A Dab of Glue Will Do: Insta Inspiration: Blog Hop

Year2tastic is celebrating reaching 500 followers on Instagram by having a blog hop and giving away a $20 TPT giftcard. I am teaming up with her and four other teachers to take you on this celebratory adventure starting Friday the 13th! Year2tastic asked for each of us to write about our love for Instagram which seemed fitting since that is how most of us participating in this blog hop have all connected in the first place.

By no means am I a pro with Instagram. I have had a personal account for a little over a year and my business account for less than a month; however, I wanted to share some of the amazing things that I have learned so far.

Instagram is more than just a social media tool for people to upload selfies throughout their day. Instagram is changing the course for how teaching is done. It has become a very powerful tool to connect teachers while also providing a platform to share their work and ideas, while encouraging one another through everyday life and teaching. There are many things that I LOVE about Instagram, but these two tools are my absolute favorite and helped me tremendously in networking for my business.

HASHTAGS

To be honest, hashtags used to drive me crazy. I thought they were silly and I never understood why people used them. Now that I am trying to promote my business and connect with other teachers, hashtags are a real game changer.

A hashtag is when someone writes a word or phrase that has a # prefix. They are used to help people search for a particular topic or subject. For example, whenever I post one of my products onto my instagram page, I always put #adabofgluewilldo in the caption section underneath my picture. If someone is trying to find one of my products they can simply search under #adabofgluewilldo and every picture that I have posted will come up under the search menu.

INSTA LINKY

Linky parties are another great way for teachers to connect. It allows you to find new teachers/bloggers that you would probably never had stumbled across on your own. Here is how these usually work. There is a theme or a writing prompt of some sort that one or more people create. The creator would tag three people (give or take) to participate in the linky. That person would then complete whatever the linky requires and then tag three new people on their own Instagram account.

One that has been floating around Instagram lately is this:

Once I was tagged, I filled my picture out:

When I was finished, I uploaded it onto my account and tagged three new people to do the same. As more and more people fill these out, you can see how quickly you can connect with new people. Normally, an insta linky has a hashtag that you would write in the captions section. This allows you to even further connect because you can click on the hashtag {the example above has #teachersarelucky} and see all of the people that have participated.

Not only is Instagram a crucial part of networking for teaching or your business, but it is also so much fun. The people in the teaching community that are involved in Instagram are incredibly encouraging and inspiring. I know for me, personally, I have met some great Instagram/blogging friends since I have started this adventure, in addition to growing my business along the way. I cannot wait to see what it continues to do for A Dab of Glue Will Do.

Thanks for reading this post! Please grab a freebie while you are here. The freebie is one of the many activities included in my Phoneme Segmentation Unit. Enjoy!