By James Nord

Instagram shopping arrived just a few months ago, and while it has sweeping implications across what brands are doing on their own social accounts and with influencers’ posts, I want to talk about where this is pointing us more broadly. 

We’ve been guiding brands to view their owned Instagram brand profile as a new kind of brand homepage. Facebook has been working for years to not only own the social network category, but to own the entire internet, and Instagram is just an extension of that ambition. 

Instagram Shopping is another strategic move by Instagram to keep its users within the platform. Swipe Ups on stories are currently driving users out of Instagram and to your brand-owned website URL, which isn’t ideal for Instagram. My assumption is that they will be making it increasingly harder for brands to divert users off the platform, so brands will eventually need to build an entire influencer strategy as self-sustaining inside that platform. 

You should be thinking about Profile Visits to your owned Instagram account like traffic to your brand's website, should think of a Follow like a newsletter signup, should think of your story highlights as your brand's blog, should think of your feed as your marketing and e-commerce pages. I don't think ROI is ever going to be attainable if brands continue to try and use traditional digital metrics from platforms outside of social as measurement.

This means your social teams need to work with your internal or external teams handling your influencer efforts to make sure you are getting the most out of the profile traffic you'll be driving, rather than website traffic. For example, if you're doing a bunch of sponsored posts around a new product, make sure that you have a few shoppable posts with that product in the recent posts of your brand owned profile feed, creating an easy, actionable flow for a potential customer. 

This was originally sent as an email on March 20, 2019. To learn more on how brands can better navigate the influencer space, sign up to Fohr CEO James Nord’s weekly email here.