Using Instagram

Unless you have been living under a rock or are a huge fan of keeping your life completely private, you know Instagram. A popular social media community created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger as a means of capturing and sharing life’s moments, the platform is used by a wide variety of people from celebrities to creatives to musicians and more. Although it has faced a lot of backlash for the changes in algorithm and the addition of features that it’s users do not value as much as they would the chronological algorithm. Regardless, people love Instagram and it is the social media of choice for many people. If you’re looking to stay up to date on the latest social media, read on.

## Signing up for Instagram & Following People

There are two ways you can do sign up for an Instagram account: on your browser or on your phone. For the sake of this guide, we will be walking through creating an Instagram account on the browser, but will also address how to do this on your phone.

### Signing up on Your Browser

Head to https://www.instagram.com

This will take you to a page featuring two iPhones, and a login/signup box labeled with the Instagram name, and open boxes where you can insert your information. The page will ask you for a mobile number or email, your full name, a username, and a password. Alternatively, you may sign up with your Facebook account.

Once you have created a unique username and password, Instagram will suggest some users for you to follow because you are new to the platform. Following someone basically means that you will see the content they upload to the site. The users that Instagram suggests right off the bat are usually popular on the platform and will represent a variety of interests. For example, some of them will be bigger corporations, YouTube stars, musicians, sports stars, and so on. You are not required to actually follow any of them. In fact, you can ignore these suggestions altogether and search for the people you want to follow by typing their name or username (if you know it) into the search box at the top of the page. To follow a person, just click the blue follow button, and it will change from “Follow” to a gray “Following” button. If at any point in time you need to stop following someone, you can click the button again and it will go back to “Follow.”

The process for signing up on your iPhone will be similar. However, instead of heading to the website, you may download the Instagram app and go through the same process of generating a username, password, and entering an email or phone number.

## What to do Once You’ve Signed Up

After you’ve signed up, you will want to follow people. Instagram is a social networking site, so it is useful for keeping up to date with friends, celebrities, organizations, you name it. You might consider following university affiliated organizations or departments such as the UCF College of Arts and Humanities, UCF Football, or the official account of the University. You might also want to follow accounts that are relevant to your interests. So, for example, if you are a huge fan of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or Will Smith, you might follow their Instagram accounts just to keep up to date with them. Or, if you love dogs and want to see them all over your feed, you might follow accounts like WeSnapDogs or TheDogist.

Another thing you will want to do after you’ve signed up, is customize your profile. Your profile is where the pictures you post will be shown. It is also where your information such as your name and bio will be reflected. You will want to add something here to represent who you are as a person or to represent whatever it is you want to portray online.

## Using Your Account: The Basics

Once you've gotten everything set up, it's time to actually use Instagram. On your dashboard or feed, you will see the posts of the people you follow. Beneath those posts there are usually three symbols: a heart, a comment bubble, and an arrow.

The heart is what you would use to like or show appreciation for a picture. It is essentially the goal of all Instagrammers to get the most "likes" on a picture as they possibly can. If you come across a picture that you quite enjoy, you can double tap/ double click it, or you can click directly on the heart itself to show your appreciation for it.

The comment bubble is used for leaving comments. Clicking on it will take you down to the comment section, where you can type anything you desire. A good rule of thumb when commenting is to only say things in the comments that you would actually say to that person's face. It's always good practice to leave nice comments telling a person how much you like their picture, replying to their caption, or generally saying something nice.

The arrow is used for sharing a post. When you click on it, you get the option of sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, Email, or to copy the link for whatever platform you want to use it on. A word of warning, if you share posts that are on private accounts, other users who are not also following that account will *not* be able to see the post. On your iPhone, a small difference with this arrow option is that instead of it being the way you share the post to other platforms, the arrow is used to either share the post to your own Instagram story or to send it in a direct message to someone you follow. On your iPhone, in order to share a post to those different platforms, you must click the three little dots on the top right corner of the post.

One other symbol that exists under the pictures looks a bit like a ribbon. This is the save button and it is used when you want to save a picture to your collections. Many people use the save feature as a way to gather inspirational posts for later reference or to bookmark accounts that they want to go back to.

On your dashboard, as aforementioned, you will see the posts of the people you follow. To interact with posts, you may "like" or comment on them.

You will also see Instagram stories. Instagram stories are where users can post related content or videos to their account in a slideshow format. Users may post videos, pictures, Boomerangs, live videos, typed words on colored backgrounds, etc. To interact with Instagram stories, you just click the circle with the person's profile picture on it, allow it to load up, and watch or tap through the pictures and videos.

## Uploading Photos

To create your Instagram feed, you need to post photos and/or videos. While you cannot do this directly from the browser or from your laptop, you can do it from the app. To take or upload a photo or video, click the small plus sign icon at the bottom of the screen. That will open up to three options: Library, Photo, or Video.

Library: Use the library option if you want to select and post a photo from your camera roll. This will show you all the photos you have saved to your phone and you can choose one from there. This option also lets you choose the size of your photo, create a Boomerang, create a collage, or create an album. When you create an album, you will choose multiple pictures that will go into the same post. Whichever photo you have chosen as number 1 is the one that will be the directly on your profile.

Photo or Video: This option will open up your camera and from there you can take a regular photo or video, depending on which option you selected, as if you were using your camera app.

## Editing Photos on the App

Once you have selected your photo, you will be taken to an editing page. On this page, you can add filters to your photos, adjust the alignment of a photo, change the brightness or contrast, play with the sharpness, alter the warmth and saturation, add different colored highlights and shadows as well as change the intensity of both features, or put vignettes, tilt shifts, or fades on the picture.

You are not required to edit directly on the app, but you can if you would like to. Some people do, others choose to use different apps to achieve their desired look.

## Advanced Features

Instagram has been constantly developing into a more advanced and versatile media platform, so of course there are advanced features. You can also download contents from Instagram with InstaDP.

One of these features if the IGTV channel. Here, you can create longer vertical videos to share with your audience. On IGTV, your videos can be longer than 1 minute which is usually the allowed the length if you are posting a video to your feed. In fact, often people will post YouTube style videos on their IGTV channels ranging anywhere from 1 minute to upwards of 30 minutes. Usually those who follow you will be notified if you've posted an IGTV video. You may find and watch videos of people you do and do not follow.

Other features you may use to network are your Discover page. On this page, Instagram will show you accounts and posts that they think you might like based on who you follow and the pictures you like. Here, you can find new accounts to interact with or just browse to see what Instagram thinks you might like. This is a fun page to go on when no one you are directly following is uploading any content.