Great Social Media Idea: Instagram Collage for Facebook

I've made no secret of the fact that I sweat Instagram. I also make no secret of the fact that I love 90s slang. (I'm about 95% sure I first heard the term "sweat" used in this sense when Adrian Campbell, a teammate on my fearsome middle school CYO basketball team - the Holy Cross Runnin' Crusaders - used it in reference to Topenga.)

ANYWAY... I think Instagram is probably the best social media tool we have right now to get great engagement with students, but one persistent challenge in using Instagram is that it's difficult to promote your presence through just the platform itself. I've written before about some tips to "advertise" and promote on Instagram, but I'm always on the lookout for clever and creative cross-platform ways to let people know you are on Instagram.

Which is why I was excited to see what University of Colorado Boulder posted today:

Super fun! And it looks even better as a highlighted post on the Facebook page. (I couldn't fit it all in a screen shot, sorry.)

This works on a lot of levels - it promotes Colorado's Instagram presence, it promotes the hashtag they are encouraging people to use, and it highlights some great user-generated content. If you click through, you'll see that many of the comments are from students who were thrilled to be featured.

I like how it uses the grid format to feature lots of different photos - another challenge with Instagram is that you can't get hi-res versions of the pictures... Webstagram is about as good as it gets, but they are still just web quality.

An idea like this works particularly well for special events - a campus snowfall, a big game, an amazing sunset, etc. - that lots of different people are sharing photos of and can offer different perspectives on.

Props, Colorado, for this fun and fresh way to promote an Instagram account!