Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the deliberate social media marketing practices of a start-up company. The study aims to measure the effects of these practices (i.e. following potential customers and liking and commenting on their posts on Instagram) on creating and increasing awareness of the company’s business and gaining followers for the company’s Instagram account. Design/methodology/approach – The research is exploratory in nature and adopts an approach similar to that of action research. The research was enabled and facilitated by collaboration between the researchers and a company representative. The company offers an application for young mothers. Findings – The model developed in this study identifies the effects of the practice of endorsing and interacting with customers for marketing purposes. It points out following as a first-order practice that smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can employ to gain followers instantly on Instagram. Research limitations/implications – The method used limits the generalisability of the findings. However, the findings offer preliminary insights for future studies on Instagram marketing in SMEs. Practical implications – Companies can attain success in social media marketing by actively engaging with customers and potential customers on various social media platforms. Originality/value – There is a paucity of research focussing on Instagram marketing in SMEs. The model in this study contributes to theory on Instagram marketing and offers a framework that can help managers plan Instagram marketing strategies.

Introduction

The number of social media users worldwide is growing each year. Aside from the sheer volume of users, the breadth of different types of social media platforms is increasing as well (Hoffman and Novak, 2012). Social media are becoming an integral part of everyday life for communicating and sharing information and have transformed consumer behaviour, which is a development that companies must respond to (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content with companies and their brands (Hanna et al., 2011; Parent et al., 2011). The strategies and tools for companies to interact with their customers and facilitate co-creation have changed dramatically with the emergence of social media. Different social media platforms have become a natural part of companies’ marketing strategies (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Kietzmann et al., 2011; Weinberg and Pehlivan, 2011), particularly in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) ( Jones et al., 2015; McCann and Barlow, 2015; Taiminen and Karjaluoto, 2015). Mangold and Faulds (2009) label social media platforms as new hybrid elements of the promotion mix. With more and more people using mobile devices, numerous social media applications have gone mobile, and new entrants are appearing (Hoffman and Novak, 2012; Kaplan, 2012). Previous research on social media marketing and SMEs has primarily focussed on social media adoption and performance, as well as the key drivers, barriers and enablers for these processes, both in a business-to-consumer (Dutot and Bergeron, 2016; Jones et al., 2015; McCann and Barlow, 2015; Taiminen and Karjaluoto, 2015) and a business-to-business context (Michaelidou et al., 2011). The findings show a resistance to adopting social media in SMEs. The lack of knowledge, time and vision of how to integrate social media into the marketing strategy have been identified as barriers to adoption, which is also conditioned by the products and services offered by the SMEs. Some products and services are simply better communicated through social media (Taiminen and Karjaluoto, 2015). There is also evidence that the adoption of social media in SMEs is not always driven by a purposeful agenda through which value could be added to the customer experience (Durkin et al., 2013). In addition to that, McCann and Barlow (2015) elaborated on the problems and absence of follow-up measurements in social media marketing efforts in SMEs. A few studies have been conducted on SMEs’ use and perception of specific social media platforms such as Facebook (Wong, 2012) and Twitter (Bulearca and Bulearca, 2010; Geho et al., 2010). Research has also discussed which SMEs are suited to using blogs in marketing (Chua et al., 2009).