Hey, Eric here with 30 by 40 Design Workshop talking about Instagram tactics this week.
I've kind of changed my thinking about it and how I've been using it and it's becoming
really important to my business and my work as an architect.
So, if you're like me and you have an Instagram account but you're unsure of how to use it
professionally or why it's even important, I'll show you a few of the people that I'm
following and what I'm learning as I try to become a better Instagram practitioner myself.
Understanding the context of Instagram is an important first step.
It's a social platform and it's one where the engagement of your followers is gonna
be a lot higher than almost any other place online.
People are looking to be entertained here, they're looking for a closer connection to
their favorite creators or brands, and - especially here - they expect high quality images.
This context is a chance to give them something they can't find from you anywhere else and
with 800 million users worldwide I can guarantee your clients, your future employers, employees,
and your business contacts, they're all here too.
So, knowing the context, I think your first task is to separate your personal account
from your professional one.
When someone sees your grid and decides to follow you they're doing so because you've
shown a consistent aesthetic or set of images and so that's what they're going to be expecting
from you.
You want to follow through on that promise; save the cat photos for your personal account.
Now, the business account also opens up all these analytics tools too so you can measure
the success of each one of your posts and there's a few other important tools, but more
on that in a minute.
Simple, clear, short descriptions are best here: what you do, where you do it, and probably
the most important thing is the link.
Now, you only get one clickable link on all of Instagram and that's here in your bio,
but rather than link up the home page of your website, use it to strategically send traffic
somewhere.
I use it to link out to my latest video but you might use it for a product launch, or
links to the tools that you use, a landing page; a Kickstarter.
I read an article on ArchDaily recently touting Norman Foster as a must follow on Instagram.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time relating to this kind of lifestyle;
here we are on some kind of a super yacht, here's his Rolls Royce or Bentley or I don't
know what this is.
But, for him and the kind of clients he's seeking, it probably makes a lot of sense,
it's probably a smart strategy.
Your grid is your portfolio and it says a lot about your brand.
What do you want it to say for you?
Is it purely lead gen?
Is it for brand awareness?
Does it offer a behind-the-scenes look at your process, or is it only photos of the
finished product?
Is it abstract?
Minimal?
Artistic?
Does it show the people behind the product?
When you decide what that is, ruthlessly curate your posts for a consistent message and edit
your images before posting them.
Simple subjects and high contrast are things that I've found to work pretty well.
Well, the more I practice the more I've come to realize that almost everything we do is
linked to story.
Learning to tell a good story is a skill we could all use practice with.
Instagram makes it easy to experiment with video using their Stories feature; these are
short video clips which always show at the top of the feed when you open the app.
If all your highly-polished content - let's say - lives in your feed, you might use Stories
to color that, to give a behind-the-scenes look at your process, the sort of messy side
of design.
Now, although it's easy to post just about anything to your story, a trend that I've
been noticing is that people are actually putting a lot more effort into their stories.
Instead of dropping clips haphazardly onto their story, they're editing more cinematic
sequences.
You might check out Jesse Driftwood to see what he's doing in this regard.
Now, I managed to ignore this feature for a long time in part because your story used
to expire after 24 hours but that's changed.
Now, your stories can be archived to a highlighted section in your bio which makes them actually
worth investing some time in I think.
I'm also a fan of Nick Schiffer’s stories - he's the co-host of the Modern Craftsman
podcast and although his stories aren't cinematic necessarily, I like them because he digs into
the details of his projects and he openly shares the specifications for the materials
and all the products he's using.
Matt Risinger is another design-focused, craft-conscious contractor who's smartly using Instagram and
YouTube.
He's often using it to engage and solicit other expert opinions from his followers.
You're able to access the intimate details of his projects, including the points where
he's stuck or left guessing what the right thing to do is.
This is material you'd never be exposed to otherwise and I love that about his feed.
Also worth noting here is that with a business account - which offers a whole slew of benefits
- and more than 10,000 followers you can unlock the swipe up feature on stories.
This allows you to link out to any location online you'd like and it's in addition to
the link that's in your bio.
Think about that for a minute; that's amazingly powerful.
The people and brands I seek out and most enjoy following have between a couple thousand
and let's say a hundred thousand followers and they often pull back the curtain on their
process.
Their feed offers me something I can't get anywhere else and best of all I get to see
their experiments.
They're trying to figure out what works just like I am.
So, their tactics are a little more creative and they're not so rule-bound as a feed like
ArchDaily’s let's say.
The things you have to do to get to a hundred thousand followers are much different than
the things you have to do once you have a hundred thousand followers, which makes emulating
their tactics more likely to be successful for smaller creators like me.
Now, I'm not going to get into the tagging strategies here but you'll see all the Instagramers
I've highlighted here, they use them.
Watch what they're doing, follow along, experiment and learn.
I love this comment from ArchDaily on a recent post they put up about Instagram.
I love it because it's just more white space for the rest of us.
The reality here is: Instagram is a business opportunity.
Check out Zean MacFarland, not only for his fantastic feed, which is populated with his
renderings - they're kind of done in this Monument Valley kind of style - but also because
he's using Instagram to sell products.
He's written six e-books and they're all kind of geared toward architecture students.
A couple of these are actually tutorials which teach the techniques he uses to create his
unique, sketchy style renderings, the ones you see in his Instagram feed.
If you check out his website, he also sells prints of everything on his feed.
So, he's found a really clever way of turning his Instagram feed into a revenue generating
business.
Now, one of the really interesting evolutions of social media is that growing a following
teaches you all these meta skills and I'm really big on meta skills - the skills you
build that confer broad advantages to every aspect of your life.
Meta skills are things like: writing, photography, editing; storytelling.
These are all present on Instagram and posting regularly forces you engage in all of them
frequently.
You start to learn what works and what doesn't, you learn to market to an audience, you learn
to build engagement, and empathy, and you craft a voice for your brand, whether that's
personal or professional.
And, what's even more interesting is that your social media following…it has a real
monetary value now.
Your following is an asset you can actually leverage, whether that's for professional
reasons, for your own personal financial gain, or to influence change in the world.
When you're looking for new work, or looking for a new job, or marketing your business,
your social media following, it becomes part of the negotiation, part of the value you
can bring and I think that's an asset worth investing in.
Now, if you want to follow along with what I'm doing on Instagram you can find me at
30by40 and please do share yours in the comments.
Smash that like button below if I've helped you in any way, keep making things out there,
and I'll see you again next time.
Cheers, my friends!