Editorial
Instagram is now home to over 800 million monthly active users, making it the second largest social network on earth after its owner, Facebook, but contrary to what many brands believe, Instagram marketing isn’t just for companies in visually stimulating industries. In fact, there are a few ways to approach Instagram marketing without any impressive native visual content to hand at all.
To prove it, here are 17 tech companies that are rocking Instagram — who deal mostly in code and customer service. All figures are correct at the time of publication.
1. IBM
IBM uses Instagram to share snaps of its data centers as well as videos about its history. In one video, IBM educates its 195,000 followers on how IBM programmers helped with the Apollo 13 mission back in 1970.
Related Article: 5 Instagram Marketing Tips For Businesses Without Visual Content
2. Citrix
Citirix has a diverse set of images on its Instagram page, and yet they often manage to tastefully get their logo into the shot. Sometimes it’s on a pie, sometimes it’s on a mug and sometimes it’s flying high on one of it’s office buildings.
3. Adobe
Adobe uses Instagram to flex its creative muscles. Each image is beautiful in its own right, from lonely clouds to reflective lakes. You’d never know Adobe made software, but who care — it’s pretty.
4. Cisco
Cisco have used a healthy blend of animated videos, event snaps and creative close-up imagery to amass over 141,000 Instagram followers. They’re also big on sharing pictures of their employees loving life to help showcase the best bits of their company culture.
5. GoDaddy
The web hosting company GoDaddy uses Instagram to share beautiful landscapes, creative snaps of their offices and to post video case studies of brands that have grown online using GoDaddy as a web hosting platform.
6. Squarespace
As a website builder that was initially geared towards photographers and videographers, Instagram is a natural digital habitat for Squarespace. They share artful imagery of everything from half-eaten cake slices to breathtaking architecture. Plus, they even brought in actor Keanu Reeves for some good old fashioned influencer marketing.
7. Dell
Dell boasts 403,000 Instagram followers, and they treat them to regular videos of their products in action and even sharing interesting images of their recycling policies in action — demonstrating how Instagram can be used to shed light on the inner dimensions of a company.
8. Google
With 5.7 million followers, Google has a running theme on Instagram that involves the iconic ‘G’ from their logo being crafted in different ways. In some snaps you see the "G" made up of food, in others, it’s made of slime. They also share creative snaps of city skylines and colorful street corners.
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9. HP
HP have taken to Instagram by running with imagery about printing. The majority of their uploads story-tell about making memories and printing them out with HP’s wide array of portable and office-grade printers. It’s not the most creative Instagram page, but it does have a message — which their 958,000 followers seem to enjoy.
10. Oracle
To please their 114,000 followers, Oracle relies on inspirational images of skylines and landscapes. They also mix in pictures of their events and videos explaining things like how the Oracle Database is helping to map our Galaxy.
11. Salesforce
With 43,500 followers, Salesforce makes full use of Instagram’s slideshow features which allow you to upload multiple images in one post so that users can swipe to see more. Their images and videos are largely focused on events and outdoor spaces.
12. HubSpot
Rather than indulging in stunning landscapes and skylines, HubSpot keeps its Instagram content strictly about digital marketing. They share quotes and infographics about best practices, as well as a few tasteful memes that marketing executives can relate to.
13. Amazon
Amazon’s Instagram can be described in one word: homely. Their images often contain homeware and other products that you might use around the home to either work or laze. They also drop some video ads on occasion to entice their 1.2 million followers into a sale or two.
14. Facebook
Facebook owns Instagram, so technically, they could post whatever they like. What they seem to like is imagery about friendship, and they’ve run with that theme by overlaying the "Friends" checkbox found on the Facebook platform suffixed by words that describe great friends.
15. Twitter
Twitter uses its Instagram presence — which has attracted over 398,000 followers — to spread the word about trends on Twitter, leverage Twitter-based influencers and share videos depicting the most liked and most retweeted Tweets from the previous year.
16. Apple
Apple encourages its 3.5 million Instagram followers to use the hashtag #ShotOniPhone to "take part" in their Instagram venture. They rarely publish anything to do with their own products. Instead, they focus on sharing inspirational imagery of performances and landscapes that, as the hashtag in their Instagram bio would suggest, were shot on an iPhone.
17. Microsoft
Microsoft’s Instagram page isn’t filled with landscapes, it’s filled with people. They even like to share snaps of their CEO Satya Nadella having a laugh, showing how Instagram can help humanize a company — even if it’s as large as Microsoft.
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