Why you should have an Instagram hashtag photo stream on your website

Did you know Instagram is the fastest growing social site globally?

And there's a great reason for that: as of now, it's still basically pure social. You can easily find posts by using hashtags, which means it's easy to find photos of things you're interested in (from kittens to skydiving, music to tattoos). It's so easy to scan a list of photos to see what you like. 180º different from Facebook, where it's practically impossible to search for something, but I digress.

We've developed an Instagram module that lets you stream photos with specific hashtag(s) on your own website.

Why create all the content yourself when it's already out there just waiting to be used?

Chances are someone is already posting photos of your brand or product. Put them to use! [click to tweet]

Not only can you stream the tags they're already using, you can ask them to use your own hashtag. Tell them if they use it they can appear in the photo stream on your site, and most people will jump at the chance. People love to feel like they're a part of something! If you're really adventurous you can even have contests built around your hashtag.

When visitors click on a photo on your site a larger view will open in a lightbox, showing who posted it, the caption, the number of likes, etc. Visitors never leave your site and you're benefiting from free content!

It's a small world out there and you never know who you might run across.

Example: several years ago I tagged a photo #Nashville while visiting and a girl who lives there started following me; I started following her back & realized she often posts photos tagged #BuggsIslandLake. Since we work with a regional tourism website and Buggs Island Lake is in the region, I was able to ask her to tag photos with their hashtag so they'll show up in a stream on their site.

Instagram's stats as of this writing are:

• 300 million monthly active users
• 70%+ users are from outside the US
• over 30 billion photos shared
• 2.5 billion likes per day
• 70 million photos shared per day

 Get in on the fun! Drop us a line and let's talk about how you can easily use social media on your site and in marketing campaigns.