I wanted to talk a little further on Instagram this week, why it might be the right tool for some self-promotion. While having a Facebook page is almost essential it might not longer the best way to get attention. Facebook serves as a more of a guestbook or holding space for all the other media available.
This is a mobile based, real time sharing platform gives users a way to combine visual and text to grab consumers. Originally designed to pick up where twitter failed in the image-sharing realm, there is now a whole new tactic to being a super user. What Instagram allows you to do is make visual statement and expand on it with text. For me I might post a picture of post a picture of some students inside of a museum trailer and in the text put something like “Students from @WestMiddleSchool are learning to Think Like an Artist with #DIAaway. Come see us @WestboroLibrary 2/14-2/17”. To create that text I needed to do a quick search to find out if the attending middle school has a twitter or Instagram account, I need to know the event hashtag and search for the event sites Instagram or twitter. In the end all easy steps if you want to create maximum impact.
Instagram primarily uses a square format but now also allows for wider images and helps a user with some simple editing along with pre-set filters. Each filter allows members to add to the overall mood you want to create. For a museum program with kids I want to make sure the image looks bright and colors bold.
Now that I have the image and text ready I will choose what additional forums I want this image to be shared on. This is exactly why Instagram is such a great tool, it creates content for other platforms. I would choose to share this image on the Facebook page that Josh and I have set up for our professional lives (not my personal page), the twitter feed for our professional lives, and possibly foursquare/swarm (this is a geotagging app that would make that image available to anyone looking at the location on one of those platforms). There are even further options as they fit your current needs. The benefits are that you are easily creating content to push out to whatever platform desired users are seeking. Using the hashtag and @user connection you helps a post to reach even further.
The complicated element of Instagram is choosing hashtags, figuring out the right ones to use takes some time. By searching some terms within the app you can hook onto what is popular and will fit your needs. Don’t hesitate to search via a tag you came up with then look at what other terms are used on popular posts. You’ll quickly be able to take part in the discussion.
**For my regular readers this post has a slightly different format, as it is part of my coarse work for SNHU.
Keller, K.L. (2013) Strategic brand management: building, measuring and managing brand equity. Pearson Education, Inc. Fourth Edition
Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press.
Streatfield, B. (2015, December 23). “Rise of a tech giant: the history of Instagram”. The Telegraph. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/technology-video/12064686/Rise-of-a-tech-giant-the-history-of-Instagram.html