Instagram is a place where visual expression from business inspires visible action from people around the world. — Instagram from Facebook Connect with friends, share what you’re up to, or see what's new from others all over the world. Explore our community where you can feel free to be yourself and share everything from your daily moments to life's highl.
Instagram is one of the hottest social networks right now. Besides being visually appealing and easy to access on the go, it's also pretty simple to learn how to use Instagram.
There's no better time than now to get started with Instagram. The following 10 tips can help you make the best out of your own Instagram experience so you can grow your followers and increase engagement.
Post Interesting, Colorful Photos and Videos
Instagram is all about providing value to your followers, especially if you want more engagement. In this case, your goal should be to post photos and videos that evoke some kind of emotion – happiness, humor, motivation, nostalgia, love or anything else. High-quality photos with a lot of colors tend to get the most action on Instagram.
Don't Overdo It With the Filter Effects
Instagram provides you with a bunch of filters you can apply to your photos to automatically enhance the look and style, but that trend seems to have already hit its peak. People want photos and videos that are colorful, but relatively natural-looking. Although filter effects may be tempting, try to limit your use of them to keep the color and contrast normal in most of your photos.
You can learn how to use Instagram filters to enhance their natural look rather than distort it. Check out the best Instagram filters of 2018 to learn which filters you should use for specific photos.
Feel Free to Use Hashtags, But Use Them Sparingly
Using hashtags is a great way to increase you reach on Instagram, encourage more engagement and even attract new followers. Unfortunately, some people take it way too far. Their captions are often bloated with hashtags – many of which aren't even relevant to the topic of their photo. If you do decide to use hashtags, make sure to keep it to a minimum, and only use keywords that are relevant.
Use the Explore Tab (Popular Page) to Find Great New Content
The Explore tab on Instagram is where some of the most popular photos and videos get featured. The photos that are shown here are tailored to you according to the photos and videos that have been liked or commented on by people you follow. You can find new users to follow or engage with by checking out this tab regularly by tapping the magnifying glass icon in the bottom menu.
Post Often to Keep Followers Interested
If you want to keep followers engaged, you need to post new content on a regular basis. That doesn't mean you need to be posting 10 photos a day. In fact, posting once a day – or at least once every other day – should be frequent enough to keep your current followers interested. If you go long periods of time without posting, don't be surprised if you lose a few followers.
Use Instagram Direct to Contact Specific Users
Although it's a good idea to post frequently to keep your followers engaged, sometimes it's not always necessary to publicly post something to all your followers. Instead. you can target one or more specific users by privately direct messaging them a photo or video. Instagram Direct is a great way to connect with specific groups of users without needing to broadcast your content to everyone all at once.
Interact With Your Followers
Never ignore your most loyal followers who regularly like and comment on your photos! That's a surefire way to eventually drive people away. Instead, you want to make your followers feel valued. Reply to their comments or even go check out their account and like a few of their photos. You can use a third-party tool like Iconosquare (formerly Statigram) if you want, to track comments and see which users are interacting with you the most.
Don't Be Tempted to Purchase Followers
There's a lot of hype around buying Instagram followers. And it's true that you can get some big numbers for pretty cheap. The problem with buying them is that they're often mostly fake and inactive. Your account may look a little strange to users who see that you have 15,000 followers, but almost no likes or comments on your photos and videos. Stick to real engagement. It's not all about the numbers.
Experiment With Shoutouts
Interacting with your current followers is always recommended, but the more people you reach out to, the better. Doing a shout out or s4s with another account in the same follower range is a very fast and effective way to reach more people. Two users basically agree to give the other a shoutout post on their own accounts. This is actually the main technique that many Instagram users have used to grow their accounts by the thousands.
Stay on Top of the Latest Instagram Trends
Hashtags and shoutouts are great, but even trends like these will eventually have an expiry date. If Instagram is a major social networking platform for you, it's important to keep up with the latest trends to avoid getting left behind and putting yourself at risk of losing valuable followers. Check out these five big trends that are currently hot on Instagram.
Post Stories
Stories are less permanent, more 'in the moment' pieces of content that you can post for your followers to see. They come in the form both photos and videos, which automatically disappear after 24 hours. They can be viewed at the top of the feed (in the form of circular bubbles). Stories simply offer a more casual way to connect, share and interact with your followers.
This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.
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Description
Bringing you closer to the people and things you love. — Instagram from Facebook
Connect with friends, share what you’re up to, or see what's new from others all over the world. Explore our community where you can feel free to be yourself and share everything from your daily moments to life's highlights.
Express Yourself and Connect With Friends
- Add photos and videos to your story that disappear after 24 hours, and bring them to life with fun creative tools.
- Message your friends in Direct. Start fun conversations about what you see on Feed and Stories.
- Post photos and videos to your feed that you want to show on your profile.
Learn More About Your Interests
- Check out IGTV for longer videos from your favorite creators.
- Get inspired by photos and videos from new accounts in Explore.
- Discover brands and small businesses, and shop products that are relevant to your personal style.
What’s New
The latest version contains bug fixes and performance improvements.
In the great big crowd of social media apps, Instagram continues to stand out for a reason: it makes sharing moments with everyone in your world easy, speedy, and fun. Whether you’re posting breathtaking vacation photos tweaked with one of dozens of cool image filters or a video clip of an insane concert, Instagram’s uncluttered accessibility has kept it at the top of the social-sharing heap.
Bring Back Custom Locations!!
My previous review from many years ago is below. Instagram took away the custom locations feature but made it so that if you “registered” your location on Facebook, then it would be available on IG. So I did this and it works ok, but twice now, an update comes through that removes my location from IG. It’s still there on FB and I can even check in and post to it. But it’s no longer on IG. The first time I registered the location again (which resulted in 2 of the same locations on FB). This time I’m not going to bother. I’m tired of IG messing with my location. In fact, I’m tired of IG all together. I think I’ll just go back to not using it.
As you can see by other reviewers, the ability to add custom locations was very important to many of us!! You took away the ability to add permanent locations with FourSquare - and now we can't add custom ones either?!? But all the lame crap locations that were loaded in there as permanent, are still there! I really don't care about searching by location. I just want to be able to post my picture and put whatever funny custom location I want to in the location area. Why did you change it? Have you ever heard of the term, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'? Please stop giving us these 'exciting new updates' that we don't want! When the ability to add custom locations comes back I will change my rating. Until then I will not being using Instagram.
Nothing is being done
I love Instagram, as many of these other reviewers do. I’ve had an account since Instagram first started. I almost always love the updates and am always very excited to see what’s new. That’s why I am very disappointed with Instagram right now. I have two accounts logged onto my account, one being my account and the other being my boyfriends (mainly to see the stuff he dms me from private accounts). Mind you, both accounts are logged on not just my phone but also his. My app says it is up to date on updates however my account does not have the features of the new update. For example, my account does not have the questions feature for the stories, the new three line bar to access settings and saved, as well as the new location/logo for the archived stories. However, when I switch to my boyfriend’s account, his account is updated and equipped with all the features above. It is very frustrating that the update has been around so long and my account has still not gotten the new features. I have written several times to the “report a problem” resource and nothing has been done. I have deleted the app and re downloaded it several times and still nothing. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem but it’s the first time it’s taken more than a month to be fixed. It is very frustrating and I really wish someone would fix this.
In the great big crowd of social media apps, Instagram continues to stand out for a reason: it makes sharing moments with everyone in your world easy, speedy, and fun. Whether you’re posting breathtaking vacation photos tweaked with one of dozens of cool image filters or a video clip of an insane concert, Instagram’s uncluttered accessibility has kept it at the top of the social-sharing heap.
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Information
Requires iOS 10.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
English, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
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Supports
Family Sharing
With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.