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Instagram® in the Real World

I am super super excited and this is such a great way toe unwind the day toe have my favorite instagram app. I want to say or marketer be up here with me because I discovered Prince to Graham when I was redesigning my business cards, which I do frequently. I've had so many business cards. What's the first perfect business car? What do I want to put on it? So I want put Google plus like all my social sites, clog up the business card. It's like too much the websites there. A picture of me is there and then I discovered for Instagram I'm like, Oh my God, if I can have my Instagram photos be my business cards that's being one with my brand. In addition, Teoh having my instagram be my phone case. But for Instagram is amazing because they take all the beautiful images that you create on Instagram and turn it into art. Turn it into its like the nineties used to be all about printing your photos. Now it's all about celebrating your instagram posts, So I'm gonna let Tamer talk more about what h...

e brought with him today because there's so many goodies up here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think you started off introducing us a little bit. Um, on, like you had mentioned, were really into the idea of getting the digital back into the physical space. So our company has been lucky to take off with letting people bring their digital prints, uh, back into their own homes in the form out of square prints or album books or posters or framed prints or photo albums and line people scrap IQ with them. They can use them at their own businesses leaving their contact cards out on the table. We've also created this system that's speaking up now. Oh, yeah. This is our life printer. Um, I think it's been on on the show all day today, but it allows anyone Teoh choose a hash tag and then print the photo alive. And this one just came in. I think they're watching us. We've had that set up in the kitchen, actually. Cool. We've been a lot of these coming in throughout the day. You may have seen it on the camera earlier, so we've been watching. What's so cool about this one Tamer is that the artist actually has. What? She's right in the picture. Cool. Um, so, yeah, I can give you a little bit of history about how How are companies started? We are founder Bell Otan. Uh, started the company, actually is an art project in San Diego. He was doing his mff ucsd, and he had the realization that he could create a product that allows people Teoh bring digital photos into the physical space again. And we started with actually a Facebook friend poster which allowed you, Teoh, go online to our site, click authenticate your account, and it would automatically populate a poster. I think we have one of them right there. Yeah, I get it. I think the way people print Yeah, the poster. It's right there in the frame in the ice and work. But it allowed people to create a photo grid poster with all their Facebook friends taking up the images around that same time, Uh, that the company started. Instagram actually came online and created their app, and it was an easy transition from Facebook to Instagram and Instagram Printing is the company that really took off. We were the first people to start Instagram printing and we still hold our position Our number one Google ranking as instagram printers because we got in so early. Um, and we've expanded since then from offering just the photo grid poster. And now we have, like, little album books, I think Yes. So you should off your contact cars that you think this is. So we recently just started doing the contact. Yeah, those were great. We have kids. I actually, you know, a lot of people using, like, save the dates or like wedding related. Yeah. Your baby announcements. A lot of stuff like that. I don't see you showed your little contact cars that you had. We just started releasing these bigger double sided printing cards. So a lot of people, a lot of our customers, we're out to us. They do blogger fares or those sorts of things, and they want something on their table. So as people go by, they take a look at their things that could grab it thes work out perfectly. Because if you have your instagram feed filled with all of the products that you're creating, we print all your instagram images on one side and then the reverse can be whatever you'd like. I just put our AC social PS handle on here, but it works great for everything. So we have. All of our products are buttons are prince and the creative ways that people use them. There's, ah, about production assistants, Miles pulling up our photo strips, which I have here is Well, yeah, we do a lot of our production in same. It's in San Francisco here in the city. Um, and we've been able to experiment, experiment with a lot of our products are our photo strips have taken off recently? Really well. And they were a product of us creating posters in the studio and the one day we cut one of them weird, and we realized, Oh, that kind of reminds us of, like this of the old school fed a strip. So that's how that happened. Yeah, kind of retro. Yeah, exactly. And that's actually how we talk about it in, um, on our social media channels. Throwback. Yeah. What I really like is that so many of the artists that are creating art can actually now take what they're creating and turn it into a product that they could essentially sell or give away our Yeah, definitely. Yeah, We have a lot of people who do have an artist portfolio, and they're interested in ways Teoh share their work with people and at the same time advertised for themselves. So are double sided prints work really well for that. And we also do large format printing. So we have these photo grid posters, but we also do a single image. That's really big, too. So and we've created an IPhone app. That's really easy. Teoh, select any photo from your IPhone. Drop it directly into your, uh, into your cart, and it will be there in a couple days. It's Prince Studio Nap is called Prince Studio. We have new version coming out pretty soon, and it should be pretty exciting. We've been meeting with a lot of people, literally can just go into the app, click on anything that any of your photo libraries and you can choose any of the products that we have. Um, excited. I've made a couple mistakes when I've ordered Yeah, I actually customer service team Waas talking to Seo. We've had the pleasure. No, e. My mistake was I thought I was ordering the contact cards, but I got greeting cards, which I ended up liking because they make great thank you cards. They just got me doing another product. So it was all good. So our audience online would like to know if you can talk about print Prince two grams instagram strategy. Yeah, I get that, um, biggest. The main tenant of our strategy right now I think is, um I myself work on the instagram. Our founder, Ben, works on the instagram. We have Shareece working on the instagram, so we just the three of us alone. Having three different points of view kind of adds to the diversity of the type of post that we're doing when we also all critique each other. So if something one person has the idea to put up like, oh, let's put up square prints and say they're on sale like the other two of us might be like. It's a little like, too obvious. Let's try and, like, work this work this photo into more of a giveaway or more of like a customer feature. So there's ways Teoh advertise your products without knowing without selling them. You know there's ways to show people. Um I mean, the only reason why anyone would want to buy any by one of our products is because of, you know, the magic of the product itself. And that's what we want to focus on. We don't necessarily want to focus on the price discount or like the sale or anything like that. It's more about how our people using them and what sort of, ah, what sort of innovative things air are they allowing people to do and share in their in their own worlds? Yeah. And I even like how, When you are showing your products your like, this white feel the goal. Yeah, that was actually a customer photo. So we've been really lucky to have a lot of people using our prints. Studio hashtag we regularly pull customer photos from there and contact them directly. We always give them a gift card for the site, just toe. Thank them for letting us use their photo and for posting the photo in the first place. That's great, you know. So in looking, I think so many of the artisans and creators out there can get a lot of inspiration. By the way that you're posting and humanizing your brand. And even though you're showing your products, I'm looking at the heart now the one that you have here. It's always it's always get with giving. It's not with ever selling, like I know I don't feel like you're selling anything. It's just a great picture that I'm looking at, right, because, um, I mean advertising his moved past, trying to sell people products. Uh, everyone has now become this field where it's people show you what they want. And from there it's. Advertisers are not giving content. We don't have to create content anymore. We're given content to use. Um, that's cool. And the other part about it is we do like to keep the feet interesting with shots like no neck drafts. Yeah, and stuff to kind of keep people like Sometimes it doesn't have to be about social print studio at all. Sometimes it's more about building the character of our city, and the cat got over 3400 likes. Yeah, never underestimate the power of cats. That's pretty wild. Audience is also hoping that you can walk us through your products and also let us know how the creatives that we have in our audience can put things instagram and prince a gram into action for their business. Yeah, I've gone Teoh a little bit of the products on and I think I've touched. Based on some of those things I mentioned using the larger contact double sided squares that we have now for bogging booths. We've also had a larger companies. Pete's Coffee, Facebook. They've contacted us to do custom framing posters for them, and they use these products. Um, like this framed print here will generate all the all the people in their community who have hashtags Pete's coffee around the new store and they'll take all those photos, put them in their post here. And then they have that up in their new caught in their new shot before they open. It has become wall art for their Yeah, exactly way have I've gone Teoh clothing boutiques here in San Francisco. Azalea and I've walked in seeing the poster on the wall. And then, like, did you guys get that from principal? Yeah, so I mean, my goodness, yeah, it's definitely a great way to show the customers who are walking into your store. Hey, we recognize that you guys are sharing our content. You know you Are you coming up with new products frequently, Or like that many book the little tiny. But that's the thing. This is a new one of the staples. I need to get one of those. This is one of any one of these little thing s so much fun. I mean, like a little product like that. Giving that out of gift as a gift or even in winning and fighting is a place with gifts of the bride and groom, including in your packaging. If you're distributing products, there's a lot of cool ideas. You have some in the pipeline that get out. Yeah. Actually, we have this one right here that's about to be released. We just started doing square magnets. We have round magnets on their everything you want. That's a good owner. Um, no spam allowed. That's a span. Um, yeah. These aerial shots from our from our collective feeds in the office, but this square magnets air coming out, hopefully by the end of the day. What is your best selling item of all that you have? Definitely the square France, Because of the format of instagram. I mean, people are taking photos in a square format, So, uh, yeah, there's these are all from our social PSP. So he's actually all of our products. Yeah. We've been seeing some more pictures come out way to show that we've been having so much fun with printer in the office. I'd like to just hear a little bit more about that printer and how people use that for their business. I guess it's all just sort of taking that digital world and bring it into real life. Yeah. So they're spitting in a lottery here. Money coming? Yeah, Um, so I think I touched the base of a little bit out of company started. So when we first started, someone contacted us and was interested to see if we could do instagram printing live at Coachella, actually, of all places. So, um, we've we've never been, uh, have come to say no to a challenge. So even though we just started, we probably had maybe five people. Um, we built a system that allowed the live printing of Instagram's at an event using a hashtag. And at that point, it was definitely not a streamlined as the machine sitting behind. I think we had people running back and forth in the desert with little USB cards. It was it was not. But three years later on, we're on stage with the life printer and it works really well. We've gone literally across the country with it back and forth a couple times on. And, um, people have used the live printer for events ranging from Let's see, new releases. Teoh. We do live. Uh, we do events here in San Francisco. We recently did event for bold Italic where they had their micro hood event. So we set the printer up there. Um, it's a great way. Just Teoh select a hash tag and spread awareness about it by having people get excited about seeing their own photos printed. And it gives people a take away, too. So we include this custom branding on the bottom for every life printer event, and it's really fun working, mostly because it's so much fun. I have a question about your logo, actually, sure. So is that local you started with because I think you just nailed the logo. Yeah, Having a great logo is so memorable. It's Yeah, I wonder if the local you started with it? Yeah, this is the logo way started with I think there was a couple generations found out a sticker appears wanted to illustrate something. So the main the cool thing about our logo is obviously the heart. But the idea was, it's the three primary colors for an anchor for a printer. Yeah, so you know, it works perfectly for us because we do have a Lot 11 studio. But, you know, you also have a lot of printers. Yeah, any advice for those small business owners out there? Because that's what a lot of our audiences online, that's what we have. A lot of people hear anything for them. If they're intimidated by something like this, how can they get into the world of taking their instagram and bringing it into real life? Um, let's see. There's authenticity definitely helps. Just I think I still consider a small business, you know, um and it helps. It helps to be a small business because you don't have to check through five different channels to get something approved. You have the ability to experiment, and learning is like the best way I mean experimenting and learning is the best way. Teoh, you know, give yourself the brand that people want to follow up, and that's something that we've been doing. I think it rings through our feed like obviously, we do a lot of experimentation, and that's something that catches people's interests. So don't be afraid to try new things. I would definitely say Don't be afraid to fail. It's probably even more important, Um, because it's we're still learning every day. And I think a lot of a lot of people in the small business universe are really trying new things that I mean, especially with the amount of new technology that we have coming out with. Instagram with Twitter with buying. I mean, we have all these different ways to contact our customers and see what they're interested in that it's, uh, definitely an exciting time to just, you know, be out there in in the in the sphere of it all and absorbing it and shooting it back out. I mean, there's a lot of ah, there's a lot of possibility. Yeah, you have any questions? Are you just amazed by all the time they excited? So go and grab the microphone. I see it. Okay. What? So what is your instagram? Uh, handle I a little confused Social PS? It's not Princeton. So you might want to talk about that. It is a little confusing. I know that. We see we experiment. That's your mention. That's your twitter handle. Yeah. So we went with a social prince CDO because we didn't want to limit ourselves to a certain, um, a certain website or a certain product. Instagram press was a website that took off and definitely became successful. Indefinitely was a very strong pillar of our of our entire company at this point. But we still our company that creates APS. We have a print studio app that isn't called instagram because it's not about just printing instagram photos. You can put any photo that's on your phone. Um, and we've also built some other sites. We built the prints studio website that allows you to print any photos from your desktop. We've built blueprints that allows you to select any any photo from Facebook. And we also have our entire creative are live creative event agency, where we create experiences for people beyond just printing instagram photos Oh, this is the live Instagram printer, but we've created gift booths. We've done visualize er's. We've done a lot of interesting stuff, so we're here today discussing in Sri Imprinting. But we chose social print Studio because our company does expand beyond just the reach of printing Instagram photos. You're here? Yeah, we're in San Francisco. We started in San Diego, moved to Berkeley on and then we came to San Francisco about a year ago. Final thoughts for us here. Um, let's see. I would just say, uh, definitely check us out Definitely right to us. We love contacting, are interacting with our customers. That probably might be a final point. I want to leave. It is Just listen to your customers. Like to the t. I mean, when we started, we didn't know what we were doing, necessarily. People told us what we should be doing, and we grabbed hold of that invaluable advice and we ran with it and a lot of the products up here. We're customer ideas. A lot of the, uh a lot of the things that we've been able to find success and came from customer feedback. So don't underestimate the yeah listening to your customers. That's a great that I think that's a great point. Yeah. Listening to the comments that are being made when I When I hear the same question or see the same thing at least five times, I know I need to take action and create either PdF to download to explain it further or, you know, a product that they're asking for over and over again. To your point. Yeah, we have a saying in the office. When we get five people right, we kind of think if there's five people writing about it, there's probably 50 people who aren't writing about it but are thinking the same thing. So not everyone's going to give you feedback. So if you only get two people writing about it, multiply by 10. You know that's a good point. Yeah, alright, awesome. Thank you so much. I think I need to just hold up this poster because what he did was he celebrated everybody that is being talked about or mentioned here. Oh, and so taking this home, I'm not used to raise Yeah, so that he had asked me for some images before coming to create the poster and this is it. So that's really, really amazing. Wow! Small business gone huge. I think you he said. He's still a small business, but there's 20 employees now. They said, Wow, this this image is on my instagram account. Soupy Zimmerman. You might need to go back quite a bit to find it, but I will. We talked about tagging right, and this was a perfect example. If you touch that picture on Instagram, there's probably 30 plus people that come up because I have Gary Vaynerchuk quote there. So I tagged Gary. I have Mari Smith. I tag Mari Michael ports book. I tag Book yourself solid everyone that you sailed. Um, all the images, all the signs that I created for social media marketing world don't condone it. Surfer Simple green smoothie. They're all there. I tagged them all, so they all got a notification that they were tagged and I just spread out all my pictures and just tag them all. So that was this again, you know, connecting with other brands that I align myself with. Um, and it's just so much fun creating your business card with your instagram post. So now I think about that when I do my post. Like Okay, this is gonna be a business card you can put. And by the way, you can put your you're email, your phone number, your web. You can put four things. Your website and I put my at mention on instagram two of them. So people confined me there, and I definitely get attention. When I had those business cards out, which is great you're talking about in your profile eso on the back of the card. You could you could choose for things for your contact. So I have two of them I have at the instagram expert, which is one of my accounts on. I also have at CB Zimmerman. I also have my email. My might have put my phone number. I wanted to make it so people could really contact me when I hand them out. So, you know, instead of all my social media buttons and everything else that used to be on my business cards, I had a quick question about tagging. Yeah, so you tagged all of these people in the the post, the actual host, or in the secondary, comment on the image. Okay, you can tag the image, and you can also tag them in. The description is doing basically the same link when it's redundant. Is it redundant? It is a little redundant, but what it does is it makes it when people touch a photo and the see that account that can easily touch it and go right to that account. So you're bringing them to someone that you align your brand with. So, for example, book yourself solid. I love Michael Port. He was my business coach. She is a good friend when I if anyone and that's my favorite business book. Quite frankly, book yourself salt. So when you touch on that, it takes you right over to his account, and I did have it in the description as well. But it's just sometimes people just touching the image to double tap. So the minute they touch it, they all pop up. All the tags make, then, yes, But then there's another thing about them getting notifications every time somebody likes or comments or no, no, they get a notification that they were at mentioned. Okay, and that's it. That's it. Okay. Yes, They don't keep getting only okay. on that. Okay? No, it's not like Facebook. We get inundated with every notification that everyone does, right? And I'm just thinking of the etiquette piece of it. Yeah, I I tag people that I know that my followers will want to start following because of the value that they add to my community. So that is my the way that I tag everyone might have. You might have different strategy, but, you know, when Robin talked about celebrating her the jewelers, I think you want to give a shout out to them. They're the designers that she's using the images and posting.