What is Instagram and How Does It Work

Instagram is one of the newest social networking apps which is made for sharing videos and photos from smartphones. With the increase in the use of smartphone and people’s obsession with smartphone photography, Instagram has experienced significant popularity in recent times. It has over 400 million daily users with over 95 million photos and videos shared daily.

Similar to Twitter or Facebook, Instagram provides with a profile and a news feed once you create an account. When you post a video or photo on Instagram, it’ll immediately be displayed on your profile. Instagram users who follow your profile will be able to see your posts in their own news feed. Likewise, you will see photos and videos from other Instagram users whom you follow.

Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? Actually, Instagram is just like a simplified version of Facebook but with an emphasis on visual sharing and mobile use. Just like the other social networks like Twitter and Facebook, you can interact and connect with your friends on Instagram by simply following them, liking, commenting, and messaging them. Now you can even download and save the photos and videos you see on Instagram.

Devices That Work With Instagram

This social network is available for absolutely free on Android and iOS devices. You can also access it on the web from your computer, and even upload and share videos and picture with a third party application.

Creating an Instagram Account

Before you start using the Instagram app, you must create a free account. You can either sign up via your email or through your existing Facebook account. All you require is a password and username. Once you create an Instagram account, you will be asked if you want to follow your Facebook friends who are already on Instagram. You can either do this right away or skip the process and do it later.

It is always a great idea to personalize your profile by adding your photo, your name a short biography and your website link if you have and when you first log into your Instagram account. When you begin following people as well as looking for people to follow your profile back, they will want to know more about you and what you are all about.

Using Instagram as a Social Network

As mentioned above, Instagram is all about mobile use and visual sharing, so the main intention of everybody on Instagram is to find and share only the best videos and photos. Every user profile usually has a “Following” and “Follower” count, which indicates how many people they are following and how many other users are following them.

Every profile typically has a button which you can tap to follow the user. If a person has his or her user profile set to private, they’ll need to approve your request first.
It’s important to know that when your user profile is created and set as public, anyone can search and find your profile, along with all your videos and photos. So, learn how to set your profile to private if your desire is to only want the users you approve to follow you to be able to view your posts.

Interacting on Instagram posts is easy and fun. You can either double tap a post to “like” it or just comment at the bottom. If you want to share it with another person, you can just click the arrow button. If you would like to add or find more friends or specific accounts to follow, you can just use the search area (indicated by the magnifying glass icon) to search through customized posts recommended to you. Also, you can use the search bar to look for specific hashtags or uses.

Instagram to Promote Your Business

Just like Facebook and YouTube, you can use Instagram to promote your business. You can create a business profile and invite people to follow you. Since Instagram involves sharing of photos and videos, you can take advantage of that by creating interesting photos and videos about your business and sharing them. There are even companies or sites that sell Instagram followers. You can buy Instagram views to increase your followers and even rate of conversion.

So, Instagram is just like Facebook and Twitter, except that it focuses more on visual communication than written communication.