We all love blogging, but what about those times when you want to share that fabulous activity you did with you students, or your latest school supply steal, but don't have enough time to write a blog post? That's where Instagram (IG) comes to the rescue! As a mom of two busy little boys, I love how quick and easy IG is! I can post a picture of an activity, meme, outfit, etc, write a short description about it, and share it with all of my Instagram friends! It's fast, simple, and easy, so I can go back to doing whatever it is I need to do!

In this post, I'm going to show you some tips and tricks that may help you along the way, as well as some apps to add some pizzaz, and make your life easier! I find that the best way to explain a tech tool is through lots of pictures, so here we go!

The Basics: If you just started you're IG journey, welcome aboard! To show some love for an Instagram post, all you need to do is press the heart. To leave a comment on a picture, click on the speech bubble and type away! Sometimes we see a post that we believe another IG friend would like to see. To share with the friend, simply type the @ symbol before their IG name, along with your message. This will tag them in the post, and show up in their notifications, alerting them to check out that particular post.

Sending a direct message: You can also send a photo and message directly to specific people, friends, or family members. This may be helpful if you want to share an image for a blog hop or when promoting a collaboration. You can find a nice tutorial for this here.

Let's Talk about Apps, Baby! There are many different apps to choose from when using Instagram, and they all have various purposes. Here are a few of my favorites!

A Beautiful Mess allows you to add fun star bursts, arrows, hearts, etc. on your photo to bring attention to certain aspects. I love that you can add text to your pictures! Lets face it, as someone scrolling through their Instagram feed, you are more likely to read the text in the photo before reading the description, so make it catchy! A Beautiful Mess also has backgrounds that you can use and add text. This is great if you have a question to ask without a picture! *This app does cost 99 cents, but it is well worth it in my opinion!

Photo grid is an app I like to use when participating in Instagram linkies that require you to put a photo on top of a background. This app offers a lot of options, but to place a photo on a background, make sure you have taken a screenshot of the background you will use, as well as the photo to place on top. You will choose the PinBoard option, which will then allow you to choose the images (background and photo(s)) that you want to use. You can then situate them images to suit your needs! *This is a free app!

Sometimes you might like to repost a photo and description from another Instagram user. Many people do this to share ideas they loved, announcements, and giveaway. To give the original poster the appropriate credit, the Repost app is the best way to go! With this app, you can search the user and identify the post that you want to share with others. Once you have selected it, you click the Repost button, and it will connect you back to Instagram to repost the photo and description to your account. You also have the ability to                          add you own text to the description. *This app is free!

There are many apps that allow you to do photo collages. You can do them through A Beautiful Mess and PhotoGrid, but I tend to like the look of the collages from Pic Stitch because there is a white boarder/divider between each of the pictures. Pic Stitch also gives you many different layout options. *This app is free!

Keep it Simple! Did you know that there is also a free collage builder that is now built into your Instagram account? It is super easy, and I love how it gives you layout options with your pictures in the layout! You can read all about that here!

Finding new people to follow There are many ways to find new people to follow! The first is to search a hashtag that interests you. For example, if you are a first grade teacher, you could search the hashtag #iteachfirst. Take a look at the pictures, click on one you like, and then check out the person you clicked on. If you like what you see, go ahead and become a follower! Some other hashtags you can search for followers are: #teachersfollowteachers. #iteach(grade level) #teachersofinstagram #teachersofig 


Another way to find new people to follow is by pressing the speech bubble with a heart at the bottom, and then "following" at the top. Here you will get to see the pictures that people you already follow have liked. You may see some pictures that catch your eye, and then check out the person they belong to!

Finally, don't forget about the followers you already have! You may have some who show you lots of love in likes or comments. Be sure to check out their IG page too!



What about getting new followers? When it comes to getting new followers, I find that engagement is key. While liking photos is great, commenting on photos shows interest in others, which may in turn, entice others to start following you!

Flash Freebies & Giveaways Freebies and giveaways on Instagram are a great way to say thank you to your followers as well as celebrate different occasions, whether it be a blogiversary, a milestone, finishing a new product, etc. For a freebie, all you need to do is post an image about it, and place the link in your profile. When doing a giveaway, you need to decide if you are going to host it solely on IG, or advertise it there and host it on your blog or Facebook page. If hosting on Instagram, you set the parameters for the entries, whether it be for the participants to repost the image with a special hashtag, place a comment under the picture, etc. Speaking from experience, if you host a giveaway on Instagram, you may also get "giveaway accounts" (people who only use the account to participate in IG giveaways) as participants. You can decide how to handle these. I prefer to support my fellow teachers when doing a giveaway, so I try to have one of the parameters as a comment regarding something teacher-related.

Can you schedule Instagram posts? Yes! Greg (my other half) recently wrote a blog post about the new Instagram scheduler Wisel.it here! (It's free, too!)

Best times to Post/Looking at Analytics As explained in this article, the best times to post are 2 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST.  Although there isn't a huge difference in on the best day to post, Wednesday did show to be the best day.

One way to look at some basic Instagram Analytics is through Iconosquare. Once logged in with your Instagram info, you can get information such as your most liked posts, the amount of likes/comments you've gotten, and your follower count. You can take a look at your most liked posts to see if there is anything in common with the time posted and the type of content posted. When Iconosquare updates, it sends you a snapshot of your Instagram stats! This is very helpful if you are tracking your stats!

While all of this Instagram information may be a bit overwhelming, the best way to start is to jump in and give it a try! Pick one app to start with, and try fancy-ing up a photo! The Instagram atmosphere is very fun and positive, which makes it an awesome place to connect with other teachers around the world! Be sure to continue to check back on the #tptSMsurge Facebook group to learn even more about Instagram throughout the week!

So, how do you pronounce GIF? Is it GIF with a hard G or "JIF" like the peanut butter brand? Actually, it's the latter. Earlier this summer, Becky showed me a few TPT stores that replaced their personal quotes with PNG/JPG files with a GIF. After finding a few tutorials, I decided I could tackle the job! 
This is my final product: 

I'm super excited that I handled everything - from Photoshop to the HTML code. It wasn't easy, but here are a few things I learned from my project.

Becky and I had a long discussion about what to highlight in our GIF. Obviously, each store owner can choose several things that you want to reinforce to your customers. Selecting two or three products with general comments for several slides will build a concise snapshot of what your store has to offer. 

There are a lot of applications that can handle this type of process - PowerPoint, Keynote, or Photoshop, to name a few. I created the images (450 pixels x 150 pixels) in Keynote and then exported them to Photoshop. (I created it in Keynote because I have the experience and liberty to be more free with my design). 

Here are a few notes about the image creation:
1. You need the background of the image to match that grayish color on TPT. You can do that  by either making the background image in Keynote or PowerPoint that hue of gray OR you can extract the background in Photoshop when you put it together. The html code for that gray is #F2F2F2. If you're ever trying to match color or find the HTML code for a specific color, this is a great color wheel. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't choose a color based on the HTML code in Keynote. SO, you can save the image above OR take a screenshot of the personal quote from your TPT store. Throw the image/screenshot in to PPT or Keynote and do a color match. 

And then there is always Photoshop. You can extract the background color. This is the best option, but not everyone has Photoshop.

I have an older version of Photoshop (CS3). There are plenty of video tutorials available for creating a GIF, but this is the best one that I found for my version. (If you're searching for other tutorials, just make sure you know the "instructor" is speaking about your version of Photoshop.)

If you want to create a GIF for your store, but don't have Photoshop - no worries. Here's an alternative - 
gifmaker.me. Here's a quick tutorial. 

Photobucket is the easiest way to upload your GIF to the web and get a source code. They offer a wide variety of links for different reasons, but the "DIRECT" link is the one you'll need for this job.

Once you copy the link to your GIF, you'll need to jump over to TinyURL.com. There are two links you're going to need to shorten:

1. You're going to need to shorten the PhotoBucket Direct link you just created. Copy the link and throw it in a note or side document for just a minute (be sure to label it so you don't get the links mixed up). WE WILL CALL THIS LINK: "HTTP://TINYURL.COM/GIFLINK".
2. You need to decide what you want the GIF to link to. We have ours set back to the blog, but you may want it to link to a specific part of your store or even a product. Grab that original URL and put that in to TinyURL as well. Grab the shortened link and put it in the same document as #1. WE WILL CALL THIS LINK: "HTTP://TINYURL.COM/SITELINK".

Now that you have both links, you're going to need to do some coding. Here you go:

If you want to test the code to make sure it works, you need to do the Tryit Editor! Feel free to play around with our GIF code:

Once you played around with the code and it's ready to go, simply copy and paste it in to your "personal quote" under your profile in TPT. Best of luck and if you need any help, just let me know!

Best,

Hi everyone, it's Becky! Today I wanted to show you a new way that you can easily create collages in Instagram without having to switch to a different app on your own. (IG does it for you!) My Vegas roommates encouraged me to write this post, after I showed both of them this little trick! So after changing their IG lives (ha!) I thought I'd share and change yours too! Since it is a whole lot easier to show you the steps with pictures, I took a whole bunch of screen shots to walk you through this simple process! (Be ready for picture overload! #sorrynotsorry!)

I love how easy it now is to create a collage in Instagram! There is no need to go back and forth between other collage apps, trying to pick and choose which layout is best depending on the type of pictures you have. The layout choices provided are wonderful and such a time saver! Although it does take you to the Layout app, I like that you do not have to actually make the app switch on your own, and there are no adds that you have to watch in order to share it to Instagram.

There are a few drawbacks to the collage feature on Instagram. The first is that there is not a border between each photo. I know that is a visual preference for some. The other drawback is that you cannot add text on top of the photo like you can in apps like A Beautiful Mess.

Despite the drawbacks, the ease of use and efficiency in the new collage creator within Instagram makes it a win in my book! Have you used this new feature yet? Let me know what you think! Also, if you haven't checked out Greg's post about the new Instagram scheduler, be sure to check it out!