Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs loves Instagram, the iPhone app that encourages users to share filter-treated photos.
“Instagram allows you to create visual stories with an artfulness and elegance and a special kind of gravitas that’s at the heart of good content,” Handley writes. She adds, “The images on Instagram are at once intimate and broadly appealing, at once personal and universal. Hence, its popularity.”
Handley also points to Ben & Jerry’s, GE and McKay Flooring as shining examples of brands that understand how best to use the Instagram platform.
“General Electric might be an old-school brand, but it’s using Instagram in innovative ways. In fact, that’s how it sees its broader mission there: Turning innovative GE technology into Instagram art,” argues Handley.
Jason Keath, founder of Social Fresh, notes that Instagram’s growth (14 million members and counting) is pretty amazing, especially when you consider that the app is only available on one mobile platform at this time. The app will be coming to Android handsets in 2012.
Keath also generously shares a list of 23 brands using Instagram to tell their stories. From the looks of it, Burberry, Gucci, Red Bull, Threadless and others are all putting up interesting images.
