by Rachel Smith
30 March 2017
Hi Rachel and Leo. I am a late adopter on social media, but I know a lot of journos who are on Instagram and I wondered if I’m crazy not to have an account? I write books and do features but given you can’t link out to your stuff easily, I always thought it seems like a waste of time, really. Would love your thoughts. C
I hear you. It took me a while too to get onto the Instagram bandwagon – but I do think there’s great benefit in being on there if you’re a journo, writer, designer, or other type of creative person. The thing to get your head around is that Instagram, as primarily a visual medium, operates very differently to the other platforms out there – but it’s hugely popular one and slowly gaining traction with news rooms and other media organisations. You want to be on there not to get clicks through to your website – because frankly, Instagram is really, really bad at getting you that – but to build brand awareness.
Instagram can kind of operate as a living, breathing online portfolio that brings you comments and likes and followers who dig what you’re doing and want to see more of it. If you’re into building your personal brand and clarifying for people and potential clients what it is that you do, and start some quality engagement around that, Instagram is the prime place to do it. The metrics are easy to understand – and if you post good, regular content and know a few tips and tricks to tease out those in your niche to come take a peek at your feed, it’s easy to grow your audience. It’s also easy to find editors and potential clients on there willing to follow you.
If you’re really dedicated to a social media strategy that aims to build your brand successfully, it’s a good idea to ‘batch’ content – creating weeks or months of social media posts and scheduling them to stop it sucking the time out of your day better spent on other things. There are many ways to pre-schedule your Instagram posts, but I do it via Hootsuite (you create the post on Hootsuite then you get an alert on your phone when it’s time to post it). The great thing about pre-scheduling is that it keeps your feed busy and thriving and it’s not so hard commenting or replying here and there – but you’re relatively free to focus on other, paying work. There’s nothing quite so doubt-inducing (when you want to hire someone) as a website with clippings dating back to 2004 or social media platforms that haven’t seen any love for weeks.
We’ve also talked about the importance of having a social media presence as a freelancer and, if yours is large enough, how it can play favourably when you’re pitching and editors and clients know there’s a chance you might share your work, delivering their brand up to a whole new audience.
And when you consider how easy it is to snap a beautiful photo – of anything from a media launch to the brand new issue of a magazine you just landed the cover story for – you see the value in Instagram over ANY of the other platforms.
Are you a journo on Instagram? What do you use it for and do you feel it’s worthwhile?
