety of tech and team culture pics, as well as cute dog pics, and some photos they were clearly unafraid to show their inner weird. Their use of hashtags could’ve been improved by adding #sandiego or #SD to be visible in searches, but other hashtags were spot on. Placement and use of these hashtags were the same on each post (mostly their services) but each post varied slightly depending on the occasion. To give them a better chance, I searched for tags that I thought would have fewer results, but the only one that brought back Seamgen was #seamgen. They have 192 followers, and posts were getting 15-30 likes. Very few comments are made outside of the account posting its tags. About 11% of followers liked Seamgen’s posts.
    Tateeda Global (@tateeda) is a local and international small business with offices in San Diego and Ukraine. Again, there’s an Instagram that’s currently linked to their website; and again, it’s unmaintained. Tateeda has a current presence on LinkedIn. It feels like they just gave up with Instagram and didn’t even bother to disconnect it. But again, at least it’s something to investigate. And it turns out to be good for contrast. Tateeda’s last Instagram post was in 2018. They have 86 followers, a total of 8 posts that sometimes use hashtags minimally and other times not at all. Ah, it seems they are all the same hashtag (#tateedateam). A search for which leads to a page that appears to have employees at a winter party (using my context clues.) The hashtags are always used the same way – at the end of a sentence; their text posts are descriptive and inviting, and there are some likes (15-20), but no comments. Videos were the most successful content – one video of a (then) recent mobile app got around 200 views. Perhaps 20% followers liked Tateeda’s posts. In the instances of Seamgen’s and Tateeda’s unmaintained continuance with Instagram, it looks worse to keep links on their website to social media that the business doesn’t use than to have the absence of it. Another side is that it’s a potential vulnerability that might go unnoticed because no one is managing the business’ social media account. They should perform CPR or disable the accounts.
    PhoenixNAP (@phoenixnap) is a small business (65 people!) in Phoenix Arizona that can deploy cloud infrastructure services globally. Maybe Instagram works for them, but I’m getting the impression that Instagram’s not a contender for software and cloud service companies. PhoenixNAP is another small business, but this one makes me hopeful because their last post was 3 weeks ago; they have 157 posts and 1,638 followers. They use a plethora of hashtags, for instance, 20 is a lowball (my eyes got tired counting) number; and some are mixed with German and English. Hashtags are placed several dots down to keep them separated from text content. Unfortunately, when I search their tags I come across similar problems to before – the hashtags are so ubiquitous that the company itself doesn’t appear. Their site looks well-made with buttons right on top of the posts to connect viewers to the company products and corporate partners. They have impressive friends – Intel, VMware, aws, and Microsoft to name some – and they know how to flaunt them. The most successful posts were videos – comparing the 10ish likes on images to the hundreds of views on all the videos. Their posts are varietal. Some posts are technically esoteric, others just technical, a few inspirational and daily work images, and uh, a weird one with a grinning guy throwing peace signs at a freshly filled-in grave. Then there’s the grinning guy standing over him. Their posts get about 1% likes, which might be more realistic because they have more followers.
    Cisco (@cisco) is a large enterprise headquartered in California, with 79,500 employees across all sites. They are actively using Instagram, and it is the most successful, in terms of viewer engagement, of any of the sites I’ve seen. It makes sense to me that Cisco, of all companies, wouldn’t leave an “open port” with Instagram. They use all kinds of hashtags, but very specifically, and the most I saw was just a few on any post. Most posts just have 1 hashtag, and it’s placed at the end of the text content of the post. The hashtags that actually have the word “cisco” in them are the ones that return Cisco when searched. They have 1,543 posts and 444k followers. They post every few days at least – the last one was of employees playing instruments on St. Patrick’s Day, and the one before that was for Pi Day. They get a lot of likes on basic images – averaging around 1%, which I think is outstanding – but as before, they get the most interaction from videos. On one video of a baseball game they got 5% of their followers to view. They get comments, which is pretty cool. But then again, I have to remind myself of perspective; 7 comments seems like a lot, but not out of 444k people. Their posts are a mix of the people and the products that make up this enterprise. With such a large company, the opportunities for diversity are abundant, and Cisco makes good use of snapshotting these events in their employees’ lives. But no rainbows this year, so I investigated. In June 2020 Cisco put up a nice image (above) supporting inclusion, but they got several negative responses. Cisco didn’t try again in 2021. Regardless, Cisco’s Instagram management is the best I’ve seen. They have little challenges, like, “Tell us you’re a CCNA without telling us you’re a CCNA” to drum up engagement. Another very successful post was a 1 to 10 how do you feel today showing very specific tech things, it was hilarious. These challenges got hundreds of comments. Good move, Cisco.
    As I mentioned before, it seems like Instagram isn’t too popular for smaller tech firms. If I had to guess why, perhaps it’s because technologists want repositories where we know we can find information – sometimes, pictures aren’t technically descriptive. Also, the use of Instagram hasn’t rendered outside interaction; it’s mostly employees, or people who have a connection to the business. I really liked Cisco’s challenges. I thought that drew a lot of branding pride because these certs are famously difficult. Getting one can be a point of pride. I also think Seamgen’s use of weird does something special; it lets viewers know that their company is made of individuals who are free enough to express themselves. It’s only one picture, not on top, but in there. If my business were real, I would use these tactics.