How To Use Instagram & Is it really worth it?
Why Is Instagram Such A Powerful Tool?Instagram has grown considerably in the last 5 years and has even taken over Twitter in terms of monthly users. With over 300 million users worldwide it's a huge free resource to market yourself or your business. I'm here to teach you how to take advantage of this beautiful social app. When it first came into the public eye, FB was still booming and not a great deal of people were using it or even knew what it was (including me). There had been similar apps for adding filters to photos but Instagram made this process easier than others and the interface was clean and modern. Soon enough the teenage crowd swarmed to see what all the fuss was about and the rest was history. These days it seems everyone has an account over there and everyone knows about it! This has led to brands utilising the platform to get their products in front of the younger crowd, and they're having huge success. The year is 2016 and Instagram is now seen as the cool relative to it's parent network Facebook. In recent years more and more youngsters have deleted their FB accounts and shifted to the trendy photo app instead. This could be due to a number of factors including older folk joining FB and ultimately, cramping their style. After all, seeing your nan comment on your every status doesn't exactly shout 'cool!' So why should you use Instagram? Do you want to get your message out to a younger crowd? If so, this app is your best option. Do you want massive engagement levels? Is your brand extremely visual? If you're an artist or photographer Instagram should be your number one stop, full stop. Instagram is very visual and therefore attracts more eyeballs because, well, people like pretty pictures. It's more satisfying to look through a feed of photos than having to read through a lot of text. That is the beauty of Instagram, the text field is located below the image and therefore the viewer sees the picture first. It's a win win because before the viewer sees what you have to say, they can soak up the same information in a more digestible format, provided your image is directly related to the text below. Of course, if your content is more text based then your best option would be to stick to FB for now until you find a way to create brilliant and relevant images to go with your articles. However unlike FB, you only have space for one link at any time and that is in your bio. That is where FB has the advantage when you're promoting a lot of text or blog posts on your social feeds because as we all know, you can put a link just about anywhere on FB. But more on this matter in a future blog post... Other types of brands who do well on Instagram are cooks or food enthusiasts. It's so easy to just get your phone out of your pocket and take a snap of that delicious chocolate cake you just baked. And, just about all people like food! So cookery accounts do very well with engagement. Instagram Engagement Levels & Reach The last point I made leads me onto the subject of engagement. This is one of the top reasons you need to get your brand onto Instagram if you already haven't. Compared to my FB pages I've seen 60% more engagement through using Instagram effectively and posting at the right times.. It is no secret that in recent years FB updated it's algorithm to the point where your FB page was not reaching even 10% of your fans, and this meant less likes, comments and shares. Then came the constant battering of asking you as the page admin if you'd like to 'boost' your posts. But...not for free. Oh no, you'd have to pay FB to make sure that your latest funny picture or quote was in front of your followers faces. It seemed like FB had finally caught up with the big fish and was taking advantage of the pages with 100,000+ fans. Almost over night, I know that a lot of page admins wanted to chuck in the towel altogether on FB because this was having a serious impact on their social reach and ultimately, business. Then we have Instagram, the holy grail of reach and engagement. Instagram has the best of both worlds when you want eyeballs on your content. Although you are free to write a long description beneath your image, hardly anyone does and that's because people on Insta don't want to read too much if they can help it. Instead you should be using the text field to put in relevant hash tags. Hash tags on Insta make your image appear in a field amongst other images with the same tags. But more on this later... If you use; #love, and someone enters love In the search box, they will see your image if you've just posted it and will more than likely click on your picture (if they find it interesting enough! This means the viewers you get on your content are more targeted. As an example, let's say David posts a photo of his cat. He enters #love #cute #cat. His photo would appear in each hash tag 'field' and posted at the right time, he could generate some decent likes and comments from the users browsing through these different fields. Each different hash tag would be like a different door way for people to walk through to see his content. If you continue to use a strong hash tag strategy, over time you will have highly targeted 'door ways' for people to find your content. This is basically free advertising for you as the account owner. On FB you have to hope someone stumbles across your page, or you have to pay for them to see it. Imagine what all those extra viewers could do for your business? Like FB sharing, Instagram users can 'regram' something if they like it, exposing your content to even more people. That is the thing about Insta, it's got a 'sharing is caring' attitude where the users are more engaged and eager to like, comment and share on anything that sparks any kind of emotion in them, that's why as an example, cute animal accounts get a lot of engagement because people find it hard to resist liking something that makes they say 'awww'. By now you should be able to see why using Instagram is so vital for you as a content publisher or business owner. Now let's get into the basics - how to use Instagram. How To Use Instagram 101 Instagram is a very clean and easy to navigate app. It's design makes it easy to share what you love at the touch of a button. Once you've signed up by entering your email address and username, you can instantly start posting your photos. So how do you use it? The Home ScreenThe home screen is basically your feed. The photos which show up here are photos that are suggested by Instagram, but usually are photos posted by the people that you follow. At the top right of this screen you can find your inbox. Click on it to view your direct messages where you have the option to delete or reply. The Search ButtonThe search button is the tool you use to discover people to follow. Just type in a name and look people up. There are some different ways in which Instagram let's you search. These are the top (people you've recently searched) by people, by tags and by places. When you start typing in a name or word, the top recommendations will appear at the top of the results. Start typing in a name to discover someone you know or for example a celebrity you want to follow. You can also search by tags. Tags make the Instagram world go round and there are millions to search from. Start typing in a subject your are interested in and see what pops up. lastly, you can search by place. Instagram allows its users to tag where they are when they take a snap, this means you can search for photos taken at particular places throughout the world. The Notification Button You guessed it, the notification button is where you receive your notifications. These range from likes, comments, follows and re-grams. You can click on this button to view all your latest notifications in one stream. The User Button The user button lets you view your profile. On this screen you can view you profile picture and you can change it form here. Just click on it to be given the option to upload or change it. You can click edit on your bio to start typing in something about yourself. On this screen you can also see the number of followers you have and the number of people you are following. You can also see how many posts you have made in your accounts lifetime. Use the 3 vertical dotted lines at the top right of this screen to view your settings. From here you can invite friends, change your password set your account to private and a number of other important functions. Now we've gone over the very basics, you should have a good understanding of how to use Instagram and how it can benefit you. Let's move onto part two where you'll learn what niches perform well on Instagram.
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Sean Michael
Make money on the side using your social media accounts. |