Heard me mention Instagram before? I am a bit of a fan and have been using Instagram since it was just two months old. If you need the beginners’ guide, head back to my first post on what Instagram is, but otherwise, let me tell you what I’ve been loving about Instagram lately:

• It’s the perfect way to be personal, and personal is good for your brand. Instagram is a clean and simple app, with relatively few functions, and it’s very much focused on creativity and sharing. 
• It’s fast, simple and done on the go on your smartphone, which is perfect for someone like me who doesn’t always get to sit down at my desk during the course of a day.
• There’s very little overt promotion, and that means you have to think outside the box. You can’t leave links everywhere (or at least it is strongly discouraged and most users stick to this), so you need to focus on the kinds of messages you can give your followers about you and your business in a more subtle manner.
• It has great engagement. If you look at the proportion of your followers who “like” or comment on your Instagram posts, it’s usually a much higher percentage than on any other social media. 
• You can share it to other platforms. Occasionally, I’ll share an Instagram picture to Twitter (usually if my caption is pretty short, so it won’t be annoyingly cut off) and quite regularly, I share the images to my Facebook business pages. I find it a great way to add to the content coming through on Facebook and because it’s also very image-based my Instagram posts usually work really well there and have great engagement too.
• Advertising is just starting up on Instagram but they are promising they’ll keep it true to the spirit of the app. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out but there could be some interesting opportunities there.
• Heaps of social media experts are predicting that Instagram will be important in 2014. Even Forbes and Social Media Today are saying so. Personally, I hope they’re right.

#businesspics Instagram photo prompts for March 2014

The numbers in the prompt image are dates in March; join in when you feel inspired or try to take an image for every day of the month (that’s my plan!). If you want a reminder email each time a new round of #businesspics starts (and a mid-month pep talk) sign up to my #businesspics reminder email list. I look forward to seeing your gorgeous pictures and helping you create interesting and engaging content for your social media … remember to hashtag your images with #businesspics and tag me @amandakendle so I see it straight away!