More on Instagram for Quilters

Welcome back to the continuing explanation of Instagram for Quilters! Hopefully by now you are set up on IG and have started posting a few pictures and following a few people.

Buying and Selling on IG

A lot of businesses are on IG and do a mix of posts about new fabric lines coming in, pre-order requests, customer makes and sales posts. These sales posts are either directing people to go to their website and buy or asking people to put your PayPal email address [EDIT May 2017: Instagram now hides those comments so don’t ask people to do that anymore!] in a comment to purchase. This is a GREAT way as a business to sell some surplus stock, some new or unique stock or just to let prospective customers know the type of items you have.

There are some great hashtags for non-shops such as #greataussiedestash #thegreatfabricdestash where people can sell some of their fabric from their stash. Many an evening has been whiled away scrolling through all the for sale items on here! Just comment with ‘sold’ and then send your your PayPal email address via a Direct Message and they send you an invoice for what you have ordered and postage and a little while later your goodies arrive!

 

Competitions

A lot of people will do a giveaway on IG….. as a thank you for the wonderful community, as a celebration when they get to a particular number of followers, as a shop wanting to increase their presence on IG. I have won a few beautiful things: fabric, posters, a special make by somebody etc…. we all love to win things!

Before you have a competition take a look at how others are doing theirs first. A lot of people don’t like having to repost a picture onto their own feed and having to tag a heap of people can be difficult (do you have 5 IG friends who REALLY want to be told about the obscure fabric designer that you just LOVE?).

Also, a warning. Tagging a lot of people in the one comment or in separate comments but straight after each other can get you into #instajail. Just before Xmas 2015 a LOT of people got put into #instajail for tagging too many people on competitions. They were banned from posting comments on IG for a full WEEK. I try and put a different comment or emoji with a tag when entering a competition. So far I haven’t been put into #instajail!

Reposting or Regramming

You will see people talking about reposting or regramming a post so that it shows on your feed. There are a few ways to do this. There are some apps you can get that you can regram through, however the quickest way is to take a screen shot of the picture on your phone, maybe crop it a little bit and then post the image onto your own feed. It is always nice to mention the person whose photo it is in your comment.

Reposting is something some competitions require, but other times you might just want to show all your followers a picture from someone else’s feed. If the latter then you DEFINITELY need to tag the person in your comment.

Be warned that some people have in their profile description a note that NO photo can be used without their permission.

Tagging a Photo

If you are posting a picture of a make that someone else has done it is good to tag them in the picture. When you are adding the picture into your post there is a section to Tag People.

Click in here and your image will be displayed and you can click where on the image you want the tag to be (for example their face or their item/pattern) and select their account name.

  

If you have already put their account name into your post it will be displayed first so you can easily select it

 

Once you have the people tagged on the actual photo you can share with  your followers!

Some IG Etiquette

Etiquette is, as always, what is acceptable amongst a group of people, so the things that I and my ‘friends’ do on IG do might not be OK with you….. this is one of those things that you need to watch and see what others do and follow along.

Tagging people: I have a group of people that are OK with me tagging them in competitions. We have talked about this and have all said it is OK. Some people however might not like being tagged all the time for every strange and unusual competition. Ask first 🙂

Posts: posting pictures that aren’t your usual…. if you usually post a lot of pictures of your dog and everyone who follows you loves that about you and then suddenly you start posting pictures of your EPP hexagons…. expect to lose a few followers. Also if you suddenly start posting about politics or religion or questionable pictures… expect to lose followers. I’m not saying don’t post these things if this is what you are in to and like and you want to get some new followers in the areas of your new interest. Some people have multiple accounts so they can post the pics of their kids for their family and friends, and their quilting/fabric related pictures to fellow quilters.

Comments: it is always lovely to get some genuine comments on your posts. If someone LOVES your new quilt then it is great to hear that. If you hate the quilt or the colours etc, then don’t comment. Just move on. Plenty more things that you will love to comment on. If there is something that you want to say to a person that might not be 100{557cb0de45f4248f47d4ac028c5e353e2045c2cf110136f8175d4656403a993e} great, then direct message them. I once noticed an obvious mistake in the layout of a popular pattern in a person’s quilt top…. I didn’t want to comment in public about it, so I DM’d her to let her know. Nicely. She was grateful to find out then and not AFTER she had it quilted. But I didn’t embarrass her or myself in case she wanted to do it that way!

 

Direct Messages or DMs

You can also direct message someone and have a ‘conversation’ out of the eye of the public. Just click on the little in-tray icon in the top right hand corner when you are on the home page.

Select a picture or just type some text and select the person you want to DM. It is easier if you are already following this person before you start a Direct Message.

Summary

Thanks for reading all the way through! You now know pretty much all there is to know about IG! I hope you have fun finding inspiration from others and sharing your creativity with us too.

Feel free to tag me @anneboundy I would love to see your makes!

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