Instagram: Photo studio and blog in a pocket

Posted October 09, 2012 |

Sold recently to Facebook for $1 billion, Instagram has proven it’s no flash in the pan. This photo-sharing service is top of its class, offering some brilliant opportunities for jewellery retailers and suppliers to present their products.

The photo-sharing family
Jewellery retailing and design is an industry focused on the pursuit of attractive aesthetics, which makes online photo-sharing a logical platform for promotion. Instagram, Flickr and Twitpic are just some of the options available to those in the trade looking for new ways to display their wares.

Flickr is the veteran, and a great clean way of displaying photos in albums, while Twitpic is Twitter’s better looking sister, enabling users to seamlessly showcase pictures and videos in Twitter streams. Instagram is like the the artistic renegade, applying filters and effects to photos to make them appear timeless and elegant.

While all three have dedicated communities, the real benefit of using these services is the ease with which they connect with other social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter. By displaying content across multiple channels in one action, businesses can cut down on their social media use while still ensuring all fans and followers get the full branding experience.

The Digital Catalogue
The reason why Instagram stands out over the others as an ideal photo-sharing choice is because it is dedicated to improving the look of photos. The platform’s dedication to pretty things makes it a natural choice for jewellery designers, retailers and suppliers to display products, and its acquisition by Facebook means it should be even easier to integrate into any Facebook page.

Instagram posts can become like a constantly updating catalogue, and have a charming personal touch. Rather than just uploading photos of latest collections to a static website, jewellers can now take pics of their products, their store, their customers and even themselves with nothing more than a mobile phone before uploading to Instagram where photos can be vastly improved using built-in filters. Such candidness can provide a more personal representation of businesses and products to potential customers.

Of course, the opportunities for jewellery retailers using Instagram are vast but, at the moment, big brands and suppliers are still leading the way. Some examples of jewellery companies doing brilliant work with Instagram are as follows:

• Tiffany & Co. (@tiffanyandco) is doing an inspiring job of displaying products, with magazine-worthy shots that are getting a lot of great feedback from Instagram users. The luxury retailer also displays some of its advertising materials through Instagram. This is a clever way of pushing sales messages without flooding fans with spam. Instead, ads come across more as providing a variety of content.

• Sparkle Designer (@sparkledesigner) is a supplier using Instagram as a key platform for showcasing new products. Sparkle’s Instagram stream is probably even more impressive than the company’s official website. Check out these sensational product pictures.

• Wired Jewellery (@wiredjewellery) is using its Instagram account to provide followers with a more intimate account of daily life as a jewellery designer. The supplier mixes up classy new product shots with travel and food shots to remind fans that there are real people running the company.

• Antika Jewellery (@antika_jewellery) keeps followers updated constantly with its latest designs, and even manages to use Instagram to make its humble showroom look like something special.