For this activity, I started using social media platform Instagram; focusing my uploads on potential activities that could be undertaken by information institutions. BookishBastet and Other Instagram Things is the blog post created about my Instagram experience.
What Did You Learn?
Instagram is a visual platform focusing on images on videos (Instagram, n.d.). The default aspect ratio for images is square though uploads can be edited to landscape or portrait presentation. Uploading and capturing images is simple enough and the filters and basic editing suite allow for nice effects and correction of some flaws. The main discovery option I used was hashtags. Each post is allowed a maximum of 30 hashtags to describe itself and capture peoples attention, and it is normal to see people using all thirty or close to it to attract attention. These hashtags do go through trend cycles which are important for libraries to be aware of due to the algorithm behind Instagram (Chacon, 2017).
Social media is now a prominent promotional tool for libraries, understanding how platforms work is an essential skill for librarians (Potter, 2012). Instagram is popular with younger generations, Millennials and Gen Z (for definitions of these terms see Robinson, 2017) with 59% of Instagrammers within one of these demographics (Mathison, 2018). As Millennials cease to be young adults the remain relevant to youth librarians as the parents of young children.
My strengths are in words, stories, quotes. I tend to have the ideas for visual presentation, but the execution is not my forte. Practice in the creation of visuals may improve my skill. My preference would be to develop the skills within a role, with targets in mind and set goals.
There are still gaps in my knowledge that are specific to Instagram, tagging and effective use of filters. Both will take time and trial and error to improve. Though the tagging gap may be filled by further exploration on Instagram and extended reading on blogs. I know that Instagram tags go through trends I have not used it extensively enough to notice those changes, the precursors to them.
Discussion of New and Emerging Technologies in Relation to Your Chosen Activity.
While not a new platform having launched in 2010 (Instagram, 2018) the effective use of Instagram is still relatively new to libraries. There are 9 million monthly Instagram users in Australia making it the third biggest social network for Australians (Cowling, 2018), so definitely worth looking into. But for me this was not about Instagram, it was about the learning of a new platform, looking at a platform with a professional lens and how this can translate to other platforms.
The use of social platforms is ever growing in librarianship as libraries follow their patrons, with multiple books published dealing with the topic of how to best manage social media in a library context (Eden, 2016; Harmon, 2013; Mon, 2015). While all platforms are different with varying focuses and individual strengths and weaknesses they can all be learnt be spending time there and engaging with the interface and the community. An important factor in social media promotion is knowing your audience and posting targeted and unique content (Uribe-Mutal, 2016). Be that the young, fun imagery of Instagram, the multiform potential of Tumblr or the brevity of Twitter.
Chacon, B. (2017). 5 things to know about the Instagram algorithm. In Later. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from https://later.com/blog/instagram-algorithm/
Cowling, D. (2018, May 1). Social media statistics Australia: April 2018. SocialMediaNews. Retrieved from https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-april-2018/
Eden, B. L. (2016). Marketing and Outreach for the Academic Library : New Approaches and Initiatives [Rowman & Littlefield Publishers]. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Harmon, C. (2013). Using social media in libraries best practices [Scarecrow Press, Inc.]. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Instagram. (2018). Our Story. In Instagram Info Center. Retrieved May 23, 2018, from https://instagram-press.com/our-story/
Instagram. (n.d.). What is Instagram? In Instagram Info Center. Retrieved May 23, 2018, from https://help.instagram.com/424737657584573
Mathison, R. (2018, 24 January). 23+ useful Instagram statistics from social media marketers. Hootsuite. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics/
Mon, L. (2015). Social media and library services [Morgan & Claypool Publishers]. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Potter, N. (2012). The library marketing toolkit [Facet]. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Robinson, M. T. (2017). The generations: Which generation are you? In Career Planner. from https://www.careerplanner.com/Career-Articles/Generations.cfm
Uribe-Mutal, O. (2016, January 20). Social media for nonprofits. [Lynda.com online course]. Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/Facebook-tutorials/Social-Media-Nonprofits/426766-2.html
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