You know that Instagram has exploded onto the scene unless you live under a social media rock. In my experience, compared to any other platform, the level of engagement is amazing. Social media became fun again and a lot less like work.
As we cruise into fall though I started wondering if this could translate into professional benefit for the action, outdoor and adventure industries. It’s not a definitive guide, but I did come up with 11 thoughts for creatives, athletes, destinations and brands.
To start, I asked an accomplished action sports photographer who’s had success on Twitter. "In comparison to Twitter, I don't know if you can target your audience nearly as well (on Instagram). Sure, they might like your photos, but does it have any pertinence to business? I know for sure I've received jobs because of my presence on Twitter. I've yet to feel that from Instagram. To me, it feels more like Facebook. That said, I think it's yet another piece of the social media puzzle that you need to interact on. Something that can't be ignored either." I thought about this and put down my thoughts on using IG professionally.
Thought 1: Use Instagram for posting any “good” pics regardless of what you use now
I mean, why not? It interfaces beautifully
with all the major network (e.g Fb, Twitter, Tumblr etc) and with its open API has an extensive community of 3rd party apps being built. Most importantly it has an exploding user community and a rich array of editing tools.
Thought 2: Think about starting with a small group of trusted friends and a larger community of people who wouldn’t know you from Adam
When I built my community on IG I stayed away from friends and focused on new people engaging (liking and commenting) on photos I liked. As I parsed through them, I looked for people who also had photos that interested me and started following them (and engaging). My “real” social graph is starting to track me down now, but I liked the anonymity as I experimented. [Find me on Instragram @matchase – Photos to the right]
Thought 3: Building a community doesn’t have to take ages
For me the time required to build a community of +1000 on Instragram was about two months. Twitter took a year.
Thought 4: For creatives, post pics that reflect what you do without compromising what you get paid for

For example, on our campaign for One Eyed Bird in February called Military Rider, I wish I had been on Instagram. I took all sorts of informal shots and Facebook just didn't give the same engagement I see on IG. In fact yesterday, I saw that Travis Rice (athlete and film maker) was doing just this by teasing followers (@travisrice on IG – Screenshot to the right) with pictures of the course being built for his new event in BC with Red Bull called "Supernatural". Try and string together images and tell a story whenever possible. I don’t do this very well but love it when people do.
Thought 5: Crappy, lame photos are like crappy, lame Tweets. Nobody likes them.
Take interesting pictures . This means restraining from pics of food, flowers, your feet, the sky or yourself. That’s hard for the “me” generation I know, so feel free to upload those directly to FB.
Look for the second half of this later today