Is your department on Instagram? If you’re not, you may want to consider joining because “nearly one in five adult cellphone owners uses the app”, according to One Stat that Explains Why Instagram Is Adding Ads, which came out yesterday.
A colleague shared this stat, which comes from the Pew Internet and American Life Project (if you don’t know about this already, bookmark the site now) and it got my attention for a few reasons:
1) That is a LOT of people on Instagram. The author, Alex Fitzpatrick, captured just why this is a big deal: “Go ask five random people with cellphones (so pretty much anybody, considering 91% of American adults own a cellphone), and at least one of them is likely to say they use Instagram.” So yeah, I agree Alex, that does explain why Instagram is adding ads. Everyone is on there!
2) I’m a member of the Instagram-ing club. My department launched an Instagram account this fall to share pictures of our office activities and big events. While we’re only at 41 followers, we’re excited about the possibilities. For example, we had students share their interview outfits and tag our account to grow followers. We had 8 students participate. That’s not a ton, but 8 students is a solid place to start, especially when their own friends liked their Instagram photos (read: viral marketing). Now that Instagram also offers videos, we hope to capture advice from students and alums, too.
3) It’s time to get visual. Instagram helps share your department’s identity in a visual manner (as I discussed a while back in my Pinterest post). Furthermore, if you tag your photos appropriately, you can join in the institution’s identity as a whole which is good for branding, plain and simple. At my institution, I see what the main university account uses as hashtags and I make sure to include those when I post.
What are your thoughts on the Time article? Is your department or school on Instagram? We’d love to hear about your experience and see how you’re using the platform!
by Shannon