Three Instagram Success Stories: Humans of New York, GoPro, Momma’ s Gone City

As we’ve learned in our Marketing Management class, the reigning Four P’s of marketing are: Product. Place. Price. Promotion. Another reason Instagram is a valuable platform to place your product, for promotion (and include the price), so you’ve covered a lot of ground there, all with one free app!

In this post, we’ll highlight three Instagram pages continuing to gain momentum and in turn garner business opportunities.

#1: Humans of New York
Humans of New York is a unique Instagram page dedicated to the profiling the day/moment in the life of a New Yorker. In 2010, after Brandon lost his job as a bond trader, he turned to his passion in photography hobby into a profession. Brandon began a tour of American cities taking candid photos of subjects and along the way started collecting quotes and stories posting them on Facebook and Instagram. His stint in New York was supposed to last a few months, but by 2013, Brandon had landed a book deal and published a New York Time’s bestseller “Humans of New York.” In capturing a short story of the person in the candid photo, he has also captured the hearts of more than 2.7 million Instagram followers.

#2: GoPro
GoPro, a San Mateo, California-based company is in the business of high-definition, wearable, mountable photography and video camera! Luckily, for them, in October 2013, Instagram added a new feature of allowing to post up to 15-second videos. Now GoPro and their customers could share their GoPro videos from cooking, skiing to surfing or capturing a family reunion the videos are endless. It has boasted well for the company which has 4.4 million Instagram followers and a variation of the hashtag #gopro is tagged on more than 11 million posts. GoPro is also consistently ranked in the top ten “Best Instagram Videos” on www.adweek.com

#3: Momma’s Gone City
Here’s the story about a mom, Jessica Shyba (and photography enthusiast) started her blog “Momma’s Gone City” in May 2009. Initially Jessica created the blog to keep friends and family up-to-speed on their family’s life with their little ones (including a cross-country move with husband attending dental school). Jessica would also share tips and posted reviews on children’s products.

In November 2013, the family adopted a part Boxer, part Shepherd, and part Labrador retriever they named Theo. When we started following @mommasgonecity, Jessica had ~29,000 Instagram followers (she’d collected followers as a blogger). However, life changed when she began posting images of a sweet puppy (Theo) and Beau (then almost age 2) and using the hashtag #theoandbeau in their daily side-by-side naps ritual, the posts, and the images went viral. The pictures captured the attention of online and print publications including People Magazine and soon the world took note. Jessica has seen more opportunities for sponsorships, and a children’s book deal ensued, “Naptime with Theo and Beau,” was released in February 2015 and earlier this month her family was featured in an episode of Nat Geo’s Wild’s “Unlikely Animal Friends.” Momma’s Gone City has more than 550,000 Instagram followers, including actress Jessica Alba (who is co-founder of The Honest Company and has allowed Jessica Shyba to be a guest blogger on The Honest Company’s Instagram page.)

#TheTakeAway
Instagram has over 300 million users. Therefore, whether you are in the business for social good, like Brandon in Humans of New York, placing a product for promotion, like GoPro, or a mom like Jessica’s “Momma’s Gone City,” a key factor to success is to remain consistent in your posts and genuinely true to your brand. When you do, you connect with your audience; your followers will remain loyal, and only spread the word, sometimes, around the world.