The Top 5 Tips to Make the Most of Your Instagram

With 600 million monthly active users, Instagram is a great platform for all organizations to take advantage of, especially if you’re interested in reaching a younger or more diverse audience. Below are five tips for making the most of your Instagram account.

1. Maintain your presence

Although it can be unrealistic to post an engaging photo each day, trying to post at least a few times a week is a good place to start so people don’t forget they’re following you. Besides posting your own photos, interacting with other Instagram users by liking and commenting on their posts is another great way to stay active and involves less forethought.

2. Be diverse in the types of photos you post

Shout-out to two of our clients, Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association, and Pride of Baltimore, who do a great job at this. Wissahickon posts a mixture of staff photos, beautiful nature shots, and people interacting with the watershed.

Soup to Owls is back! On Fri. March 10 from 6:30 to 9:30 join us at WVWA Headquarters for a warm bowl of soup and a presentation on owl biology and the species likely to be found in the Wissahickon. After dinner, we’ll head out for a moonlight walk at Armentrout Preserve in search of these nocturnal creatures. Register online at WVWA.org/calendar. Photo: Wikipedia BUT Great Horned Owls have been seen in our preserves!

A post shared by WVWA (@wissahickonwatershed) on Mar 3, 2017 at 12:06pm PST

Pride of Baltimore uses high quality photography, but also posts videos that give followers a behind-the- scenes look at what happens on board.

Here’s a behind the scenes look at the rigging work going on this winter. ????Dj Quads-Missing Someone. #traditionalrigging #allwoodallgood

A post shared by Pride of Baltimore (@prideofbaltimore) on Jan 14, 2017 at 8:52am PST

3. Take advantage of the new stories feature

Instagram has a relatively new feature called “stories” which allows users to publish content that stays live for only 24 hours before disappearing. It’s very similar to Snapchat, but for organizations who might not use Snapchat, Instagram stories is an easy way to get started. Stories are great for posting in-the-moment content, whether its photos or videos and really gives followers a sense of being there. You can easily add filters and graphics to these posts as well to inject some personality.

4. Expand on your posts in the caption to tell a story

Storytelling through the caption is a nice way to enhance the impact of your photos and better inform your followers. Think about what they might not know from just the photo alone and what you can tell them to give it more emotional impact or context. And whatever you do, don’t forget to use hashtags, the more the better!

5. Consider Instagram for ad campaigns

One useful thing about instagram ads is that the same targeting options that available for Facebook are available for Instagram. Targeting options include location, demographics, interests, income, buying behavior and much more.

There are three types of ads which you can chose from, photo ads, video ads and carousel ads (multiple photos). The ads will be marked as sponsored at the top, and have a link, but other than that they look like regular posts.

The Hatcher group can help you use Instagram in your next campaign. Get in touch.