I'm a big Instagram user and, now that I've been using it for a while, I'm getting a hang of some of the more subtle and advanced ways of using it. I've found a cool techniqe for using tags but first I'd better set the stage...

Hashtags

Instgram (IG) has hashtags very much like Twitter (but IG just calls them "tags"). And these tags work in a very similar way. For example, I like to take pictures of doors (don't laugh!), here's an example...

 So, if I post this picture on IG then all my followers can easily see it (and have their lives enriched by this multi-door handled beauty ;).

However, if I use tags then I can be a bit cleverer. E.g. if I add the tag "#door" to my picture (via the original photo title when I uploaded or by a subsequent comment I add to it) then I add my picture to the (as of today) 14,458 other photos tagged as #door.

Why do this?

Well, apart from the fact that it's a 'cool thing(tm)' to be able to cut a swathe through the IG pictures and to see just "doors" there are some other reasons:

- if people are tagging photos then people are searching on them

- if people are searching on tags then your photos are more findable

- if your photos are more findable then your photos are more likeable and you're more followable

If you're not sure what tags to use then you can always use the search facility on the app as this helps (or keep an eye on what other folks are using). But the cool thing is that you can add tags to your photos at any time (I'm constantly going back to add relevant tags).

Personal Hashtags

Ok, now we've covered the basics of tags I want to move onto the main thrust of this post...personal tags. What are these?

Well, it struck me the other day that there are a few themes which run through my IG stream:

• doors
• ships, boats
• letterboxes
• texture
• walls
• sheds (I kid you not!)

Now obviously I'm already using the techniques mentioned earlier to tag these photos. This allows my snaps to be more findable and, just as importantly, it gives me a way to find people interested in the same odd stuff as I am.

However, I got to thinking that it would be cool if I could group my own work. E.g. I would like people to be able to see just my doors, my sheds. 

So, I started creating a set of my own tags:

• #jh_doors 
• #jh_maritime
• #jh_cars
• #jh_sheds
• #jh_walls
• etc

(Where the JH_ prefix is referring to my own name, obviously I checked they weren't in use already).

This means that I'm now organising my IG feed and making it easier for folks to find the stuff they want.

A clever bit

A final clever bit is to do this though...

IF I upload a new photo of a door, a shed etc then I make sure I include the relevant tag in the comment, e.g.

"A new shed for my #jh_sheds collection"

So, if someone likes the shed (again, don't laugh!) then they've got easy access to all my other ones. From my "likes" notifications I've seen this to be very worthwhile. We all want to be liked after all :)

Notes:

1. The programmer in me knows that this is a little bit of a fudge. I mean, the IG photo database is clever enough already to show people all the photos in the (say) #door tag which are just by @joel_hughes BUT the search facility in the app doesn't allow it (and it probably would be a bit clunky anyway). So, for the time beiong, we're stuck with inventing out own personal ones.
2. There's nothing to stop other folks posting on my hashtags so I suppose you want to make it as obvious as possible that this is a personal hashtag. Perhaps the personal tag names should actually be something more like "joel_hughes_doors" or perhaps "_joel_hughes_doors" where personal tags always start with a "_", followed by the full username and the tag name; you don't want to make it too complex though. Most folks on IG are pretty nice and if they mistakenly post on a personal tag you could always ask them to remove it.
3. This is a side note really: remember that only the photo author can add tags. I sometimes see other people commenting on photos and adding tags; these tags have no effect on search.

Update:

1. oops! I meant to add that I'm not saying I've invented this or anything! Yes, it's not rocket science and I'm sure many folks are doing this already but I've only just stumbled across it and I wanted to share the idea :) 5th Aug 2011