The Real Reason Instagram Profile Pages Matter

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or - the digital alternative, without internet access - for the past week, then your week included the Christmas Eve-like joy of your new Instagram profile page.

Around the web following the rollout however, the scene was less akin to an exciting Christmas Day, and more to, well, anything anticlimactic in general.

Okay, okay, I’m a dork so I did get excited and it did feel a bit like Christmas Day as my brand-spanking new profile was rolled out. But then I started thinking through a checklist of items to run through to ensure the new profile page was properly utilized.

New Instagram Profile Checklist:

1. Double-check your profile copy: Now that it’s on the web, take a quick look and remember to write for SEO purposes. Here’s your chance to share common hashtags for followers to use when interacting with your account as well.

2. Begin - or continue - using high-res photos when posting to Instagram: The less cynical side of me firmly believes that people recognize subtle differences in photo quality. Particularly in the sports realm, we have access to more AP-quality images than other organizations, often times without the significant expense. Invest in a DSLR and an iPhoneography class for your digital team and commit to using great photos, not just good ones.

3. Begin linking directly to your page: It’s your cross platform content strategy at it’s finest. Photos posted to your Instagram profile can be pinned to Pinterest now, but not pulled in as a link to a Tumblr post. Use your new profile as a reminder to keep building those healthy traffic links!

4. Consider creating an “Instagram follow” button to direct folks to your Instagram feed: the link will take folks to the same location we’ve already been sending them, but moving forward, keep in mind that Instagram should be right up there with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

But here is what excites me about the new Instagram profiles: This is truly the first of many times to come where a traditional mobile application will develop and grow an audience purely on mobile prior to being taken to the web. To consider that it took a purchase by Facebook, a traditionally web-based service, to launch a web profile database for users, is incredible to think.

Does this mean that web-based platforms will slowly evolve to become the new “brick and mortar” concept as mobile takes over? Stay tuned…

Photo Archiving Project by Peace Corps

In the realm of cool things I never knew existed, the Peace Corps keeps a digital photo library of projects from across the globe.

Photos are searchable by subject area and location. Incredible stuff - click here to check it out.

Content archiving is a fascinating area of digital media. In the past, I’ve collaborated with Indiana University to digitize and create an internally searchable archive of Indianapolis 500 photos and no matter how many photos I looked through, I always felt compelled to know more about the story behind it. I  loved working with our photo staff along the way and always hoped to someday see the project become external-facing.

Hard not to be excited about stumbling across an equally interesting undertaking by the Peace Corps to capture U.S. Citizens doing good work around the world. This might even top my love of the Library of Congress’ Flickr stream…

The phrase “In Case You Missed It” needs to go

Before you keep reading, I want you to start by promising to remove the phrase “In case you missed it” from your vocabulary. Here’s why:

It’s human nature. In your mind, you’ve already posted the article (let’s assume it’s an article for example here), but step outside of your world for a minute and you’ll see that you’re presenting a negative with a positive, what you’re saying is pretty much this:

“Hey, this is old but you’ll still love it.”

See? A negative and a positive, which will leave fans feeling just neutral enough to probably not click. Visualization in social media demands that our post copy enable fans to see what they need to see. Tell them why they are looking are your content now, not why you’re tweeting it again.

So why do we continue to re-share content from earlier in the day, week, or year with the phrase “in case you missed it” at the beginning?

It’s what makes web and social media folks so incredibly clever, they are the ones who find ways to present content in different shapes and forms that appeals to certain audiences and engages their brand with consumers.

You’ve successfully shown that you can “sell” content in 140 characters or less, but now the next challenge is to show that you can sell it more than once within a small window of time.

Next time you go to re-post a piece of content again, take a second to consider what drove you to re-post the piece. Simply needing something, anything, to post that day is not a justifiable reason.

Does the content support a current storyline? Are the images used particularly impactful? What could make someone click on that link today?

In the online editorial environment, it’s not often that you’re first to the punch as a sports organization. The goal needs to be selling the content and engaging your fans, rather than simply shouting that you have an article.

Ten other websites have coverage too. So what if I missed it earlier this week? Why should I click to see it now? Tell me, please.