Get High at Work!

Learning Instagram

Written by

Kevin Sandlin

in

When I learned that Instagram had overtaken Twitter with more than 300M users, I though it might be time to try it out. I was in the early majority on Facebook and Twitter, but obviously I’m way behind the laggard curve on Instagram.  Here’s what I’ve learned since joining and participating on Instagram since January 1, 2015.

  • The UI is great. I’ve read a lot of other people’s opinions on the Instagram user experience, and they’re right. It’s simple, and very intuitive. Capture, edit, add text, share.
  • Not friendly with Twitter. But don’t share directly on Twitter. Obviously, the higher ups on one side or the other have decided they don’t want to play nice. When you share an image from the Instagram app to Twitter, you get a link and not an image. Bad form, and I’m guessing it’s on the Twitter side. Anyone know for sure?
  • Integration with Facebook is complete. Instagram is a startup unicorn success story (<2 years old, 10 employees, sold for $1Billion to Facebook), and Facebook has done well in integrating the service into its main UI. When you share an image to Facebook from the Instagram app, it looks great; however…
  • The image in Instagram has to be square, or else it’ll get cut off like mine did yesterday, when I shared an image and quote from MLK. The quote got cut off, as you can see below, on both Instagram and Facebook.
  • “Take and share pictures that nobody else would see otherwise” is the main calling of Instagram, so it’s not (or at least no longer) about selfies (thank. you. God!).  That’s a great mantra, and I hope they continue to preach it.
  • Instagram breaks their own “Best Practices”. I teach classes on Digital Marketing for General Assembly’s Atlanta location (in fact I’m leading “Social Media Strategy” tonight!). Instagram is now a big part of the Digital Marketing strategy for any business. One of the best practices is to use less than 200 characters of text with any image.  Follow Instagram on Instagram, and you’ll quickly find out that they don’t abide by that rule.
  • You can’t share links. This one was the biggest surprise for me, but now I get it. Instagram wants the image to be the destination, not the bright shiny object that takes you someplace else. You can tag users (like @kevinrsandlin) and use Twitter-like hashtags, but not URLs to other sites.

I avoided Instagram for a long time because I figured it was just selfie-central, but that’s not the case (or maybe I just don’t follow any selfie-kings).  It may have been like that early on, but because the crew at Instagram has done a really good job eating their own dog food and teaching their users how to use the medium very well. It’s a great place to share and see great images of life.

Comments

Leave a comment

More from Kevin

  • DGM4 Starts Tuesday at General Assembly

    If by now you have not made your way down to spend some time at General Assembly at Ponce City Market, you’re pretty much doing it wrong. GA is a great global brand in the digital training space, and they’ve built up a first class operation in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. Tomorrow night at 6:30pm,…

  • Content + Images = Dope

    Good content is nothing without good images. It’s like PB&J. Or a bagel and schmear. Or popcorn and butter. My love affair with food aside, content and high-quality complementary photos and graphics are the perfect match. The Lowdown There’s a reason you can’t have content without an image. It’s the world we live in now:…

  • My process for creating blog content

    When you create blog content for a living, you can’t wake up each day and say, “ok, how we gonna do this today?” You have to have a process. Just like the process that we teach in Pitch Practice every week, it’s a construct that you start with and then adjust to your own style,…

  • 3 Reasons Why Every Digital Marketer Should Learn to Code

    This post originally appeared on the General Assembly blog in Digital Marketing, Work Life. The definition of “marketing” hasn’t changed in 100 years or more. However, the methods, tactics, and tools of marketing have changed rapidly in the last 10 years. Today, if you want to lay claim to the title “digital marketer,” you’d be…

  • 7 Upcoming Speaking Events at SuperNova South and General Assembly

    Summer is almost over, the kids’ school starts next week, and the fall schedule is about to kick into high gear. I’ll be teaching, leading, and otherwise getting up in front of people on several occasions for various reasons on a plethora of different topics in the coming weeks. Here’s the list of upcoming events.…

  • The 3 Ingredients for Outstanding SEO

    This post originally published on the General Assembly Digital Marketing Blog. Since Google took over ownership of the search functionality on the internet, the term “SEO” (search engine optimization) has been top of mind for any serious website owner. If you cannot be found easily when someone searches for your product or service on Google,…

  • Three great questions about social media strategies

    Last night I led a full house class called “Advanced Social Media Strategies” at General Assembly. This class is fun to teach, and we had a very large group with tons of great feedback, questions, and anecdotes to share. There were three questions in particular that we spent some extra time on. Should “going viral”…

  • Content Marketing Takes a Turn for the Worse

    When content marketing was first hailed as an initiative for brands to reach customers, marketers and consumers alike couldn’t get enough of it. But in the past couple of years, content marketing has turned down a dark path. We’re now producing gobs of articles and podcasts and social posts that mostly repeat each other. They…

  • Digital Marketing Terms & Metrics

      We kicked off a new class last night at General Assembly called “Digital Marketing Key Terms & Metrics.” We had a great turnout, and I tried a non-traditional delivery of this class. I didn’t use a slide deck. #FREEDOM! Instead, we started off with a little brain-freeing inspiration from this fantastic video. No, instead,…