Instagram, Apple iPhone App of 2011, is supposedly coming to the Android platform in the very near future. It therefore seems a good time to post some IG pro tips I've accumulated over the year (and by "pro" I mean someone-who-spends-far-too-much-time-fiddling-with-Instagram than anything to do with my level of photography!).

The basic usage of the Instagram (IG) app is actually pretty straight forward: you take your piccy, optionally apply a filter and then optionally share it to multiple social networks of your choice (and it's this simplicity which has been the rocket fuel of its amazing success this year). Interestingly though, you don't have to share to Twitter/Facebook etc as IG is a social network in its own right (it shares the same concept of following/followers as Twitter). 

So, without further ado, let's take a look at some of my tips:

1) Username?

If you're a twittererer then I'd say it makes good sense to keep your usernames the same (mine, on both, is joel_hughes). If you can't, you can't but it's worth bearing in mind.

2) Follow Policy

I treat IG differently to Twitter in that I am very strict on viewing all the photos of the folks I follow. This means that the more you follow, the more work there is for you to review: I can stay on top of the 130 I follow but it can be a struggle. (Note: if somone follows you and they are following hundreds or thousands of people then, in my opinion, it's a bit of an empty compliment - they ain't paying attention).

This tip is particularly important because, when some folks first join IG they mistakenly use the "follow all from Twitter" approach. Don't! Just because you follow someone's tweets doesn't mean you'll like their photos of rusty sheds ;)

3) Follow Back?

I don't feel the need to follow everyone back as this would impact on point (2). Also, you'll find snappers who excel in the same area: e.g. there's quite a few who take pictures of old signs but, for my attention span, I'll just follow @recapturist.

Note: it took me a while to get used to the asyemtric nature on IG but, when I embraced it, things made a lot more sense. And it even impacted how I think about Twitter; i'm now less worried about who follows me back on Twitter (not that I stayed up all night crying before though!). If you create interesting content and people are interested in it then things will happen of their own accord.

4) What should I take photos of?

Obviously you can take & post photos of whatever you damn well please (within reason!) but, for me, I tend to like photos of rusty sheds, texture etc etc; I won't put loads of photos of the kids/family up as I've got Facebook & Path for that.

I tend to take photos of a range of subjects but some folks are a lot more focussed. We've already mentioned @recapturist but take a look at @liljeberg - he has a fantastic eye for urban typography and doesn't it look great when viewed as a single feed?! I'll touch on this point again later...

5) How often should I post?

Like Twitter there is no easy answer to this but it is important to try respect other people's streams. I tend to post max 5 a day. If I post more then I'd only do so if I was sure that the shot was worth sharing and I'd try to space the time out. No-one likes an attention hog.

6) Don't post your test shots...
This follows on from point 5 really. Don't post 10 shots of your feet in the sand when 1 or 2 will do. Be a harsh critic of your own stuff. Self editting is your friend.

7) Tags/Hashtags
Tags work pretty much exactly the same as hashtags on Twitter. They allow you to group your photos into different segments - this can give much greater visibility to your snaps as people do a lot of searching of tags on IG.

For instance, i'm a big fan of rust, decay etc and, no surprise, there are tags which help group those shots together (us weirdos like to group :) - and that groups people across the whole of the IG community - not just me & my following/followers. It's one big old melting pot of photography love :)

To add a hashtag (sorry, I always say hashtag even though IG just say tag, old habits die hard) just add it in the comment of your photo (they start with a # just like on Twitter).

Note: And this is a big gotcha, you cannot add tags to other people's photos! Well, IG allows you to add them but the tagging has has no effect; if you then search on the hashtag, the tagged photo is not there. Remember,: only the author can successfully tag a photo.

8) But which tags should I use?
Well, obviously this does depend to a large degree on your photo but as a general rule you can spot tags on other peoples posts and use this as a starting point - click on the tag to see what the stream looks like (and if contains lots of photos then you know it is a popular one).

Another good way is to use the IG search facility right there in the app:

- click on profile
- click on search Instagram
- click on tags

If you search on (say) "door" it will list out matching searches and, more importantly, how many pictures they contain - this tells you which are the popular ones. Use this method for tag research.

9) Getting Followed

We're all a little vain; hey, isn't that the purpose of social networking? To show off a bit? And our vanity is pampered when we get some people interested in what we do.

A simple receipe for getting more followers on Instagram is:

• post great content: think about what you want your subject(s) to be, edit well.
• Interact with the community; like and be liked. Don't like TO be liked though.
• Use (don't overuse) hashtags

Easy huh?

10) Apps

Im not going to go into detail about the full range of apps I use (that'll be a good post on it's own) but I will say that you don't have to do all/any of your editting on the IG app itself; there are plenty of other options. Here are some:

• Camera+, wonderful features and some great filters (try 'clarity')
• Picgrunger, magic at aging an image
• Gyrocropper, great for straightening those lines
• Magichour, loads of great effects
• 6x6, a lovely, medium format looking retro camera app. Shoots in IG dimensions.

11) Competitions

Some folks have a lot of followers on IG and they've taken it on themselves to launch competitions to help keep everyone interested. A great example of this is JoshJohnson, Josh is very active in the community and regular runs competiions where, for example, the the topic is black and white. It usually works where there is a specific hashtag for the competition and people submit an entry to a competiton by tagging the photo with that hashtag etc.

Why do this? Again, it helps meet like minded people - find great people to follow and, perhaps, find peope to follow you.

12) Personal Hashtags

This is another subtle use of the tags facility and works well if you post pictures across a broad spectrum of topics. E.g. I sometimes post pictures of door knockers (with the usual hilarity about the word knockers); now, if someone is interested in one of my pictures of knockers (watch it!) then they probably will be interested in seeing ALL of my knockers (ahem!).

Therefore, I tag such pictures of mine with the #jh_knockers hashtag, this tag is for me & me alone. And if you click on the tag you will see my knockers in all their glory. 

I've posted about personal hashtags before.

13) DSLRs

This is a quite an emotive one. A lot of folks think that IG is for photos taken on the iPhone only. this is kinda fair enough but I'm a little less puritanical about it. My take is that IF you do post photos you took on your lovely Canon 550 then let people know via the comments, add a #dslr tag or something. Make it obvious.

I'll spot a DSLR photo straightaway primarily because, 9 times out 10, the editting for IG's square format will be poor/non-existant with black bands to the top or sides of the photos - looks awful. Golden rule? It's hip to be square. Don't be lazy with the editting.

14) Links

This, again, is a bit of a gotcha. If you add a link to a comment on a picture then IG will NOT turn it in to a clickable hyperlink - so it's pretty useless. A workaround which I've seen some people use is to reappropriate their main profile URL for this need; they'll say something like "click on my profile link to read the blog post". Clever.

15) Sharing

Don't forget that you can really go to town on your sharing settings. Yes you can share to Facebook but you can also share to a Facebook Page (ideal for businesses). You can share to Foursquare, Tumblr and, obviously, Twitter. Now I'm selective about what goes where though - I don't put everything on Twitter as I don't think it's fair on my community there; however, if I were a photograper (like @hjphoto) then perhaps it would make sense to share all between the to. It all depends. 

So, hopefully you found that interesting. Please pity me as I lost half of this fricking post when Posterous played up (a Wordpress move is closer & closer). 

Plase shout out if you have any more and I'll try to add them in.

Joel

Updates

 21st Dec 2011 - Oh, and people who watermark their photos? Good grief, this isnt The Tate?!