Publishing an Instagram Post
Below are notes on using Instagram and a guide to publishing posts. These are notes for someone with a basic understanding of Instagram. If you're brand new, head to Instagram's Help Centre for more instructions and help.
Context
Instagram is a very visual place - it is a place for posting high-quality, aesthetially pleasing photos and short videos (reels). During 2022 at Life Itself, we did not focus too much time and resources on our Instagram. During the second half of the year we got into the pattern of publishing 1 post every 2 weeks. Depending on the future goals of Life Itself and its chosen communications strategies, this can be stuck to or varied from.
Our Instagram content over the past year has been dedicated predominatly to sharing pictures from residencies - we found that our followers tended to engage most with photos from our hub(s) rather than with content relating to other areas of Life Itself's work such as the Web3 project. However, we did find that posts created from quotes from some of our 'Exploring Social Transformation' podcast episodes did well. So it seems our followers are most interested in engaging with content to do with social transformation - something to perhaps pay heed to when deciding what to share on Instagram.
Publishing posts on Instagram
Publishing multiple photos
Posts can contain just one photo, or up to 10 photos. To publish more than one photo, click the New Post button in Instagram (a box with a + in it), find the button that looks like 2 squares layered over eachother and click that. You can now select up to 10 photos. Note that if you are publishing a post with multuple images, all photos to be shared together in a singular post will be automtacally cropped to have the same dimensions. All photos in a post will be cropped to fit the dimenions of the first photo selected when selecting multiple photos for a post. Attempting to post one picture which is landscape and one which is portrait to one post will result in photos being significantly cropped.
Make your posts visually appealing!
It is crucial to use high quality images. Your post will viewed as part of a feed of posts and it is very likely your post will be viewed in between posts from influencers, celebrities, and businesses. If your photos are grainy, dark, blurred, people will just scroll past. Images should be appealing to look at.
Images must cause people to stop scrolling; they should be both aesthetically inviting and also interesting to the viewer by nature of what is going on in the picture. Is it lots of delicious looking food, is it a group of people looking happy, is it a beautiful landscape, is it people playing music, is it a bonfire? Have a look through Life Itself's past photos. Note which images got more likes, which fewer.
Use a good quality camera
The Life Itself hub has an Iphone X. This has a decent camera so use this for capturing photos unless someone in the hub who has taken on responsibilty for capturing photos to be used for social media has a phone with a higher quality camera or an actualy high quality camera.
Make sure there is good lighting
One trick to getting a good picture is ensuring the source of light for your photo is coming from behind the photographer. Try and avoid taking images of someone in front of a window with light streaming in, or someone standing in front of the sun.
Editing photos
Editing photos is a subtle art, subtle being the key word here. Here is an easy and quick way to enhance your photos: when you have taken a photo using the Iphone, go to the photo in the photos app, find the image you want to use, click edit, and then click the little magic wand icon. This will minorly adjust the photo's brightness, exposure, briliiance etc to enhance the photo. For someone with no editing skills this is an easy way to make your photo that much more appealing to look at.
Use hashtags
Here is a bank if hashtags you might want to use for your post:
Conscious food
#consciouscooking #consciousfood #consciouseating #communitydevelopment #community #intentionalliving #intentionalcommunity #communalliving #simpleliving #mindfulness
Community Residency
#communitydevelopment #community #intentionalliving #intentionalcommunity #communalliving #collectiveintelligence #coliving #collectivewisdom #embodiment #collectivetransformation #mindfulness #meditation #zen #innerdevelopment #transformation #collectivedevelopment
Collective contemplation
#contemplativeactivism #contemplation #activism #interbeing #communitydevelopment #community #intentionalliving #intentionalcommunity #communalliving #collectiveintelligence #coliving #collectivewisdom #metamodernism #embodiment #collectivetransformation #mindfulness #meditation
Ecospirituality
#climatejustice #climateaction #ecospirituality #spiritualscience #mindfulness #community #communalliving #collectiveintelligence #coliving #collectivewisdom #collectiveaction #socialtransformation #ecologicalcivilization #metamodernism #metamodern
Tag people!
Tagging people is a great way to get engagement and get your post shared. Before you publish your post, find out if anyone featured in your photos has Instagram by either asking them or typing their name into Instagram's search box (but make sure you tag the right person!).
The caption
While the images are what first will capture someone's attention on Instagram, you have an opportunity to convey more to your audience through the caption. Have a look through our old posts for examples. Note that if you paste a link into a caption, your viewers cannot follow this link. That is why we have a linktree - one link in our account bio that takes users to a list of links. So if you are wanting to direct a viewer's attention to a link, in yourn post write something like 'link in bio to find out more' to let viewers know where they can find more information (if you do that remember to actually add the link in question to the linktree!). The log in details for our Linktree account can be found on Bitwarden.
Instagram Stories
With Instagram stories, you can post photos and videos that will then disappear after 24 hours. Stories are low effort ways of of being active on your account and to keep Life Itself in the awareness of its followers. If you're cooking dinner in the hub, or playing a game, or doing a workshop, take a quick snap and upload it on your story. That way followers can see what we do at the residencies, and hopefully with repeated exposure to the hub and the acitivities that go on there, be encouraged to one day attend a residency.
You can also share your posts to your stories - it's a good way of getting people's attention that you have a new post up as not everyone is constantly scrolling through their feed. To share a post, click on the post you want to share and swipe to which photo you want to appear on your story (if it is a post with multiple pictures). Then click the small paper airplane shaped icon under the image, then click add Post to Your Story. If you want to share more than one of the pictures from one poast, go ahead and do the same thing with one or more of the other images.
You can now post links directly to your stories. To do this, once you have uploaded what photo you want to share on your story or have taken the photo directly in the Instagram app, click the little square with the folded up corner and the smiley face. From there, clicl the blue 'Link' icon and paste in the link. You can also explore other ways of adding a little something extra to your stories by clicking that same smiley face square button; add music, tag someone, tag a location, ask a question etc.
Reels
Reels can take longer to make and as we were low on resources but high on things to do, we didn't focus much time on reels over the past year (2022). We tried out a couple of reels and neither got much engagement so we focussed our energy elsewhere. But feel free to keep on experimenting! Here's some resrouces you can take a look at to learn more about making reels:
When to post to Instagram
Consistency is key. Post once every 2 weeks, every 1 week, or even a couple of times a week, whatever you have the resources for, but, whatever you do, keep it consistent. Specific things you should be posting:
- Marketing an upcoming residency - use past residency photos from the hub or photos the faciliation team have given you of past residencies they have hosted.
- Updates in the midst of a residency - showcase what is going on during a residency. What have you been up to over the past 1 or two weeks, what was a standout moment, what do participants have to say so far?
- Reflections on a recently finished residency - same as above but after the fact
- Quote graphics from a podcast episode or a testimony from a residency participant or host.