Instagram has often baffled the public sector yet with some fresh thinking it could work well for you.
The worst examples I’ve seen of corporate Instagram are a receptacle for every piece of artwork or campaign regardless. The sense of box ticking is as strong as the tumbleweed, frankly. Just because something been posted doesn’t mean it’s worked.
So what does work?
Well, firstly, it’s creating a filter around who your audience is. Who is likely to follow you? Who is following you? Instagram is most popular amongst under 30s. It’s visual and increasingly video. Half of all time spent on Instagram is spent watching video, so how can you tailor something?
The days of Instagram being a place solely for landscape pics, fashion pics or shots of your breakfast have long gone.
Here’s three examples of good Instagram use to inspire you.
Alderhey Children’s Hospital
A few years ago, this children’s hospital on Merseyside was involved in a high profile court case involving a baby and medical advice that pointed to switching off the life support machine. The case was traumatic for all concerned and led to a rethink by the hospital on how they use social media.
Instead of using Instagram as a general bulletin board they asked a simple question: ‘What are we about?’ The answer was they were a place that had inspiring staff doing amazing things for amazing child patience. So, they decided to use Instagram as a place to posting inspiring stories of staff and patients and nothing else.
This remarkable approach has generated some truly magnificent content that has been picked up by news outlets across the globe.
For example, here’s 13-year-old Ellie who appears in this video ringing the end of treatment bell.
It’s an emotional video that shows video ringing the symbolic bell then hugging her Mum. It’s beautiful.
Then there’s this which is a quick staff profile of Linda a catering assistant.
Both build a picture of a hospital with real people doing a fantastic job.
Leeds Plus Social
This isn’t public sector but its absolutely a channel to learn from. Leeds Plus is a news outlet that exists on social media that focuses on the positive.
Scroll through and you’ll see stories from across the city with more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. That’s an impressive number.
The platform divides its content into seven nicely curated categories including news to food & drink, new venues, local heroes, back in time and events. Want more food & drink? Hit the category at the top of the channel. The lesson here is to focus on what people want and curate it for them.
As you scroll down the timeline you get a layer which gives the title of the video. Click through and it uses subtitles to run through the story. Here a £250m tram proposal is being explained in the caption but also the video which tells the story in text on cutaways of Leeds streets.
Or this which tells the story of the Mr Whippy Vans departing the city park.
It’s clear that news stories can be covered on Instagram if they are created for uniquely for Instagram and from the ground-up.
Yorkshire Dales
While video is a driver there’s still room for good photography. Every area has its share of people who celebrate the area with good pics. The trick is to ask them for permission to share them and then credit them.
Here, a shot taken by amateur photographer Andy Kay is used to celebrate the view. What I also love about this are the comments. One person recognises it as his father-in-law’s land where he first started to dry stone wall. So, connections with the community in an unexpected way.
From a more day-to-day call to action perspective this shot of the museum flags up the museum as a place to go for events.
What good looks like
Anton Mosseri, head of Instagram, recently posted that follower numbers were less important than likes and views per post. This makes loads of sense and navigates around the legacy impact of previous ways Instagram were used. An account may have 20,000 people, for example, but if the content is poor this week it’ll lead to limited engagement. A couple of likes for this is not a great look.
The other good thing about this is that it can be understood with a basic grasp of maths rather than buying an external tool. Adobe put ‘good’ at four per cent engagement. So, two likes amongst 20,000 followers at 0.01 per cent is demonstrably poor. To reach four per cent for 20,000 followers would need 800 engagements.
Summary
Instagram is its own channel with its own filter needed to weed out the content topics that won’t work. Will it appeal to under 30s? Is it visual? Can it be video?
Consistently, what doesn’t work are pieces of graphic design messaging. The numbers for these are consistently poor.
