6 ways to tell better visual stories on Instagram

Editor’s note: This story is taken from Ragan Communications’ distance-learning portal Ragan Training. The site contains hundreds of hours of case studies, video presentations, and interactive courses.

Instagram is the second-largest social media platform, after Facebook, says Jenn Herman. To get the most out of it, though, you can’t rely on sheer numbers alone.

You must master the intricacies of the visual platform, the social media consultant, speaker and Instagram expert says in a Ragan Training video, “Advanced Visual Storytelling on Instagram.”

With 700 million users, Instagram is a powerful platform with a lower bounce rate than other social media sites, she says in her presentation. Fewer people click through to your website by mistake and back out of it again.

“You’re not going to get as much traffic from Instagram … but the quality of traffic is so great,” Herman says.

In a visual age, the platform also has the highest engagement of all social media. “It’s still exponentially higher than what you’re going to get on Facebook and Twitter,” Herman says.

Here are some tips:

1. Good photos matter.