When Instagram emerged, it was a different kind of social media, one that suddenly allowed everyone to be a photographer, millions of selfies later, and it still stands as the foremost image-centric social media platform. Let's learn how to create a post for Instagram. Open up Instagram. If you're not there already, select your business account. I'm using the business account for Snackwall here, the snack subscription service from DCB Cleaning. To create a post to appear on the news feed, we're going to simply tap the Plus in the center. Instagram will default to our camera or photo library where we can take or choose a photo for our post. Instagram will also let you take a boomerang video, which takes a video and places it on a back and forth loop. You also have the option of creating a collage of photos or adding up to 10 photos per post. Now let's create a post. But first, we'll think back to our prep work. What goals do we want to achieve with our post, and what kind of posts do we want to create? In this case, I want to create a post that will help James introduce Snackwall to customers so he can start to generate some awareness. We'll just do one photo right now, but a multiple photo post might work as well for this. We'll tap the Plus button and add the photo we want. Let's select a photo that shows the appeal of Snackwall. When you're done choosing your photo, click Next. Unlike Facebook where you can add what you want all at once, Instagram will guide you through the posting process. The next screen is where you'll be able to edit your photos for brightness, contrast or vibrancy. You can let Instagram do the photo editing by choosing a filter along the bottom, or you can tap the "Lux" wand at the top of the screen for an auto-tuning of the photo. Or you can edit a photo yourself in the edit screen, where you can alter the contrast, saturation or color, add a vignette border or a tilt shift to focus on a specific part of the image. Remember that you want to catch a scrollers eyes with well taken, sharp, uniquely edited images. When you're done, click Next. Now's the time to create our caption. While Instagram will let you write a long 2,200 characters, captions are truncated after 125 characters and followers will need to tap a Read more to get the rest of the caption. As we write, let's think about our brand voice and the personality of our business. We might write treat your employees to office snacks they can look forward to. Now's the time to add our hashtags, which will tag our post with a category and make it more findable. Simply type in hashtag and some words. Instagram has a handy feature that will auto-suggest hashtags and show you their frequency of use so you can pick one that's more likely to get to the public eye. Remember that users can not only search hashtags, but can follow hashtags like they can follow users. While Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, we don't advise using that many. Now, include any mentions or tagged user accounts in the caption. For example, any media that might be covering your event or people or products in your photo, this will alert them that they've been mentioned in your post. I don't really need to add anyone for this post but I could add Aptly, our company here for instance. Now would be the time to add a link to the Snackwall website so people can learn more about it. But Instagram does not allow you to add hyperlinked URLs in the caption copy. You could certainly add it, but your followers wouldn't be able to tap it nor could they highlight it to copy it into their browser. They would have to physically type your URL in. Instagram does however, allow you to have a link in your bio where businesses can link to their website or to specific URLs. Often people will just add link in bio to their post, and that's what I'm going to do here. Now that we've created our caption, let's fill out some other information. You can tag the people in your photo which will let them know you posted about them, same as a mentioned. Add your location to link your business to a map. Instagram also gives you the ability to post photos to multiple Instagram accounts, or to post out to linked accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, or others. Just be aware that photos and captions may be truncated and add mentions may not be the same on other sites. Click Advanced settings to alter your commenting, let followers know that this is sponsored content, set automatic Facebook posting, and write some alt text or text that describes what can be seen in the images you used. Ready to post, click Share and it'll immediately go live to the newsfeed. Notice a typo or want to add a hashtag, tap on the ellipsis in the upper right corner to make alterations. You cannot schedule your posts with the Instagram app. For that, you would need to create your posts in another tool instead. We will look at how to use those tools later. Now let's create an Instagram story. From your Instagram homepage, simply swipe right and stories creation screen appears. This screen allows you to post a photo, take video, add filters, and post polls and interactive questions, add stickers, hashtags, mentions, and more. Instagram also offers a live feature which allows you to interact in real time with your audience, answer questions, and conduct interviews, and even host a fundraiser where viewers can donate right through the app. Our Facebook and Instagram examples are just two platforms of the many you can use to create unique, relevant, fun, and engaging content for your audience. Next, let's explore what you can do to make the components of your post as effective as possible. We'll start with the text.
