By Ed Avis
Is your repro shop on Instagram? Do you even know what Instagram is? It might be the most perfect social media platform for a reprographics business. Why? Because it is 100 percent visual, and if there’s anything reprographics folks succeed at, it’s in creating visual images.
Instagram differs from Twitter and most other social media channels in its complete reliance on images. Once you get your account up and running, you post interesting, high-quality images that you think other people – in particular, your clients or potential clients – would like to see. The images you post are connected to some kind of text, of course, but that’s in the background and not nearly as important as the images.
You also use hashtags when you post your images. Hashtags – those things with the # in front of them – act as aggregators of content. For example, if you post an image of an employee printing something on a backlit media, you might include the hashtag #backlitmedia. Then if a potential client of yours wants to see images of backlit media, he might search using that hashtag and find your post. Voila, you’ve just attracted a new potential client!
So what kind of photos should a reprographics shop post? The key is to make them interesting and attractive. Post photos of great jobs you have done, or awards you’ve won, or employees doing something special. These kinds of photos reveal what kind of shop you are – they paint a portrait of your business.
As you post interesting photos with well thought-out hashtags and descriptions, you’ll start to attract followers. When someone follows you, they receive your posts on their Instagram page, so the more followers you have, the more exposure your business gets. You can accelerate your following by promoting your new Instagram handle on your other social media, emails, and paper communications. You can also speed things up by “following” other Instagram pages you enjoy and which pertain to your business, such as the pages of architects you serve or would like to serve. When they see that you are following them, they sometimes choose to follow you, too.
Here are some examples of reprographics shops with good Instagram pages:
Century Graphics (a division of California Surveying and Drafting Supply) has an Instagram page consisting mainly of its past projects, such as a banner printed for a music festival, some vans with vehicle wraps, and a 3D printed house floor plan. This has attracted 854 followers, some of whom presumably are potential customers.
https://www.instagram.com/centurygraphicsrsvl/
Precision Blueprints in Hesperia, California, also posts images of past jobs, including some blueprints, some garments, and some tickets, and has nearly 1,200 followers.
https://www.instagram.com/precisionblueprints/
Skyline Reprographics in San Diego is a little more artistic. Their Instagram page includes some nice black and white images, several photos of employees working or sitting around, and a couple of non-work related images. One memorable photo just shows a smiling customer in a chair – the caption says, “First happy customer of the morning! Thanks for coming in!” They’ve attracted 82 followers with this collection.
https://www.instagram.com/skylinerepro/
United Repro in Seattle has an Instagram page that focuses on client projects, but artfully presented. For example, a gorgeous picture of a long colorful print coming of an inkjet printer has a caption that says “Printing vibrant color, all day long” and a long list of hashtags including #colorprinting, #banners, #seattle, #posters, etc. They have 330 followers.
https://www.instagram.com/unitedrepro/
Brentwood Reprographics in Brentwood, Calif. has attracted nearly 600 followers with a combination of client projects, photos from various fundraisers, and images commemorating holidays. All of these help humanize the company and show potential customers that it is part of the community.