Instagram: Love it or Hate it

Jason McDonald touches on the tips and tricks for Instagram for a quite a while in his Social Media Marketing Workbook. In addition to the tips and trick, he also gives some helpful insights on how Instagram works for the personal users all the way to the professionals. He starts by outlining the basic stuff like what goes into an Instagram profile including; profile picture, timeline, status stats and a bio. After this he goes on to outline the elements of a post and then he gets into what us as young professionals or even just avid Instagram users would find very useful and here are my top 3.

1. Converting a Personal Profile to a Business Profile

For all of you young aspiring entrepreneurs out there in the world, this can be a very useful tool. I never knew this could be done until I took the time to create a separate Instagram page for my photography and as I scrolled through the settings I saw the slider. I had no reason to click it, but McDonald explains well as to why this can be useful. It allows for people to use a contact button at the top of your page in order for people to get things like directions to your business, phone numbers to call and emails to contact for any further information needed.

2. Search by Location

This feature of Instagram, I feel, is often underused or even unheard of. This can be used to find out what is going on in your area or anywhere of your choosing. If you go to advanced search, you can type in any location you would want to look at, for example New York City. If I type in and search New York City, I can see all non-private posts geotagged in New York City. This can be used to acquire inspiration for posts, see new types of content or just see what is happening in the Big Apple.

3. Show Off

Instagram, McDonald says, is best used for businesses when they appeal to our narcissistic side. Instagram is a place we go to show off something we’ve done, something we’re proud of or just to show off what we can do. Businesses see this and take advantage of it. By using their analytics, they can see what we as consumers respond to and they can take advantage. Using Instagram to show off is human nature like McDonald says, making it very easy for businesses to take us into account and market for a specific demographic very easily.

McDonald touches on a lot of good subjects in his chapter about Instagram and it’s hard to pick just a few of his useful tips. Those mentioned are just a few of my favorites and if I ran a business Instagram account I would use these for my advantage.