If you want to start with Instagram, download the app and create an account or sign in with your Facebook account. Upload a profile picture and say something about yourself in the bio. And of course, don’t forget to put a link to your blog.
How to use Instagram
Once you’ve set up your profile you will see a + button. When you click on it, it allows you to upload your pictures or videos, add a filter to them and tweak the colors before posting it on your profile.
However, before posting it, you will want to add some hashtags and a description. Putting hashtags with your picture will increase the chances of someone who doesn’t follow you to see your picture.
For example, think about a picture of a cat with a little hat on its head. If you don’t add hashtags, the chances are low people will see the picture. But if you put the hashtag #catwithahat, people that search on this hashtag are likely to see your picture.
Posting good pictures is, of course, the main ingredient for getting followers but tagging them with hashtags will increase your chances. If you are having difficulties to get followers, you can always choose to get Instagram followers and likes. Then you will be sure your uploads are seen by your new followers!
The next step is to find a lot of people to follow that share your interests and are posting things that you want to see. The idea is to follow, comment an interact with those that you follow. This is a key social networking element.
Tweaks for the usage of Instagram
While the Instagram app itself is excellent, there are a few things we can do to make the experience a bit more comfortable to use, and save some time.
1] Using Instagram on your desktop
Instead of using a mobile phone for Instagram you can also use it on your desktop. To do this, you need to download an app like Grids, which allows you to post content on your Instagram account from your desktop computer or your laptop.
This allows you to edit your pictures with a more professional program like Photoshop and allows you to directly post it to your account without needing to send it to your phone first. Naturally, this is very helpful, especially if you take a lot of pictures with a professional camera instead of a mobile phone. Besides that, it also saves you some time.
2] Instagram collages
If you want followers, you need to do something that helps you stand out in a crowd, something that makes you different from the rest. At this moment the Instagram platform is dominated by singular pictures. So you could start making collages of your photos and post them on your Instagram account.
You can make a collage from photos you’ve taken in nature or maybe pictures from an event you went to. You can do this on your desktop, or if you only use your mobile phone for Instagram, you can use an app like Layout.
3] Repost other users content
Instagram differs from other social networking platforms on some things. One of those things is that with Instagram there is no way to re-share other people’s content. Why would you want to share other people’s content you ask?
For example, if you see a picture that you like and want to share with your followers, you will need to screenshot it, and edit/upload it or use an app that helps you to make the process a bit easier.
But before you do this, remember that you should always make sure that you have permission from the original owner to post their picture on your own Instagram profile. Besides that, don’t forget to give proper credits without editing their message too much.
Integrate your blog with your Instagram profile
We assume that if you are reading this article, you most likely want to use Instagram as a way to get more traffic to your website or blog, or as another way to communicate with your existing readers or clients. Either way, this part of the article will help you with that.
To do this the proper way we will need to look at a few different ways you can mix your blog and Instagram to enhance both platforms.
Before you read further, we assume that you are using a self-hosted WordPress setup, as it gives you a few different tools and plugins that help you do this effectively.
1] Embedding photos in WordPress posts and pages
The first thing that you need to know is that you can embed your Instagram pictures and videos in your WordPress pages and blog posts by clicking on a photo or video and copying the embed code.
This is a constructive way to promote your blog and your Instagram profile at the same time. Besides that, it also gives you the choice of using some beautiful pictures for your blog which eliminates the need for stock pictures.
Beware that if you are using other people’s pictures or videos that you have permission and also know that if they choose to delete the image or video, it would also be removed on your blog because you are pulling the content from Instagram’s servers instead of uploading it on your own.
2] Adding a gallery to your blog’s sidebar or footer
Something that is quite popular is adding a picture gallery to your blog that populates the pictures by pulling them from your own Instagram account.
Different plugins help you do this, one of them is called Instagram Feed, and it has a few different options to make it more personalized. You can either have a carousel-style that lets you scroll through pictures and takes up less space or use a regular gallery.
Conclusion
In this article, we talked about how you can use Instagram to get more traffic to your blog. We gave you some tweaks on how to get more out of Instagram. Both of this will help you to get more attention for your Instagram account and your blog.
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1 Comment
Excellent strategies to improve blog traffic through Instagram. Thanks for providing this information. It’s really useful for Insta users.