Summary

19 November 2016 – Choice of Topic

20 November 2016 – Decision + Research

30 November 2016 – Dilemma (Who to choose?)

2 December 2016 – UX Designer

5 December 2016 – Social Media User Experience

6 December 2016 – Another Thoughts on This Topic

7 December 2016 – Instagram

9 December 2016 – Instagram For Marketing Purpose

12 December 2016 – Demographic on Instagram Users

15 December 2016 – Marketing On Instagram

18 December 2016 – Advantages of Marketing on Instagram

Through the days, I’ve research on UX Designer VS normal Internet User in the beginning. Even though I did some studies on UX Design, however I found out there was certain parts of it still tricky to me. During the half way of my research, another thought came to my mind was Brands VS Consumers on Instagram. It’s something more commercial and I feel more comfortable on doing research on it. I found there is brunch of possibilities and aspects to do comparison between Brands and Consumers.

For example, brands launched their promotion in a limited duration, brands will update the news by adding a photo in their profile feeds. Consumers will get the news if they “follow them”  Instagram. Hence news would spreads as fast as possible throughout Instagram. Consumers get to start their “Shopping Journal”, they are able to purchase goods in cheaper price. In the other hands, sellers gain benefits too since they can clear stocks and also raise their monthly/ yearly sales. (Win Win Effects)

Hence, in my essay, I will go deep in different aspects of Instagram on how it affect the brands in their marketing and how does it affects consumers on Instagram.

Brands VS Consumers on Instagram

  • Reason why Instagram attracting people (what cause the giant raise users of Instagram in these years) -therefore marketers aims Instagram as a good marketing platform.
  • Brands before and after Instagram -using Instagram stories/ ads/ videos (bring out the sale?)
  • What hashtag usually used by brands and consumers? (what is the purpose of using hashtag on Instagram, in order to gain what?)

Advantages of Marketing on Instagram

Business online constantly increase this is due to many marketer are starting to brand and communicate visually with their followers and customers through social media platform. Through my research, I found out through Instagram, brands can achieve countless benefits if they marketing well on Instagram. So, now lets’s look at the benefits below:

Increased Engagement

Marketers have to activate their Instagram accounts by updating meaningful and engaging contents. By this way, high levels of engagement with your target audience will be achieved. According to the study by Forrester, it uncovered that Instagram content generates 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter since Instagram is a photo-sharing based platform, people are normally attracted by visual at first rather than text.

Starbucks is the brand that always share interesting image on Instagram.

 

Catch your Target Audiences

If you’re targeting people born from 1980 to the early 1990s (the so called millennial) then Instagram would be the most suitable social media channel for you to target your audience.

From my previous, I’ve found out that Instagram is the place full with millennial (people who born from 1980-1990s). Most of them are young, love to shop, and mostly woman. Therefore, they are the biggest target audience in Instagram. H&M is a mass-market brand of great appeal on this social media platform. It is the best example of brand who successful get their target audiences on Instagram.

Building Trust And Personality

Instagram can help you build trust and increase brand awareness. Emotional connection between sellers and their audience can be build through Instagram. On Instagram, there’s no limits for users to share photos, it allows them to update and activate their profiles day by day. Since Instagram is a visually social media platform, therefore business can be continue going on in a casual way, that’s why Instagram users always state that it is so user friendly. User friendly is also the reason makes Instagram so much well-liked.

Here is some of the benefits of using Instagram for marketing purpose. From this entry, I actually found out there is manifold profits of having business via social media. In my essays, I will go deep into these benefits and continue doing research on it (get some brands as example and talk about why they are so successful on Instagram). Or maybe there’s also numerous disadvantages on Instagram business?

Istvanova, L. (2014) 6 Benefits of Using Instagram For Your Business. knoozai. [Online] Available at: https://www.koozai.com/blog/social-media/6-key-benefits-using-instagram-business/ Accessed at: 18 December 2016]

 

Marketing on Instagram

Instagram with photo and video sharing features help brands drive reach and engagement. There are 70 millions of users on Instagram and almost 70 million photos will be posted/shared by them. In order to connect target audiences to products, Instagram might be the best choice for brand to carry out their business. Do you now why?

  • Hashtags

Let’s use Nike as example in this situation since Nike is Instagram’s most popular brand. Nike buyers used to snap a photo of Nike after purchase and uploaded it to Instagram. With the post, they are able to use hashtag (#nike) to highlight Nike’s product in context. Hashtag #nike has been used more than 41 million times by Instagram users. With hashtag, it indirectly helped the brand progress to global community. With the help of marketing tools on Instagram, Nike successfully gain more than 14 million of followers.

  • InstaMeet

InstaMeet is to gather Instagrammers around the globe to take photos and post to Instagram. Instagram provided an example of how brands can take advantage of the event. For example, Shoe company, Toms and Los Angeles-based photographer, Pete Halvorsen joined this event. Hence, they are able to directly engage with consumers.

  • It’s important to make your event feel like a normal meet-up. Pick a photogenic place that’s easy to access.
  • Focus not just on photography, but on giving back in some way. Be a brand that supports the community by playing a subtle role and not overpowering with your message.
  • Have an experienced community member run your InstaMeet to create an authentic experience and voice that people trust.

  • Branded ads

Instagram also provide channel which can used by brands as a strategy to mimic large-scale video campaigns. These features are an effective way for brands to generate consumer interest and engagement. For example, Ben & Jerry’s Instagram ad, used to to spread awareness of its new Anchorman inspired Scotchy Scotch Scotch flavour. After the ads released on Instagram, they achieved 9.8m followers and 33-point increase in ad recall.

  • Carousel ads

Instagram’s carousel ads provide users with multi-page print ad that strategically highlight a brand’s products. Users can swipe left to see the for additional pictures and link to website of the brand was provided too. As a consequence, users are able to immediately purchase featured item that they like the most whereas brands can telling their stories in a more flexible way through carousel ads.

  • Video ads 

Since Instagram with video upload feature, hence many brands started to upload video ads to attract their consumers. Instagram video ads provide maximum 15-second spots tease potential consumers with branded information.

For instance,  GAP comes out with a video contains micro-series of 12 videos. The storyline of the video is about a strange love story evocative of spring’s unpredictable nature. In the video, it shows Gap clothing and encouraged viewers to purchase.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ysJHTgj9mC/

Sybydlo, B. (2015) Marketers, Stop Hesitating and Start Embracing Instagram. MarketingProfs. [Online] Available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2015/28071/marketers-stop-hesitating-and-start-embracing-instagram [Accessed at: 15 December 2016]

Cohen, D. (2015) How Brands Can Take Part in Worldwide InstaMeet 11. Social Times. [Online] Available at: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/toms-pete-halvorsen-worldwide-instameet-11/617267 [Accessed at: 15 December 2016]

Ratcliff, C. (2015) How brands are using Instagram ads. Econsultancy. [Online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66689-how-brands-are-using-instagram-ads/[Accessed at: 15 December 2016]

Demographic of Instagram users

 

Based on the research on last post, the study uncovered that the number of brands active on Instagram getting more and more in these years. Instagram became the hottest apps for marketing agencies since it’s user friendly and fulfilled needs of business.

Demographic of Instagram users:

  • Young
  • Educated
  • Like to shop
  • Mostly woman

Marketers stated that most of buyers from Instagram are younger than 30. According to Pew Research study, 55% of Instagram users are in the age between 18-29 year olds. Followed by 28% of 30-49 years old and 11% of 50-64 years old. Therefore, marketers also set ‘young’ and ‘woman’ as their target audience.

For example, trendy women’s apparels or snacks foods like chocolate, cookies, cakes and pastries which can easily catch their eyes. There was a post that posted by H&M on Instagram can be a good example in this situation. A photo with mint ice cream coloured dress in an ice cream cone with caption “Tomorrow we can eat broccoli, but today is for ice cream!” and add on hashtag #nationalicecreamday and #HM (Fashion brand) received around 192,000 likes.  (Ice cream + Dress) which can attract women’s attention the most.

Furthermore, Instagram reveals that most of the users like to shop. Users would like to share their daily life stuffs such as what they’ve eat today, what they bought from somewhere, what they’ve received from someone else and so on by uploading photos of them. They would like to share product photos with their followers, comment each others’ post or double tap on the photo (like) in order to have interaction with their friends. On Instagram, marketers always have to come out with some methods in order to gain more followers which can help to boast up their sales. So basically, marketers would carry out some online activities such as “contests” and “giveaways”, they purposely want to win more followers. Some of the Instagram users follow the brand are just because they like the brand whereas some of them follow the brand is just to take advantage of giveaways.

Harris, M (2016) Marketing with Instagram, the Fastest Growing Social Platform! Medium Well. [Online] Available at: http://mediumwell.com/marketing-instagram/ [Accessed at: 11 December 2016]

Delzio, S (2015) New Research Reveals Instagram Users Like to Shop. Social Media Examiner. [Online] Available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/instagram-users-like-to-shop/ [Accessed at: 12 December 2016]

Parker, S (2016) Top Instagram Demographics That Matter to Social Media Marketers. Hootsuite. [Online] Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-demographics/ [Accessed at: 12 December 2016]

Instagram for Marketing Purposes

Nowadays people mostly can’t live without mobile devices since Internet is overwhelming for many people. Social media penetration worldwide is getting bigger all the time. Social media getting more welcome to many users, therefore social media users are expected to grow enormously in the coming years. Due to huge number of social media users, it leads to numerous brands begin to target their audiences in social media.

Bar chart below shows that the percentage growth rate of US companies use social media for marketing purpose increase  year over year.

“Now that Instagram is opening up advertising to all businesses, it’s not surprising that marketer usage will grow rapidly. ” -Debra Aho Williamson

Obviously, social media is a good platform for advertising business. Based on research, Twitter and Instagram are the social media which mainly used by US Companies. eMarketer carry out an investigation on marketers use Twitter and Instagram for marketing purpose. Linear graph below shows that while the amount of marketers using Twitter staying unchanged throughout the years, Instagram has became a potential marketing media for brands, the number of US companies which marketed their business through Instagram was predicted to reach about 70.7% in 2017, almost 7 times since 2013.

Besides, according to Simply Measured, researches have been carried out an examination on how many brands use Instagram for marketing purpose. The study found that there are 17 different industries used Instagram as marketing channel and successfully gained 130 million plus users on Instagram. Bar chart below shows that, in 2015, 90% of top 100 brands in the world have their Instagram account, and 80% of them mostly active on Instagram.

screen-shot-2015-12-08-at-9-19-48-am

eMarketer. (2016) Number of Companies Using Instagram To Nearly Double Next Year. [Online] Available at: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Number-of-Companies-Using-Instagram-Nearly-Double-Next-Year/1013122  [Accessed at: 9 December 2016]

Shirvely, K. (2015) The 2015 Instagram Industry Report. Simply Measured. [Online] Available at: http://simplymeasured.com/blog/the-2015-instagram-industry-report/#sm.0001uza83clp8f38spk1p66xaomut  [Accessed at: 9 December 2016]

Instagram

Instagram

An introduce to Instagram

Instagram is a social networking app which main for photos and video sharing platform. It allow users take a picture directly or import from photo album gallery on smartphone. Instagram similar to Facebook or Twitter, once you sign up, you will have your own profile and a news feed. Users can connect their existing Facebook account as “log in with Facebook” to sign up in Instagram. Thus, all they need is just a username with a password. This is quite convenient to connect other social media platform.

People update their Instagram profile by posting photos. Before posting, Instagram provide brunch of filters to let users enhance and edit their photo. Other than sharing photos, users can also filming video through Instagram or uploaded from mobile. Instagram videos up to one full minute in length. It used to be everybody’s favourite mobile photo sharing app. For me, I actually found out that Instagram can considered as habit-forming. After I posted a photo, I find myself always check notification of Instagram every couple minutes, it force me to reloading who has liked my latest post.

filter
Besides brunch of filters option, Instagram also provide editing effects that allow users to edit adjustments, brightness, contrast and structure.

Using Instagram as a Social Network

As you can see, Instagram is a powerful social network that is only getting stronger. There is something called “Followers” and “Following” on Instagram user profile which represents how many people follow by them and how many other users are following them. In order to have a communication or interaction with someone, user is able to like others’ pictures, comment on pictures or follow them.

In 2016, Instagram launches “Instagram stories” that works exactly like Snapchat Stories, it allow users to record video and photos and share it on stories. Those videos and photos are only temporarily which last 24-hour. So, it means whatever user had posted on stories will disappear after one day. It also allows users to decorate their photos with drawings, text, emoji and colour filters.

instagram-stories1

Kelvin Systrom, the co-founder and CEO of Instagram briefly explains why Instagram launch a new function- Instagram Stories.

Systrom explains that “It basically solves a problem for all these people who want to take a ton of photos of an event or something in their lives, but want to manage what their profile looks like and not bomb feed, obviously, as that’s one of the no-nos on Instagram.”

no-nos =  Something unacceptable or impermissible 

Therefore, with Instagram Stories, users of Instagram getting more active than before. They spend more time on it just to record what they’re doing and share it to their followers. As a result,  this enable users to reply to someone’s stories. By this way, both of them can be keep in touch since nowadays there is a couple of people using social media to stay in touch or reconnected with somebody else.

Furthermore, Instagram stories also provide “Boomerangs”. This is much convenient for Instagram users since they no need to go somewhere else to make Boomerangs. It is available in Instagram Stories now. It sounds like to “kill two birds with one stone”.

Besides, users can also mention someone they’d like to want to share with in their stories by typing “@”, followed by a username. Someone who’re mentioned in someone’s else story will receive a notification in Direct.

Instagram introduces “Stories” have been used to represent a world where every social apps merged into one. In these recent years, the number of Instagram active users increase continuously. It has become one of the most popular social networks worldwide. Except sharing daily life photos such as selfies, food, landscapes, what do other people  share about on Instagram? In the next post, I will share about my research on some brands that use Instagram to carry out their business.

Moreau, E. (2016) What Is Instagram, Anyway? Lifewire. [Online] Available at: https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-instagram-3486316 [Accessed at: 7 December 2016]

Constine, J. (2016) Instagram launches “Stories,” a Snapchatty feature for imperfect sharing. Techchruch. [Online] Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/instagram-stories/ [Accessed at: 7 December 2016]

 

Another thoughts on this topic

Besides focus on UX designer, I found out that “brands” are also one of the communities which are good in doing comparison with normal internet users. Since online shopping is normal as usual in nowadays. Especially on social media such as Instagram which they used to promote their brands and sell their stuffs. In comparison and contrasting between brands with normal internet users on social media could be an interesting controversial issue. First idea come to my mind is there is a lot of brands use social media as a powerful marketing medium, especially advertising. They have to pick a right channel and think about idea to promote their brands according to the channel. For example, most of trendy brands are active on Facebook and Instagram. I intentionally focus on Instagram since besides those big brands, there are still a lot of normal users active on Instagram. Most of them mostly share about their daily life moments, what they have been come across today, their thoughts and express them through photos and videos.

I would like to do more research on Instagram, well-known brands which are active on Instagram and also online marketing strategies on Instagram in the following posts. Hope I am able to dig deeper and deeper to find out more information and gain more knowledge about them.

 

Social Media User Experience

In this day and age, we can evidently see that the rapid rise of social media has been pretty overwhelming. In fact, social media is closely a part of the user’s experience. People use various channel to communicate and they won’t stick at only one single channel. Therefore, UX designers have to design all of these channels to be one consistent user experience.

For example, latest Facebook designed with social plugin.

As a Facebook user, you’re able to comment or like post on any Facebook pages. Other than that, Facebook provide home page with full of activity feeds that allow users to see what their friends have been carry out on their websites. Facebook also give some pages suggestions for users to click like, this is based on their daily activities on Facebook.  For example, since I am a big fans of Taylor Swift and often type “Taylor Swift” on Facebook search bar. So, Facebook will automatically recommend me to like more fans pages about Taylor Swift or else. Live stream on Facebook lets users share comments and likes in real-time during live event. Live stream could generate bigger audiences to allow your video access to worldwide. The great significant is users can easily sign up to another website by using their Facebook account.

social4

5373424370_90d5926fa4

There are some websites designed with “follow us” buttons. But what is the purpose of adding such words in a website? Why should people follow ‘you’?

social2I’ve read an incident about somebody visited an e-commerce website. The guy intentionally looking for a DSLR camera, however the first sight caught by him was a Facebook button with “follow us on Facebook“. Sometimes website design might be too complicated, so users prefer to go back to something which has the more familiar interface to them and also the brand icon tend to stand out more (in this case is Facebook) since Facebook is more friendly towards users.  He said thatSometimes follow us icons can be a distraction from the user’s primary task.”

All social media buttons do is distract the user from completing your primary call to action.

Due to the distraction “follow us”button, it makes him unable to focus on his initial purpose of buying a camera. This is because people might click the button and access to their Facebook page to look for more information. After that, some “promotion” or “sales” will changed their early thoughts of buying only a camera, they might bought more and more stuffs from the website. “Follow us” button is able to break users concentration from their task and also from satisfying the website’s business purpose of earning money.

Next, why people should follow ‘you’? To answer why, there must be a reason.

Here is a brilliant example, instead of asking people simply “follow them” they added some copy, such as:

“Follow us on Facebook for useful advice on how to get the most from your new camera.”

Thus, with “follow us” and “share” options, people can firmly combine websites with social media. This is the method on how UX designers design all of channels to be one consistent user experience.

References

Boag, P (2012) Social Media Is A Part Of The User Experience. Smashing Magazine. [Online] Available at: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/social-media-is-a-part-of-the-user-experience/ [Accessed: 5 December 2016]

Boag, P (2014) Saying no to social media buttons. Boagworld. [Online] Available at: https://boagworld.com/design/social-media-buttons/  [Accessed: 5 December 2016]

UX Designer

According to Oxford Journal Interacting With Computers, 

The definition of UX design:

  • The goal of UX design in business is to “improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.” 

While people interact with the product, it is able to enhance experiences and enable users achieve their initial aim in what ux designers have provided. 

How the product feels? 

Do you ever concerned about it? Yes. You have to concern about it if you’re a UX designer. As a UX designer, firstly, you must guarantee the product logically function well from one step to another step. Next, you have to test and observe user’s behaviour towards the product. This is due the reason that users feedback is more crucial in further development for UX design.

What the !@#$ is UX Design‘ is a youtube video that explained understandably about UX by Matthew Magain. He’s not really explains about what is UX design but he gives a clear explanation about what should a UX designer learn to and what did UX designer did for social media. He highlighted that (UX = User Experience) is mostly refer to: 4W1H

Questioning.
  • what?
  • when?
  • where?
  • why?
  • how?

This is due to the reason that how does a product looks like might affect user’s interaction. Therefore, questioning (about asking 4W1H) is one of their ‘habits’ since they have to get answers in order to come out with a success product’s design.


-Who is the target audience?

-What do we want the website do?

-What do we want user to engage?

-What do we want user to do when they interact? -What are you thinking about the apps?

-How to catch people first sight with button?

-Why is that confuse you? 

-What is the next step to do? 

-Where would user click next?

-How to make people share post after read it? 

-Why place “share” button at certain area?


UX designer will continuously questioning ton of questions and do research on their users in order to understand more about their feeling. According to Matthew,  to accomplish an aim or purpose of UX design, the product (web apps/ mobile apps/ desktop apps) are required to fulfil both user needs and business needs. 


User-centred design process – A process that requires ‘tools’ and ‘techniques’ to take user’s needs into every stage of the product’s lifecycle. It is something scientific which using analysis and measurement. (more analytical and technical)


Besides, UX Design is considered as “design behind the visuals.” This is because UX designers are concerned with the overall feel of the product, unlike UI designer/ interface designers who are particular concerned about how the product is laid out. For example, UI designers normally questioning such questions, what colours can I use? Why this colour will catch attention of user? How many images I can use? And how can I make this look incredible in visual look? 

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3

In order to provide a good user experience, it is vital to come out with a design with essential design element that help users get access to exactly what they want. For example, Figure 1 shows that before users login or register account in certain apps, they are required to fill in personal data. If the apps layout repeatedly mention *required* to fill in these parts, it might resulting users skip *optional* part. This is due to the reason that, users might have a thought about optional field may not be crucial, why should I wasting my time on it to fill in that part? In order to create an effective design, UX designers shouldn’t continuously repeatedly mention something even though it’s important, however, you can just only mention one word to catch the eyes of users. 

(with the design principle: less is more) 

Figure 2 is about design carousels on apps or mobile website. We can see that most of carousels are always designed with an arrow to direct user swipe their phone from left to right or right to left in order to get more information.

For example: mobile apps install carousels ads on Facebook. 

However, navigation arrow might not really give user an incentive to click. If change the arrows into something descriptive with meaningful labels, it’ll incentives users to click in and have a look. 

Carousels ads on Facebook.

Let’s look at figure 3, since icon is more representable as symbol of something to make thing easier to understand in order to catch users attention. So, icon have to place in front of text to let users see the icon first. Place icons, texts, or images in a proper way is to make the overall design easy to understand to the viewer’s eyes. Since our eyes seek to balance, focus on visual balance between design elements is vitally important. Therefore, as UX designer, you’ve to ensure that your design is able to maintain balance in presenting information to user and provide them with a visually pleasing picture of the objects placed in the apps/ website. 

Magain, M. (2012) What the #$%@ is UX Design?. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovj4hFxko7c [Accessed: 2 December 2016]
Lanoue, S (n.d) The definition of UX design. User Testing Blog. [Online] Available at: https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/09/16/what-is-ux-design-15-user-experience-experts-weigh-in/ [Accessed: 2 December 2016]
McGough, O (2014) 10 of the Best UX Infographics. [Online] Available at: http://blog.usabilla.com/10-best-ux-infographics-2/ [Accessed: 2 December 2016]

Dilemma (Who to choose?)

On Tuesday, a dilemma I come across is which social group should I use as comparison in this topic? The first two communities come to my mind is designer and normal internet user. Since I will be a designer in future soon, hence I curious to know what is the difference between them in social media. What is the role that played by them? However I still get confused since there are various types of designers. Such as graphic designer, interactive/web designer, user experience (UX) designer, user interface (UI) designer, industrial designer, interior designer, and so forth. 

 

Types of Designer
1. Graphic Designer

  • visual communication
  • problem solving
  • use of typography, photography, illustration
  • branding/ visual identity: logos, business cards
  • product packaging 

2. Interactive Designer

  • use of technology and principles of good communication
  • build website, turns design into actual online experiences
  • knowledge of programming languages such as Javascript 
  • knowledge of CCS and HTML
  • blog templates, banner ads
  • websites, landing pages

3. UX Designer

  • usability testing
  • creating user flows
  • validate business ideas
  • create prototypes
  • *ensure people using a site, apps or tool easily and not confusing.*

4. UI Designer 

  • create beautiful and usage interface
  • graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
  • navigate people through an app, site or tool 
  • buttons, menus, colours, and images

5. Industrial Designer

  • also known as product designer
  • create medical devices
  • appliances 
  • cars, bikes, planes
  • consumer and household items

6. Interior Designer 

  • floor plans
  • diagrams
  • functional spaces
  • visually appealing spaces
Infographic 1 (Velenzuela, C, 2014) shows the types of designers and softwares they used.
I intend to focus on UX designer with normal internet user. Before I go into depth research, I’ve almost zero knowledge with the process of UX design, it was a bit tricky to me. Based on my research I found out that, user experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product. In the next entry, I’ll going to explain more on UX Design:  

-What UX designer do

-Why do we care about UX?


References

Braun, K. (n.d) What Type of Designer Do You Need? Upwork [Online]. Available at: https://www.upwork.com/hiring/design/what-type-of-designer-do-you-need/ [Accessed at: 30th November 2016]

Velenzuela, C.(2014) Design: Which skills? What type of designer? Ventureleague of the Americas [Online]. Available at: http://ventureleague.org/main/design-which-skills-what-type-of-designer/ [Accessed at: 30th November 2016]