HOW TO SUCCEED ON INSTAGRAM

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Are you going to start a new account, or make a fresh start with an existing account? First of all it is necessary to talk through what the purpose of the account is and how you want to work with it.

​Answer these questions:

1. What guidelines should we have for photos and videos?
2. When and how often should we post?
3. What character/persona/tonality should the account have?
4. What kinds of emotions do we want to evoke?
5. What is the lowest permissible quality level for photos and videos?
6. How much variation should there be on the profile?
7. How should we handle dialogue with the audience?
8. How should we work with the Feed, with Stories and with Story Highlights?

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Is news your best discipline? Let your reporters shoot stills and video out on the job and report the news directly on the platform, for example through using Stories.

Do you have content that is interesting to a niche audience? Find out what hashtags your audience uses. Is it appropriate to tag your Feed posts and Stories with their hashtags? Read more about hashtags here.

Are human interest stories your thing? Personal stories that are emotionally moving often work well on Instagram.

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USE INSTAGRAM FOR RESEARCH

Instagram can be a great tool not just for selfies, but also for research and people finding.

Look at hashtags, geotags and related accounts – and don’t forget Stories. If something has happened in a particular town or suburb, you can quickly go in and see if someone who lives there has uploaded something using the location’s geotag or hashtag. If you are looking for people who are particularly knowledgeable about a specific subject, you can look for the accounts which appear to be leading the debate, for example.​

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STATISTICS

In order to succeed on Instagram, you need to keep track of your statistics. You can read more about this here, but in brief:
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• Ensure that the account has a business profile and is linked to a Facebook page. Then you will find Instagram Insights in the app!
  
  
• In Instagram Insights, you can see who your followers are based on age, gender and where they are in the world. You can also see the reach of your posts and Stories and how engaged the audience is with them. For example, you can see what kind of posts are getting the most comments, if a hashtag is influencing the reach of your posts and which Stories have had the most exposure.
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• By analysing these statistics, you can see for example that your followers prefer close-ups of your presenters, posts about food, or if it’s your weather forecasts that are generating the most video views. You can then use this knowledge about your audience to improve your newsroom’s/department’s efforts on Instagram.

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IN CONCLUSION

• Decide on the newsroom’s/department’s identity on Instagram.
• Decide how you are going to work with Stories, Story Highlights and hashtags.
• Touch and engage the audience with your photos and videos.
• Interact with your followers.
• Analyse and evaluate.

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Do not forget to view your own profile page! 
Is it looking good? Does it all hang together, is there a consistency about it?

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