My favorite photo from my Instagram account
Ready to set up an Instagram account? Before you get started, there are a few decisions you need to make. Do you want your Instagram account to be a personal friends and family account or an Instagram account that you will be using for website and business promotions.
Personal Account Tips:
- Select a great personal photo for your profile picture. It could be a picture of yourself, your family or even your family pet.
- You can make your account private if you’d like, that will enable you to follow as many accounts as you’d like and only the Instagram accounts you choose to follow will be able to see your posts. This is a great privacy feature for a personal Instagram account.
- Set up your profile information, just some fun info. about yourself. You can even include your email address if you’d like.
- Make sure to “like” and comment on photos in your stream. The more “likes” and comments you leave, the more you will receive in return.
- Have fun with your account, check out profiles from your new followers and get creative with your pictures.
Business Account Tips:
- Select a great “business photo” for your profile picture. You want your followers to associate that picture with your business. For example, my Instagram account user name is BlogWithMom and my profile picture is the picture from my blog button.
- Your Instagram user name should also match up with your business as your followers will begin to associate your user name with your account and that will also make it easy for them to find your site online.
- Do NOT turn on the privacy features. Your account should be available to everyone, so keep that in mind when you are choosing the pictures you’d like to share.
- Don’t be stingy with your followers, make sure to follow others while you build your audience.
- Keep on top of your Instagram account, post interesting and non-salesy pictures and always interact by “Liking” other posts and commenting when you can.
- It is fine to announce giveaways and sales through your Instagram account, but if your account becomes too salesy, your readers will be bored. Get creative with your pictures, and be ready to snap shots for your Instagram account at all times.
- Interesting Instagram pictures include animals, weather conditions, inspirational sayings, everyday life images, babies, “fun videos,” etc.
- Start your Instagram account up by following several people and start studying your account. Find out which Instagram accounts catch your attention and watch them more closely. Learn from them, watch their hashtags, check out their profile and try a few of their Instagram tactics and soon you’ll be a pro!
Instagram is a great tool and for me it is perfect because it is accessible through my smart phone. After a long day at the computer, it feels great to relax with my Instagram account while on the couch or on the go while I am away from my computer. If you’d rather view your Instagram account through your computer, that works too, but for me, the experience is more enjoyable through my phone.
Thank you for sharing these tips. These are going to really help me to use instagram a lot more than I have been.
Have fun with it Tammie, you’ll be hooked before you know it!
I just set up my account but have no idea how to use it…this is so helpful! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
So glad this post will help you.
finally getting around to reading this wonderfully timely post! great tips…especially for an instagram newbie like me!
Thank you Jayedee, I was once a Newbie too!