July 4, 2013

Tips for Instagram Photos and Videos for Churches

With Instagram you have the opportunity tell a beautiful or fun story with a photo or video. Here are my Instagram tips for your church:

1. Learn the Basics
Mashable has a good tutorial on getting started with Instagram photos and the Instagram help center and blog is the best place to start for video tips.

The Beginner’s Guide to Instagram

Video on Instagram

2. Capture Beauty
The filters Instagram offers tend to give the photos a beautiful nostalgic look. Here is an example of a photo I took of St. Tim’s baptismal font:


3. Capture Fun
Fun moments also look nice through the filters of Instagram Here is an example of a photo I took during the story at family worship service at St. Tim’s:


4. Be Creative with Captions
A prayer or quote from the Bible make good captions. Here is an example of an Episcopal church that often uses Bible quotes for captions:

St. Peter’s Lake Mary, FL on Instagram

5. Use Hashtags
Hashtags are a good way to categorize your photo, so other people may discover it through searching for hashtags. You can use a general hastag like #Episcopal or make a special hashtag for your church. Here is the result of a search for the #Episcopal hashtag:

Webstagram search for #Episcopal

6. Add Text to Images
There are many apps available that will allow you to easily add text to images. I made this image using InstaQuote Pro

 

7. Share Instagrams from Others
On Fridays, Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, shares photos that others have shared on Instagram. This is a great way to connect with the community and show your appreciation of people who promote your organization:

Friday Photo on Facebook from Grace Cathedral

8. Use an Alternative Website to View Instagram
The website for Instagram has limited capabilities, so try Webstagram if you want to search for topics and users to follow.

9. Post Once or Twice Per Day
Instagram isn’t a high frequency posting site like Twitter. Most people post 1-4 times per day, at most. It may be a good idea to take many photos during an event and select the best one or two to share on Instagram at the end of the day.

10. Follow Experts for Inspiration

The editors of the Instagram blog select several of the best photos and videos to share each week. I like to follow a few of these editor’s picks for ideas and inspiration:

Week 85 on Instagram

11. Enter Project Contests
Every weekend Instagram hosts a weekend hashtag project with a theme. If you take a photo or video with the theme and use the hashtag, you will be entered in the project contest. Looking through the other photos and videos is a great way to find ideas and inspiration:

Weekend Hashtag Project: #WHPmovingphotos

12. Create Something for Kids
As I started using Instagram over the past few weeks, the idea that this site can be used to tell a story without words has really struck me. My non-reader, 5 year old son, spent almost a half an hour looking at this spoof Star Wars Instagram account. These whimsical cartoon are my favorite and could be a good inspiration for a children’s education project:

Photos by Khiesti

What are your Instagram ideas?

This post originally appeared on episcopalshare.com and is reprinted with permission.