Anastasia  Shilova
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Anastasia shilova
Who doesn’t love visual storytelling? It’s a way to express the inner artist in you in a picture that is worth 1,000 words, as they say.
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Instagram with its storytelling ability is rapidly gaining a status of one of the more popular social media outlets since October, 2010. It allows people to share their pictures with Instagram users from all over the world and connects individuals who would otherwise never have the opportunity to meet.
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However, have you ever taken a photograph that was so beautiful or that so perfectly depicted a product that you lost hope at the thought of it being uploaded forever to just Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter? Then SnapMyAd may be just an app for you!
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WHAT IS SNAPMYAD? SnapMyAd is an iPhone app that lets users interact, compete, and get rewarded by their favorite brands. This iPhone app allows users to share their creativity by creating ads for brands. The interaction encourages users to make photo ads for the brands they have experienced, enjoyed, and that of which they are a loyal customer. Launched only in May 2013 by Josh and Yvette Lee, in merely four months SnapMyAd had more than 10,000 users. Growing fast, SnapMyAd averages 500-750 new users and over a 1000 photo submissions a week. Consumers share their ads on specific promotions with the opportunity to receive perks and rewards from companies for their grandiose ads of those brands. The app allows consumers to view brand-initiated promotions, make their own applicable ads, and remain confident they are choosing who can use their photos.
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! STEPS TO MAKE IT WORK
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• Connect an Instagram account with SnapMyAd • Scroll through available promotions and rewards • Submit a photo either from the camera roll or from Instagram by tagging a photo with #snapmyad hashtag • The community of SnapMyAd users vote for the photos they liked • For additional like, share a SnapMyAd photo on Twitter and Facebook • Receiving a ‘like’ or ‘favorite’ via Twitter and Facebook will count as an additional point • The photo with the most votes gets the reward 
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WHAT’S IN IT FOR A BRAND? Assurance Brands can use SnapMyAd to initiate and harvest user-created content with a consumer’s consent. Brands are free to utilize this content in any marketing program.
Brand Focus With SnapMyAd, brands have a way to focus a consumer on targeted products, promotions, and events. This will bring consumers closer to the brand, allowing them to have their input in the future of advertising and campaigns.
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Sales SnapMyAd gives brand companies an entry into a consumer’s social world at a level that has never been attained before. SnapMyAd allows brands to reach a larger community with major influence.
Interactivity SnapMyAd is a simple and innovative way that allows brands and customers to interact through user-created content. Brands have easy access to consumer creativity and vision for the brand and products.
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MORE Social media lovers and Instagram users will be excited by the SnapMyAd app. This smartphone app connects Instagram users to big brands in a way that benefits both sides. A user can simply snap a picture of a brand’s product and post it, and the prize is in the pocket. The app is free to use, so all users that are passionate about Instagram should jump right into this realm of creative social ads that bring the prizes to creators.
!SnapMyAd is betting that this customer engagement will be a big hit among companies and their audience. Josh Lee, founder and chief executive of SnapMyAd, believes that retailers can use this app to reach out to a new audience and encourage them to shop either online via discount promotions or in store with gift card offers.
!Considering Instagram’s growing popularity and the fact that the social network doesn’t yet display ads, advertisers do have an excellent opportunity to reach a nearly endless community of users. The most valuable prize for the advertiser might not even by the photo, but rather the social media engagement with their brand encouraged by the contest itself.
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WHAT OTHERS SAY
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TARGETED ADVERTISING AND ENGAGEMENT With Instagram’s help, there’s an amplitude of data daily uploaded online and millions of active consumers, whose desire to snap a photo became a part of their lifestyle. This data can provide an insight into a user’s experience with a product or service that is beneficial for marketers and brand account managers. Not only users create social advertisements for a brand, they also become loyal customers, as their interaction with a brand via SnapMyAd is recognized and rewarded. What’s more important, SnapMyAd is an excellent mediator between a brand and a consumer. Any company should invest into the app promotions and engage with its audience. By building a community of active consumers, a brand can win their trust and the privilege to be called “my brand.�
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Anastasia shilova
THE FUTURE According to Lee, the company’s future plans for the app include adding analytics tools, allowing the companies to understand more about their customers, and categorization, allowing promotions to be arranged by subject and location. In the next 2-3 years, SnapMyAd is going to become a part of a lifestyle. The founders of the app foresee consumers buying products, participating in the events, going on vacation, and reflexively posting photos on the platform to show off, recommend, and enter in to win prizes and earn rewards. Whether this is taking place in store, at an event, or at a specific location, it is going to be as natural as clipping coupons and earning loyalty rewards. The company is working together with popular brands and is in the process of making bigger partnerships with Fortune 500 companies in the nearest future. Additionally, the app is going to sell advertising space within the next 12 months. The big dream of the SnapMyAd’s founders is that advertising will be appropriated by consumers and their creative photographs will grow into more effective, distributable, and long lasting ads. SnapMyAd is the place to go for photo promotions!
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RESOURCE GUIDE: • SnapMyAd official website: http://www.snapmyad.com • SnapMyAd LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/company/snapmyad-llc • SnapMyAd Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/Snapmyad • Use Instagram to Earn Brand Rewards With SnapMyAd, Adam Popescu (2013): http:// mashable.com/2013/08/02/snap-my-ad/ • SnapMyAd Want You to Monetize Your Instagram Pics, Sam Wakoba (2013): http:// techzulu.com/snapmyad-wants-you-to-monetize-your-instagram-pics/ • SnapMyAd Sales Brand Deck, Lindsay Fultz (2014): http://www.slideshare.net/lindsayfultz/ snapmyad-sales-brand-deck?qid=f4095ea4-c5ce-4992-88d6f7488586a730&v=default&b=&from_search=1 • New Instagram Accessory App, SnapMyAd, Lets Customers Compete to Create Ads, Todd Hoffman (2013): http://www.columbusceo.com/content/blogs/ceolive/2013/08/snapmyad.html • Consumers Help Brands Build Their Ads With SnapMyAd, Beth Kellmurray (2013): http:// www.abovethefoldmag.com/?q=article/consumers-help-brands-build-their-ads-snapmyad • SnapMyAd to Launch in UK, Keely Stocker (2013): http://www.drapersonline.com/snapmyadto-launch-in-uk/5053145.article • Brands Offer Prizes to Instagrammers With the Most Ad-Worthy Photos, Lara Piraz (2013): http://www.psfk.com/2013/08/instagram-brand-advertising.html#!zGFJR
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