BMA Young Professionals: By You, For You

‘4 Ways B2B Marketers Can Take Advantage of Instagram’

If you haven’t yet heard, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion on Monday.

Are you starting to realize that “Instagram” is not just a buzz word, or at most something only B2C marketers leverage? Wondering how your B2B Marketing strategies will ever include an Instagram tactic?  Check out these 4 ways you may be able to take advantage of what has clearly and quickly become a huge player in digital communication today.

4 Ways B2B Marketers Can Take Advantage of Instagram

New Year, New Thinking

The start of a new year seems to be the most practical, albeit cliche, time to make a commitment to improve something in our lives or the lives of others… join a gym, read more, save money, volunteer to help with those less fortunate… All great ideas, but if you’re looking to resolve to doing something more unconventional yet more personally gratifying, start thinking sideways!  Take these 10 steps to ignite new ideas in business as presented by BMA Colorado’s December Keynote speaker Tamara Kleinberg:

• Spontaneous collaboration - Create an atmosphere in your workplace where people and ideas are intersecting all day long (i.e. don’t limit yourself to conference rooms, have chairs in hallways and whiteboards in places where people who don’t work together day-to-day interact like near the elevator).
• Be emotional - Have passion for your ideas and express them. The term “There’s no crying in baseball” does not apply here!
• Smash! ideas - Be open to taking 2 or more completely unrelated thoughts and smash! them together (i.e. working out and playing cards can turn into a promotional piece of 52 exercises in a playing card deck).
• Take a break - Did you know employees at Google all receive a 20% break time benefit?  This isn’t on top of a 40 hour work week, but part of it. So if an employee works 40 hours per week, 8 hours (1 full day!) should be break time.  Rest or whatever you consider a “break” will only rejuvenate you and make your quality of work that much better.
• Trust - Use your intuition. If you believe in an idea, truly trust it and don’t give up.
• Ask - Stop assuming things, and start asking questions.
• Collaborate - This seems obvious for generating unique ideas but Tamara further cites Steven Johnson and his claim that the best ideas are a product of collaboration in his book “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation”.
• Lean in - Literally.  Be physically open to new ideas by leaning in during meetings and conversations.  This propels you to be further engaged.
• Put it out there - Don’t be afraid. Don’t try to be perfect, that is the enemy of innovation. Just get your idea out there!
• Shock the system - Do what everybody else ISN’T doing. For example, when the majority of Americans were going to Blockbuster and local video rental shops, Netflix came along to provide a cheap and quick video delivery and streaming service that has since changed the face of video rentals in our country. 

For more on these and Tamara’s other tips (such as “Stalking”, “Breaking the rules” and “Brainstorms kill creativity”) for playing on the fringes of the proverbial box of thinking, check out her work at Imaginibbles.

Here’s to a happy, safe, and successful New Year!

-Nicole DeChristopher