Creative Ways to Build Community Engagement Through Instagram

This is my friend Sarah Kate. She’s a young vegan chef who wants to reach other teenagers to share the benefits and joys of living a vegan lifestyle. I’m really proud of her for passionately pursuing her goals — she’s amazing. She uses Instagram to share her inspiring photos.

We talked about Instagram in our Social Tools and Platforms class @ CUNY this week and it inspired me to really start thinking about ways to reach my community through this platform.

In her article, “5 ways newsrooms can make the most of Instagram,” Katie Hawkins-Gaar, digital innovation faculty member for the Poynter Institute, said that the decision to launch their Instagram account a year ago was not about driving traffic to their site. Rather, it was more about using Instagram’s creative, community-driven platform as a place to get to know their community and test things out. She shared some innovative ways that newsrooms of every size are using Instagram to do this. These ideas have helped me to explore the possibilities for using Instagram to engage with my own community, Women with chronic health problems that have not been resolved through traditional medicine.

Here are some of the smart ways that newsrooms are using Instagram and how I might apply them to my community (from Katie’s article):

“To facilitate crowdsourced projects.”

I love the Chicago Tribute’s Instagram projects, “Windows” and “Chicago After Dark.” They’ve introduced some fresh ways to connect with their audience that I think would work for my community. For example, I could create specific “projects” around subjects like healthy living/food that ask people to submit their photos, or feature specific community members that link to their personal health stories. It’s great to be able to follow these projects to see what they do and how they’re working.

“To tease long-form reporting.”

CNN’s John Sutter recently spoke to our Metrics and Outcomes class about how he uses his personal Instagram account to document his travel and who he meets along the way. Later he incorporates his Instagram photos into his reported stories, like 417-mile trek down America’s “most endangered” river. Perhaps I could use Instagram to post photos of the people I meet along my own journey to connect with my community. The head of our program at CUNY, Dr. Carrie Brown, mentioned yesterday that it may be helpful to document our work as Social Journalists because it’s an exciting new field that many journalists are interesting in learning more about. Just thinking.

“To showcase stunning photography.”

It was a privilege to hear from a guest speaker this week, Ryan Fitzgibbon, founder and creator of the magazine “Hello, Mr.” Ryan uses Instagram to connect with his community in a unique way through stunning photography (sometimes from his community) that is artistically presented. With a background in design thinking (Ideo), he knows that listening to his audience is essential to building a successful brand (music to a social journo’s ears). With almost 23,000 followers and growing, he demonstrates the power of Instagram to connect his audience, build his brand, and promote his magazine.

As I learn more about photojournalism and how to take emotionally engaging photographs, I’d like to experiment more on Instagram.

“To present news in a new format.”

As the English idiom says, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” With mobile devices and social networks becoming one of the fastest growing ways for people to consume news, Instagram provides a creative platform to share it. Video is now a great option to consider since Instagram just announced that they will allow up to 60 seconds of video. They said, “In the last six months, the time people spent watching video increased by more than 40 percent. And longer videos mean more diverse stories from the accounts you love, whether it’s Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) hanging out with friends or beauty star Bretman Rock’s (@bretmanrock) latest makeup tutorial.”

Video is a powerful way to communicate. As I observe some of the ways that other communities use video on Instagram, I’m confident that they’ll spark some ideas for my own.

“To create a sandbox for experimentation.”

I’m intrigued by the way the Arkansa Fayetteville Flyer uses Instagram to post photos that link to news stories, ask audience questions, and host sponsored content. Poytner plans to use their Instagram account for crowdsourcing projects and in-person meet-ups. These creative ideas have inspired me to think about the possibilities for my own community, so I’m following both to see if I can learn from their Instagram experimentation.