If you’re a business owner or a digital marketer looking for creative ways to earn more visibility for your brand at a low cost, you’d want to hear about Instagram seeding! Although not a top-searched marketing term, seeding is a stellar strategy to start conversations around your brand.
Think of it like this. As summer approaches, you’ll plant vegetable seeds in your garden in the hopes that they’ll grow roots and turn into beautiful plants. You’ll tend to them, water them, and with the right weather conditions, they’ll start growing. Now instead of planning zucchini seeds, marketers plant content seeds. This way, they generate awareness and leads for their brand.
In this guide, we’ll review what is seeding and how you can use it to benefit your business. But before jumping into the technical, make sure you use an Instagram Story downloading tool like Story Story. It will help you collecting the results of your Instagram seeding efforts automatically, and reuse them for future campaigns.
What is Seeding?
Seeding is a digital marketing tactic that focuses on creating and distributing content across the web to create word of mouth for a brand. It usually comes in the form of social media seeding, with Instagram seeding being the most reputed.
With the rise of influencer marketing in recent years, an impressive 40% of customers online rely on influencers’ recommendations to make their purchases. That’s because it’s easier to trust another human that advocates a product than to put your faith in ads. Therefore, by incentivizing industry leaders, you spread the word about your brand and gradually start growing your network.
The difference between seeding compared to other influencer marketing tactics is that it usually involves offering your product to an influencer without prior agreement. Specifically, brands give out products to influencers, hoping they’ll share positive reviews and promote them to their target audience.
So, for example, you can send 30 products to 30 different influencers for free and wait for them to talk about it. Of course, some may receive the product and look down on it or not talk about it at all. And others may be delighted to receive it and share their message of appreciation on their Instagram Stories.
Does Instagram Seeding Really Work?
When it comes to purchasing decisions, we mostly count on other people’s opinions, especially those closest to us. However, influencers also have the power to direct our purchasing behaviors as they offer advice and inspiration. Their role as role models and opinion leaders for their followers is an asset that companies are willing to invest in.
For example, GoPro, a popular American tech company, is reputed for product seeding full equipment bundles to exotic travel enthusiasts. In fact, they recently gifted action cameras to 4 competitors at the National Selection Tour. In return, they expect that the influencers will test their devices and provide feedback.
Another excellent example of how Instagram seeding works is the British women’s luxury brand House of CB. By distributing clothes to influencers even before they launch their products, they manage to generate interest for their pieces before they hit the stores. They even gift celebrities like the Kardashians, Demi Lovato, and Vanessa Hudgens. With almost 3.4 million followers on Instagram, we’d say the brand is well ahead of its game.
What Are the Benefits of Instagram Seeding?
Here are the most important benefits of Instagram seeding:
• Social media seeding can be done by businesses at all scales. So this strategy applies whether you have a small or a large company and want to generate more awareness for your brand. • Seeding is cost-effective. Since you’re not directly partnering with influencers, the only costs you’ll be covering are the products and shipping costs. This way, you shortcut your way into influencers' Stories without paying excessive fees. • Seeding strategies lead to organic content with better reach. Since influencers share their honest opinions on your product, especially without getting paid for it, their content is more well-perceived by their audience. Additionally, followers feel more confident about recommendations that are not accompanied by the big fat “ad” hashtag. • Seeding is not a one-time shot. On the contrary, it can be an all-year-round strategy for your business. This way, your brand name will remain imprinted in the followers’ minds.
What Are the Drawbacks of Instagram Seeding?
Here are some of the disadvantages of Instagram seeding:
• There’s no signed contract. Since there’s no payment, there’s also no signed contract to bind the influencer into specific deliverables. In other words, you can’t push influencers to create content for your brand, and, therefore, you risk gifting them products and getting nothing in return. • Seeding takes time and patience. You might not get the results you were hoping for from your very first seeding efforts. So it’s important that you keep pushing and not give up too quickly. Remember, this is a long-term strategy.
What Does It Take to Do Social Media Seeding?
Before jumping into social media seeding strategies, make sure you fulfill the following requirements:
• You have a physical product that can be displayed on Instagram, such as a backpack or clothes. • You’ve put together a list of influencers along with their physical addresses to send them your products. Don’t hesitate to target micro-influencers with 1000-5000 followers as well. They’re usually the ones with the most impact on their audience. • You have the right tools to help you detect and manage influencers’ content when they decide to post about your brand. Since they'll most likely include your Instagram handle, you don’t want to risk missing out on valuable user-generated content. A tool like Story Story gives you peace of mind by tracking a list of influencers you provide and downloading relevant stories when they mention your brand. You even get alerts if they mention your company’s hashtag or nickname.
Use Instagram Seeding for a Complete Digital Strategy
There’s an estimated $5.20 in revenue for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. Unlike paid influencer collaborations, Instagram seeding doesn’t require investing vast amounts of money. However, with consumers becoming more and more selective nowadays, you must win both their minds and their hearts.
If you opt for this marketing method, make sure you have all the support you need to collect user-generated content. And since you’re not on your phone 24/7, it’s crucial to manage all the brand mentions in one place. Use Story Story to download Stories automatically from any account, hashtag, or location. Stop wasting your time on manual procedures and focus on what matters most - your business at hand.