- [Instructor] One thing that businesses have discovered
since they started using social media
is that it's not just enough
to have a presence on social media
and upload all of your advertisements
and photos of your products,
but it's also important to interact with the community.
So let's talk about how we can do that on Instagram.
We took a look at the searching section of Instagram
earlier in the course,
and it may be a good idea to search for users
or terms related to your industry.
So let's go to the search page.
And I'm actually going to view another photography profile.
So I have it here in my recent searches,
it's blue30photography.
So let's tap and take a look.
So first of all,
since this profile is in the same industry as us,
let's go ahead and follow them.
We can do that by tapping on the Follow button
towards the top of the profile.
Now let's take a look at some of the photos here.
I like this one with the sunset,
so I'm just going to tap on this photo.
And since we like it,
we can actually give it a like here on Instagram.
Now, I can do that just by tapping on the heart icon,
or alternatively, I could've just double-tapped
right on the photo itself.
So since we've liked the photo,
the user will get notified that we've liked the photo.
So that's great.
It's a little bit of interaction.
But we can actually do a little more here.
We can be a little more personal
by actually commenting on photos.
So I'm going to tap on the commenting bubble
next to the like button to add a comment.
It's important to note that on Instagram,
you can @mention people
just like you can on Twitter and Facebook.
So we could go ahead and we can type the @ symbol
and then we can start typing the user's Instagram name.
So it's blue30photography.
So if we start typing blue, it comes up in our auto-fill.
So we'll tap on blue30photography,
and you can see the @ mention's now in our comment.
And we can just say something like, "Great photo."
And then we can tap Post.
Now, you'll notice that our comment has been posted
and we @ mentioned them.
So that will actually notify them even a little more.
They're going to get notified that we liked the photo,
they're going to get notified that we added a comment,
but now they're also going to get notified
that we @mentioned them.
And because we're actually commenting on their photo,
we might not need to @mention them
in this particular comment,
but it's a great way to reach out to users.
Let's say you have some followers on Instagram,
and they're liking a lot of your photos,
and you see the same person
kind of coming up over and over again,
and you start to get an idea of what they like on Instagram.
Well, you could be on another Instagram profile,
and you can say, "Oh, wow, I have this one follower.
"I know they're going to like this photo,"
or "I think they're going to like this photo."
So then you could @mention them
in the comment of this photo,
saying, "Hey, I think you'll really enjoy this one."
And that shows a lot of personality.
It shows that you're remembering somebody
who's following you on Twitter.
You're noticing what they're liking
on your Instagram profile.
And you're thinking about them as you view other profiles.
So that's a great way to be interactive here on Instagram.
So I think it's a great idea
to follow other Instagram profiles
that are similar to your industry or in your industry,
and really start to interact with the community.
Don't just make Instagram a place
where you dump all these photos
and hope that you're going to get a bunch of followers,
but really dive right into it
and become a member of the community.
You're definitely going to have
a lot more success on Instagram if you're doing this
than if you're just uploading a whole bunch of photos.