How to tell your story on Instagram?

Or how the Vrije Universiteit Brussel used Instagram as the perfect

story telling tool

I’m a storyteller

Who’s on Instagram?

INSTAGRAMSharing & browsing through pictures on Instragram is mainly popular amongst youngsters.

21%Spends more than 1h per day on Instagram

49% 51%

Mainly young people (15-19y)

Account and logged in during previous month 17%

Account and not logged in during previous month 7%

I have deleted my account 1%

I never had an account 75%

Percentage of Instagram users per age range

We’re on Instagram. Now what?

So why did we start using Instagram?

• It’s where our public is• Strategy: Image building through story telling• What do we do? We give the account to our

public and let them tell their unique story.

How to build your community?

• Use your ‘subjects’ to gather an interested community

• Use other channels to spread the word: FB, TW, website

• Introduce your person of the week in the newsletter,…

• Advertising on Instagram

Is Instagram worth the effort?

No, but yeah, but no, but yeah,…

What are the pro’s• When using Instagram correctly, you can tell a real story• No advertising or marketing, but honest stories of everyday

people at the university• Taking you behind the screens, where no man/woman has gone

before (unless you work/study there)• You can use the delivered content in your content marketing story• You create new ambassadors by making people important for you• You discover new ambassadors by noticing people who actively

like all of your posts• Not important in this story, but being on Instagram offers you the

opportunity to advertise on Instagram

Succes stories

What are the cons?

• You’re out of control and need to trust the ones owning the account for the week

• There are no exact numbers available about the reach,… So it’s difficult to report about it

• Finding good stories is time consuming. More then you might think

What are the difficulties we faced?

Uptill now, we didn’t really faced big problemsBUT:- It’s a good idea to give a list of tips and tricks to those

working with the account in order to avoid blurry, boring, stupid,… pictures

- When you use people who are abroad, ask them to log in the week before as it might cause some problems being abroad

- It’s harder than we thought to convince people and especially researchers and professors to take over the account

How to make sure all goes well?

• Make some good and clear rules and guidelines• Have some conversation with the potential

Instagrammer and find out what he/she is going to do and why he/she is engaged to do it

• Give some ideas to the person about what you expect to see that week

• Show them some good examples• Be available in case of “emergency”• Keep an eye on the account

Future plans:

• We’ll keep looking for good stories to tell• We would like to use the weeks even more in

a specific context in order to generate more content.

• We would like to introduce our candidates better by interviewing them.

QUESTIONS?

Thx for having me

Feel free to contact me on:nicky.temmerman@vub.ac.be