F is for… Friends and Followers

Find People to Follow

Every user has a “followers” and “following” count which like other social networking platforms represents how many people they follow and how many people follow them. You can simply click “follow” to follow a user account that inspires you. This can then be the start of a potential conversation and connection. Use search and explore to find accounts that you like (and this will also help the right people find you).

However, it is important to note that a lot of people still use Instagram for personal use and personal private photographs so they set their profiles to private and they will therefore need to approve your request first. If you have a private account yourself it will be limited in how useful it will be for networking beyond close friends and family. Therefore you might wish to consider making your account public (or creating two accounts).

Tag your Friends

When you are building a relationship or networking with friends and followers it is important to keep them engaged. An easy way to do this is to tag them. You can tag friends and other Instagram users in your photographs or your captions. Tagging friends and contacts can be a great way to:

• share inspiring content
• give them a shout out to your followers or give them credit/thanks
• add them to a conversation
• share with them content that you think they will like and to continue a conversation
• show them that you are thinking of them.

Create a Close Friends lists

Stories can also be a great way to share content and network with your followers. However, sometimes you don’t want everyone seeing your stories content because it won’t be relevant to them, or you only want to share with certain people. In situations like this, you can use a Close Friends List.

The Close Friends list allows you to share Instagram Stories with a specific group of people. You can add and remove users from this list whenever you want, and customise it depending on what you are using it for. Users aren’t notified when you add or remove them from the list (so don’t worry about using it in this way).

Creating a Close Friends list is easy – just go to the menu bar on your profile – click “Close Friends” and then click “Add” next to the usernames of the people you want to add to the list. Click “Done” when you are done. Easy.