How New and Innovative Instagram/Social Media Marketing Strategies are Transforming the Advertising Industry.

There's a modern-day Gold Rush happening right now--and I'm not referring to cyber currency. It's on your phone; it's Social Media and specifically Instagram. Flush with cash, opportunity, and life-changing profit potential--Instagram has captured the attention of modern-day entrepreneurs intent of living life on their own terms, free from a cubicle. Each day approximately 500 million people actively use Instagram. They just hit 1 billion users. That's staggering. To help build context, the population of New York City in 2017 was around 8.5 million. So roughly 58 New York City's use Instagram daily. Not surprisingly, Instagram has rapidly grown into a multi-billion-dollar business, earning approximately $595 million dollars in ad revenue alone in 2017.

Instagram's ability to grow, innovate, stay simple, and cross-generational has built a profit margin squarely on the backs of those peddling their main hustle or their side hustle. Instagram connects bloggers, fashion-forward influencers, peer-to-peer network marketers, restaurants, bars, celebrities and everyone in-between. Why? It provides income viability to coffee enthusiasts and world-traveling photographers, pulling in six-figure incomes by being and doing what they love. It shapes partnerships between fashionistas and retailers via commission models, allowing people to cash in on their "influencer" status--as others attempt to emulate their look and lifestyle.

Entrepreneurs on Instagram, however, are not all free-spirits or hustlers. Based on careful financial studies and market research, it has also garnered the attention of more traditionally-educated and business-minded professionals. Take, for example, Ambition Media in Southern California, an industry-leading social media marketing company. Co-founder Jerry Nourse earned his MBA from Harvard and boasts a successful career in the real estate industry. But Nourse recognized the profit-potential in Instagram and understood it was an opportunity too good to pass up and too legitimate to ignore. Nourse represents the growing presence of traditional professionals drawn from a cross-section of "normal" careers (think real estate, law, medicine, finance) who have successfully and profitably entered into the digital marketplace of social media marketing.

The boom has also drawn some shady folks into the fold--out for quick money, void of integrity. Promoters and would-be marketing companies sell dreams to users, without the proper infrastructure in place to actually deliver results. Hoping to capitalize on ignorant or ill-informed followers, they promise followers, money, success and comprehensive brand management without the data or analytics to support those claims. In short, they take consumer money, blast out poorly targeted and irrelevant ads--and leave customers without tangible returns on their investments. The emergence of get-rich-quick schemes has clouded the viability of much integrity-rich promotion and social media management companies like Ambition Media. And companies are not the only ones selling a dream presented as reality across social media. Individual users, too, commonly known as "influencers", flood feeds with false images on hoods of cars, in front of beachfront mansions, on private jets--none of which are their own. This is where Ambition Media has been able to create, maintain and grow a niche in Instagram unlike others: delivering meaningful content from its own pages, while authentically helping others build their own.

Ambition Media, at its most simple level, is a connector. Using the power of collaboration and analytics, they connect users with an authentic, positive experience ripe with content best suited for their unique lives. Two of their signature pages, as masterminded by co-founder Sherri Nourse, @MotivationMafia and @PositiveVibeQuotes, for example, serve up a daily dose of inspiration, motivation and advice in a manner that truly engages followers. Ambition's team excitedly responds to followers' questions and conduct live forums and videos to ensure their followers remain included, inspired and engaged. In keeping a steady focus on positivity and approachability, Nourse's pages attract up to 300 million per week.

Having found their own formulaic success, Ambition now successfully helps businesses and entrepreneurs with brand-building, networking, lead generation, and marketing. They connect businesses with their target consumer--the ones most likely to want to hear from them and convert to sales. While others try to emulate it, few have mastered the craft like Ambition, who now attracts clients like Lionsgate, Sony, K Swiss, Penske, Beach Whisky and more. After carefully considering their clients' product or service offering and determining the demographic niches to be reached, Ambition Media crafts an authentic message designed to resonate with the targeted demographic. Success is measured in the tangible return it delivers to its clients, in what is known as "conversions". It's one thing for a user to like a post, and quite another to get them off that page and onto another to either deliver an email address, purchase a product, or follow another page. Despite having a network fully capable of delivering over 300 million weekly impressions, they intentionally avoid carte blanche "blasting", electing instead to address more strategically specific niches best aligned with their clients' authentic brand and goals.

The vastness of Instagram and Social Media can feel both overwhelming and awe-inspiring for a budding entrepreneur or successful company. And while it remains to be seen how much revenue and profit can be tapped from its well, one thing is clear: those seeking to maximize their footprint, increase viability, experience profitability, while finding their perfect clients or customers, are partnering Ambition Media.