© 2016 The Training Collectivethetrainingcollective.com.au/wp-content/uploads/... · Instagram’....


Instagram Training Module

What is Instagram? Instagram is one of the hottest social media platforms for both personal and professional use. From the start, Instagram has set itself apart by being a visual based social media network. The main focus of the content is photos and videos. Each one of the posts shared can have a caption attached, however the focus is on the visual content. This is quite different to the micro-blogging, text based format of Twitter or Facebook which accommodates everything from blog links to text updates, video, photos, events and more. It’s interesting to note that the rise of Instagram has coincided with the rise of the smartphone. For most people, smartphones provide a portable and easy alternative to digital cameras and image editing tools like Photoshop. It seems the creators of Instagram predicted that smartphones would infiltrate our lives and would be the go-to for social updates between meetings, in the coffee line and even lying in bed. Whether this was the driving factor or not, users can only get the full experience of Instagram in the mobile application via smartphone or tablet. However, you can simply view public accounts on desktop via – www.instagram.com. Though it’s considered one of the ‘newer’ social networks, Instagram has actually been around since 2010. Since it’s launch the network has amassed hundreds of millions of users worldwide! Australia alone boasts millions of users. In fact, the usage of this platform has seen the rise in popularity of social slang and trends such as: selfies, Insta-celebrities, filters, hashtags and the term Insta-famous. Like most social networks, it has been most popular with a younger audience -Gen Y, Gen Z and early adopters in Gen X - through it’s rise to popularity. Now that it’s proven it’s going to stick around (and maybe because it was acquired by Facebook) more businesses, Gen X and Baby Boomers are signing up and becoming Instagrammers. Why is Instagram worth looking at for business? So why should you care about Instagram? It can seem like a new social media channel is becoming the ‘next big thing’ every other day and it can feel hard to keep up. To avoid social media exhaustion, we’ve put together a list of reasons why you should seriously consider Instagram for business, for personal use and ideally – both! 1. It is one of the most popular social networks and one of the fastest growing for business use Let’s talk business. There a few trade offs when it comes to social media for business. The fact of the matter is, most channels that have excellent


engagement are newer, they have less advertising and the data and analytics measurement is limited. Instagram has been in this zone for a while. Studies have shown Instagram to achieve up to 58 times higher engagement than Facebook and Twitter (http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/14-04-29-instagram_is_the_king_of_social_engagement). Businesses and organisations have realised this and the adoption of Instagram in this space is huge. 2. Brands have been ‘born on Instagram’

Triangl is an iconic Australian example of a brand that was ‘born on Instagram’. Instagram’s inherently visual nature was perfectly suited to showcasing and marketing the distinctive neoprene bikinis that are now a recognised global brand. They utilized the power of Instagram Influencers to reach their target market and go on to turn over $5million in their first year. Not bad for an ecommerce business launched by an Australian couple.

3. High organic reach is still possible The pattern of the digital world is that large and established networks become pay to play. Organic reach for business pages on Facebook for example, is virtually non-existent. The trade off here is that more established networks provide more data, better advertising targeting and an enormous user base. Conversely, Instagram sits in a sweet spot where paid advertising is available, however, the organic reach is not tampered with. This is likely to change in the future, so brands who establish themselves now will benefit later. 4. Users look for brands on Instagram

70% of users have said they have searched for a brand on Instagram. This user behaviour indicates that it is becoming expected for businesses to be active on social media networks. In some ways, social media acts as validation that a business is legitimate and still active.

5. Users can shop directly from the platform

Users look to Instagram for a lot of #inspo regarding their purchases. You will see fashionistas, interior designers and foodies tagging their favourite brands in their photos. Word-of-mouth recommendations are huge and often users want to purchase the exact items they see in a post. Plugins and platforms such as Like2Buy, FourSixty and BuyMyClothes allow users to shop these items without having to exit the network to search for them. Paid advertising have taken this to the next level by offering a Call to Action button with ‘Shop Now’ text so users do not even have to leave their newsfeed to shop! Navigating the App The Instagram mobile app is very easy to use once you have a handle on the navigation. Once you start to use the app, the actions will become so intuitive you will be double tapping, swiping and exploring without a second though!


1. The Navigation Bar There are five icons across the bottom of the screen of the application. These are your primary tools for navigation. Home The Home icon is in the left corner. This is your feed. Posts from every account you follow will curate and display in this feed. The order in which these posts display will be affected by your behaviour and engagement on the platform as well as the time posted. When you are at the top of the feed your Direct Message Inbox will be visible in the top right hand corner. These conversations are only visible by the participants in the conversation. Practical tip: Put your finger on the screen and move it downward to load new posts (you must be at the beginning of your feed for this to work). Put your finger on the screen and move upwards to scroll down through the feed. Explore The Explore icon is second from the left. This page is the hub for search and discovery in the platform. By default, Instagram will serve you posts that they deem to be relevant to you from your behaviour on the platform. The posts may be based on photos you have liked or similar to accounts you have interacted with previously. Another usefully feature of this page is the search bar. This is located at the top of the page. You can filter your results by ‘Top’, ‘People’, ‘Tags’ or ‘Places’ by clicking on the relevant tab either before or after you conduct your search. ‘Top’ includes all of the options whereas ‘People’ only displays accounts that match your search and ‘Tags’ displays hashtags relevant to your search. If you would like to discover new accounts or accounts from your existing Facebook or smartphone contacts, simply click on the icon on the right side of the search bar. This is especially useful when beginning a new account or when you want some new posts in your feed. Upload The Upload icon is in the centre of the navigation bar. This is the icon you tap to publish a post to your own Instagram feed. You have the option to upload a photo or video from the image library on your device. Alternatively you can take a photo or shoot a video through the app. Many Instagram savvy users choose to edit their post in a visual editing app prior to uploading their post to Instagram. Alternatively, you can utilise the in-app filters and editing options. A filter overlays the post and changes the whole look whereas the editing tool allows one aspect of the image to be


edited at a time to enhance the image – brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation, shadows, vignette and more. Once you are happy with the look of your image you have the option to include a caption, tag any other users (only available when posting a photo) or include a location. You can also elect to share this post directly to other social networks directly from the platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Swarm, Tumblr and Flickr. Once you have successfully published your post it will be visible on your feed. Notifications The Notifications icon is second from the right. If you have received any activity on your posts since the last time you opened the application, you will see a notification around this icon. When you tap on the icon it will display a list of all the activity on your account in chronological order. You can see which accounts have been liking or commenting on your posts and if any new accounts are following you.

If you want to switch from seeing notifications about ‘You’ to notifications about the accounts you are ‘Following’, simply tap on the tab at the top of the screen. This shows a similar feed to the ‘You’ tab but instead shows the posts liked, followed and commented on by the accounts you follow. My Account The icon on the far right is your own Instagram account. Here you can see how your account looks to your followers (or the public if your privacy settings allow). Displayed here is your account information – your bio, profile picture, name, handle, biolink, number of posts, number of followers and number of following. Below this is your latest 6-9 posts displayed in a square grid 3 images wide. To the right of your profile picture is an ‘Edit Profile’ button. Here you can make changes to your display information, picture and private information such as your account email, phone number and gender. Additionally you can access further account settings by clicking the settings cog in the top right corner of the account page. Here you can see the posts you have liked, change your password and more.

How does it work? Now that you’ve got a general understanding – let’s get started! Downloading the App To download the Instagram app you will need to visit the App Store for iOS users and Google Play for Android devices. It is free to download. The links are below:


App Store (iOS) Google Play (Android)

Setting Up Your Account To start using the app you will need to create an account. This can be done through an email login or with existing Facebook credentials.

Once you’re in the app, you will need to set up your profile. This is what people will see when they click on your account. You can go back an edit this at any time and in fact, many users go back and change their bio regularly to more accurately reflect what they are doing at that point in time. You will need to choose a handle. This is what other users will type in to tag you in photos, what will display next to your comments and how you will be referred to throughout the app. Similar to an email address, this handle must be unique. You won’t be allowed to proceed with your choice if another user has already secured the handle. Next you will choose a profile picture. Unlike other social media networks, other users cannot click to enlarge this image, so it is more forgiving if your image is not hi resolution. There is the option to import your picture from Facebook or Twitter if you would prefer to keep consistency between accounts. Keep in mind that your picture will display in a circle and the corners of the image will be cut off. Above your bio there is a line of text that displays in bold. Most users just type out their name as you can include spaces unlike a handle. However, you can use the extra character count to say a little bit more about yourself or show your personality by including your favourite emojis.

You bio is your biggest piece of static text on Instagram. There are 150 characters available for you to tell your story. Consider including some of the following: - A description about your account - Topics or interests of choice - Contact email address - Role or title - Branded hashtags for your business - Location

Underneath your bio is your bio link. It’s the main way to funnel people out of the app to an external site such as a blog, YouTube account or online shop. There is only one link allowed – make your choice wisely! As mentioned earlier, you can edit this at any time and if it is a purely personal account, you may not want to include a link at all.


Posting on Your Account Once your account is set up you are ready to start posting!

Instagram is renowned for it’s square images. ‘Shooting in square’ has become a common term for setting your camera or smartphone to a square view when taking photos. This way they are already in an Instagram friendly format. Instagram does allow images to be posted that are landscape or portrait. However, it’s best to only upload images that slightly deviate from the square dimensions as it risks some of the image being cropped. To avoid this scenario use an app like No Crop. This fits your image into the dimensions of a square and fills in the empty space with a white boarder.

Including a caption is not required but is a good way to give context to your image, tell a story, include hashtags and tag relevant people or places. Your caption can be up to 2200 characters in length but will get cut off after the first 3 lines. As well as tagging in the caption, you can elect to tag a place in the location section. If you tag a location and your account is set to public, this post will be shown in the list of Instagrams from this location and be discoverable by any user.

Once you have published your post it will appear in the feeds of the users that follow your account. If you are not sure who is following you, tap on the ‘followers’ section at the top of your account page for a list of profiles. Following Others

If you aren’t following any accounts on Instagram, your feed is going to look very bare. The easiest way to find accounts to follow is to find accounts of your current phone contacts or Facebook friends. You can find these connections by clicking on the settings cog on your account page. Two options display at the top of the screen:

• Find Facebook Friends • Find Contacts

Start by scrolling through the list of friends who already have the app. Simply click ‘follow’ to start following their account. If some of your Facebook friends that you would like to follow are not on Instagram simply search for their name in the ‘Invite Facebook Friends’ option on the same page.

Once you start engaging with posts and following other users, Instagram will start recommending accounts you might be interested in following. These can be found under the ‘Discover People’ section of the ‘Explore’ page. Click the silhouette in the search bar to access this list.


Sometimes you might decide you no longer want to follow an account. Maybe they aren’t active on Instagram anymore, they are TOO active or you’re not interested in their posts like you once were. To unfollow them you need to go to their account. Simply click on their handle or search for them in the ‘Explore’ page. Once you are on their account tap the big ‘Following’ button. This will change colour and instead say ‘Follow’. You can use this same method to check if you are still following an account and simply visit their account page to see if the button is green or not.

There are no rules about how many accounts you should follow. Too many accounts may mean you miss posts in your feed and following too few may mean that you don’t have much content to view. There are some social (and slightly vain) rules about follower to following ratio. If the number of accounts followed is the same or more than the number of accounts following you, the ratio would be considered out of balance. It’s inferred that those following you are only doing so because you followed them first. Following other accounts has been proven to be an effective way to build your own following provided they would be interested in the content of your account. Tip: Keep your account on public if you want to grow your Instagram following

Direct Messaging Most of the activity on Instagram is public. Even when an account is set to private, the followers of the account can still view all comments made by other users. The best way to have private one-on-one or group chat is via the direct message function. The main access point is the direct message icon on the ‘Home’ page. Tapping on this icon pulls up the list of all the direct messages and any pending message requests from users you don’t follow. Here you can pick up from where you left off with a conversation, or tap the ‘+’ in the top right corner to start a new message. The other access point is under any post. From left to right there is a ‘like’ icon (the heart), the ‘comment’ icon (the speech bubble) and the ‘share’ icon (the arrow). You can tap the arrow to share this post in a direct message with one or multiple other users. The notifications for direct messages aren’t very obvious. To receive real time alerts for these conversations, turn on notifications in your settings. What are the most popular niches on Instagram?

One of the most common questions people want answered is “Is Instagram right for my business?”. This question is often best answered by reframing that question from a different angle and asking “What is the opportunity for my business on Instagram?”.


Let’s start by looking at the most popular topics on the platform. They tend to be topics that lend themselves to the visual nature of Instagram including:

• Fashion • Beauty • Food • Music • Tech • Travel • Friends • Health/Fitness

This doesn’t necessarily mean that services with no tangible product to photograph or businesses in what could be considered ‘boring’ industries can’t achieve success on the platform. In fact, it means there will be less competition and more opportunity to stand out. It’s a chance to showcase personality, company culture, happy customers, client education and behind the scenes events. Demystifying Hashtags Think of hashtags like filters or folders. They organise content into categories. However, images are often relevant to multiple categories and therefore multiple hashtags can be relevant to the same image. How to Find Hashtags If you want to find new hashtags to add to your posts, try the 3 different ways below: 1. Go to the ‘Tags’ tab in the search bar of the ‘Explore’ page. Type in ‘coffee’ and you will find similar suggestions like: #coffeelover #coffeeholic #coffeetime #coffeehouse #coffeecup It will also display the number of posts with that hashtag and give an indication of how popular that hashtag is.

2. Look at hashtags from competitors or other users in a similar niche

Go to their profile and look at the hashtags they use on their posts. If they have a long caption, expand it to full view as the hashtags may be hidden at the bottom of the copy.


3. Use sites like Websta.me or Hashtagify.me to look for similar suggestions. Note that Hashtagify.me pulls their data from Twitter but many of the same hashtags still apply. Basic Rules for Hashtagging 1. Up to 30 hashtags are allowed on one post

2. Don’t hashtag every word in a sentence. Remember they are categories, not punctuation.

3. Most hashtags are available for us but Instagram has banned certain unsavoury hashtags around eating disorders and other negative content.

Practical Tip** Put your hashtag list in the first comment on your post (instead of in the caption) OR use emojis as a line break under the main text of your caption and insert your hashtag list underneath. This way the list will only be visible to those who expand your caption. Popular Editing Apps A true Instagram pro has an arsenal of apps in their smartphone for editing on the go. Try the ones below to find which are your favourites. VSCO Cam – With a cult like following, VSCO Cam has a simple range of photo filters for free and extra filter collections available for purchase. The user base for this app is so large it has it’s own hashtag #VSCO. Snapseed – This app is special because of its ability to edit only a portion of a photo. For example, if there is a shadow in the corner of your image, Snapseed enables you to increase the brightness of only that area in order to balance out the image. Afterlight – This app boasts a large range of filters and hosts a few extra editing options like rotating, flipping, cropping or mirroring your image. Layout - An app created by Instagram for Instagram. It’s a minimalistic app used to create beautiful photo collages. There are no borders within the picture, this feature makes Layout a standout from the host of other image collage apps. Boomerang – Think of this app as halfway between a picture and a video. It uses your camera to take a series of still images that create a very short, repeating GIF like video. Replay – For those who want to spice up their videos, Replay provides transition templates, music and text to be added to the footage. Instagram Analytics


There are a few ways to view data about your Instagram activity using external analytics platforms. More options are appearing on the market but the most popular choice with the most comprehensive information is Iconosquare. For a small monthly fee, you will get access to analytics tracking your most popular content, engagement, your most dedicated followers and more. One of the most loved features of Iconosquare is the data on the best time to post for your account by hour of the day and day of the week. How to Schedule Instagram Posts There are a number of tools available to assist in automating Instagram activity. However, in an effort to keep the platform as native as possible, i.e. not full of posting bots, Instagram compliant scheduling tools will still require you to press ‘Publish’ at the time you would like the post to go live. There are some tools that are completely automated but usage of these tools goes hand in hand with risks like getting locked out of your account. Here are 3 popular scheduling tools to try: Hootsuite – Perfect for those scheduling multiple social channels using this tool already. Scheduling can be done on the mobile app or via desktop. You will need to register a phone number that will receive the notification for the time you have scheduled your post. Sprout Social – A great option for those who don’t mind a paid tool, Sprout Social is known for its user-friendly interface and beautiful reporting. Apart from scheduling, this platform is makes managing conversations easy. Good for community managers and accounts with high volumes of comments. Planoly – Visual Instagram planners are becoming quite popular. Scheduling in these apps allows you to preview your feed before it goes live. This is particularly useful for those who are seeking a consistent visual aesthetic. How to Track Instagram Traffic in Your Analytics Unfortunately Instagram doesn’t integrate too well with Google Analytics. However, anyone with a blog, website or e-commerce store will want to know if users are clicking on their biolink – the ONLY available link in the app (besides paid ads). Fortunately, there is a simple and free solution. There are 2 steps to this process. Firstly, use Google’s Custom URL builder to build a URL that will speak to the parameters in Google Analytics. Enter your Campaign Source as Instagram and fill in other fields as necessary. When you have finished this step, the result is a very long (and ugly) custom URL.


The second step is shortening the URL to a more manageable size. Use a free shortening tool like bit.ly. The result is a Google Analytics friendly URL that is ready to go in your biolink! How to Create Ads for Instagram To take activity to the next level, Instagram power users should consider paid ads. As Facebook owns Instagram, these ads can be created through Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor – very convenient for Facebook ads aficionados! Instagram ads can be created to target the following objectives:

• Page Post Engagement (like boosting a post on Facebook) • Clicks to Website • Website Conversions (when you want to focus on an action being

performed on your site, not just a visit) • Mobile App Installs • Mobile App Engagement • Video Views

Once you have selected your objective you must choose Instagram as the placement. Note that you can run the same ad on Facebook and Instagram but your engagement data could be combined and sometimes it is best to create an ad specifically for Instagram. When you are creating your ad, remember your image needs to look native to Instagram. If your image blatantly screams “I AM AN ADVERTISEMENT” users will naturally skim past it. For this reason, creating ads specifically designed for Instagram is often a good idea. Like Facebook, once you have selected your targeting and budget, it will need to be approved before it goes live. To avoid hitches in this process, remember no more that 20% of your image can be covered in text. Once your ad is approved and running, view your analytics and results in Ads Manager as you would with any Facebook ad. HAPPY INSTAGRAMMING!!!

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