Are you on Instagram? Are you addicted to taking and uploading beautiful photos, adding a cool filter or an effect, sharing it with relevant hashtags, and then seeing the likes pouring in? Welcome to the Instaworld. A very powerful community of people sharing amazing, cool, funny, exciting and beautiful content. And you won’t be on your own. The total number of daily active Instagram users has hit 500 million last December, according this blog post from Omnico.
And of course, businesses has jumped on this successtory, as well as Instagram (read Facebook) itself. You can turn your personal account into a business account, giving you call to action buttons on your profile page and giving you specific analytics on your Instagram presence. And through Facebook you can use Instagram as an advertising channel as well.
Businesses use Instagram for competitions, showing the human side of the company, showcasing their products etc. But did you also know that Instagram is a very powerful tool for training and education? Here are 5 ways to use Instagram in your classroom:
Inspiration – Instagram is a fantastic place to get visual ideas on any topic you are interested in. Just search by hashtag and you will get a wide variety of posts, photos and videos, that you can use to expad your thoughts around the topic that you are researching.
Video Tutorials – This is one of the most powerful aspects of Instagram. Short video tutorials. As somebody said on youtube about what a good Instagram video tells you: “It’s a really good idea. You should try it!”. Look at recipes or fitness videos. Short videos with simple explanations that inspire you to do it yourself.
Gamification – People love playing games. So who not use Instagram to add an element of competition to your lessons. Students posting their work on instagram and they compete with other students through number of likes, or comments.
Discussion forum – Posting training videos on Instagram opens up a natural communication channel with your students as they can use the comment section to discuss anything or ask questions to you or other students. It is also a great way to open up discussion with thought leaders in the industry and find out about market developments.
Instagram Live – And here is your winner. Since most of your students will be on Instagram, why not add a live online learning element to your training by doing Instagram Live training sessions. It’s immediate, students can ask questions, you can give instant response and it’s fun.
So here you go, 5 ways to use Instagram for your training. An incredibly powerful tool to add a new dimension to your training. Using visuals through photos and videos, leveraging interactions and conversations and bringing in the “cool” factor through gamification. Let me know what your experiences are with using Instagram in an educational environment.