Los Angeles – When it comes to social media influence lately, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly finding themselves in the growing shadow of Instagram. Technology is all about the fresh and fast. Mobile centric apps like Instagram that instantly gratify your tastes for visual stimulation are all the buzz in 2015.  Brands and companies are finding new and exciting ways to engage their consumers with attention grabbing photos and videos. They are now discovering that leveraging influential social media users’ followings is an excellent avenue for engaging a wider audience of active users within their markets that they otherwise wouldn’t reach. Instagram is one giant popularity contest,  with the most followed users cashing in big time with their influence on consumer decisions.

Originally founded in the Summer of 2013, IG Shoutout Network LLC is the first company of its kind. Their network is designed to help brands more efficiently collaborate and build relationships with influencers.  It’s also a tool to launch social media campaigns and measure their effectiveness. This allows digital marketers to better engage potential consumers and ultimately drive greater business results. Essentially, the app gives you a communication platform to conduct a Brand-to-Influencer transaction. What this means in layman’s terms is that you can purchase a post from a relevant and influential Instagram user,  from a wide variety of participating accounts. Seem complicated? It’s really simple once you wrap your head around it.  Many companies of all shapes and sizes are catching on to this marketing trend.

The site features a wide variety of different Instagram users,  whose followings include hoards of mobile consumers across a broad range of interests.

“More and more companies these days are allocating increasing amounts of their advertising budget toward influencer marketing rather than traditional advertising methods like TV, radio, print ads, and even Google or Facebook ads.” Simon Heit, CEO IG Shoutout Network

Simon says, “Our company is the first to bridge the gap between influential Instagram users and brands of all different shapes and sizes. It doesn’t even matter if you are a brand or company, even if you are an average Joe who has 20 bucks and wants some instagram followers within your interest. Let’s say Joe is a car guy. For that $20 his car can be posted to a auto enthusiast page with 100,000 followers. That post on the big page which tags @JoeTheCarGuy in the caption will likely deliver dozens of followers, comments, and likes to Joe’s future posts on his page. Now isn’t that the point when showing off your car?  The same principal can apply to @JaneLovesCats and her adorable Persian feline.  Fancy that.”

How it works

IG Shoutout caters to two influencer types from any interest:  From animals, fitness, travel, photography, and women’s fashion, to fishing enthusiasts, college football fans, and basically anything you can imagine that people are interested in. The two types of influential Instagram users are niche pages and influencers. IG Shoutout has heavier emphasis on niche pages, and they plan to expand their platform to be centered more on relationship-building between influential people on Instagram and brands that align with their interests. On the IG Shoutout Network, most of the Instagram accounts that sell promotions are general niche pages, and do not represent actual people. For example ‘Shredded Academy’ is an account related to fitness and bodybuilding. On the other hand, ‘Gerardo Gabriel‘ is a fitness influencer with a name and face behind his personal brand. This person’s endorsement is worth more to companies and brands,  because followers are much more likely to engage with a real person than a fan/niche page. Therefore, influencers endorsement generally costs more as compared to their niche page counterparts.

Followers of both pages are much more likely to engage if an actual person telling them to go out and buy a product when they endorse it, as opposed to a niche page about fitness. A diverse combination of endorsements from niche pages as well as actual people is a healthy influencer marketing strategy for social media.

“I got a shoutout on the page WomensApparel for my fitness clothing line and I was VERY pleased. I added over 400 followers in 6 hours and gained instant sales for my business. I highly recommend this site if you are looking to get noticed.” Jesse Mirabal – Owner of Fitness Epidemic

About the apps – IG Shoutout makes it possible to buy and sell Instagram shoutouts from a mobile app. The IGS Customer app (For Brands & buyers of shoutouts) facilitates the brand and influencer correspondence, so the latter can endorse the former’s product/service for strategic social campaigns. Brands can submit photos and videos to the influencer for approval. The IGS Vendor app (For Influencers & sellers of shoutouts) allows shoutout sellers to tap into the vast network of potential buyers from many different niches. Approved vendors of IG Shoutout gain access to a sales portal where they can approve or deny a shoutout request, and manage multiple instagram accounts. Now that’s nifty.