Happy Friday world! 

Hope you all have a blessed and a productive day :) I have been promising a ton of my friends that I will post about Instagram and how it could be used correctly to its full potential. So here it goes!

Decide why you want an Instagram account and if you want it to be public or private. If it's private, then it's easy peasy and you won't worry about getting followers or search terms. If it's a public account then this is when you need to put some work into it. I have many artist/designer friends and I always advice them to have online presence otherwise the world won't know about them or their amazing work. 

Have a user name that makes sense and easy to remember. Avoid numbers and hard to pronounce family names. If you have other social media accounts, just use the same exact name. Mine is DesignerEsra on most of them depending on availability.

Have a bio! I hate it when people don't bother write two sentences about themselves. Unless you are Beyonce, you need to tell the world who you are.

Have a profile image that is you or relates to your work no one follows anonymous people.     

The buttons in the bottom are useful. first one is home, where you get the feed of everyone you are following. Then comes the search tool. You can search names, places and users. Instagram, automatically shows you suggested photos and people based on your own activities or based on popularity in your country.  

The heart icon is when you get your own activities and the activities of the people you are following.  

If you want to find the photos/videos you liked, you could check the options (the wheel above your page). Or you could use websites like IconOsquare.  

Another cool thing about Instagram is you can choose to look at the pictures based on where they were taken geographically. 

Editing images is really cool on instagram. You have adjustment tools, filters and more settings to control brightness and colours. 

results! 

Using Instagram For Promotions, Connections & Networking: 

Post 

Post interesting images with interactive captions asking people simple question like their daily plans. Whatever you do, don't post on other people's photos asking them to like you back or follow you or tell them to look at your page. It's considered spam. If someone wants to do that they will. Also post at least once a day. Don't over kill instagram with posts every two minutes. It's not snap chat. My average is about three photos a day.  

Hashtags 

After editing your photos. You add a description/title/place whatever you want. Then HASHTAGS! no one will find you without them. Hashtags are like search words that you use to help people find you when they are searching about something in particular. If you can't think of hashtags go on websites that show you the most common ones such as top hashtags. Ideas for hashtags: the name of the day #Friday, common phrases associated with the day #HappyFriday #TGIF #Weekend #FridayNight, the month #January, the season #winter, the place #Saudi #Dubai #London, the content #hand #nails #henna #macarons #plant. You can have hashtags in any language, but the maximum is THIRTY hashtags.   

Interactions

Instagram and any other social media is a two way street where you have to interact with people. Like people's photos back, comment on things you like, have a conversation about interesting photos. Take part of Instagram weekend project, and just be active.    

Happy Instagramming! 

if you have more tips, feel free to share them in the comments below.