5 Reasons Your Municipality Should Be on Instagram

The other day I was searching Instagram to follow nearby cities and noticed many cities didn’t have an account. That or I couldn’t find them using the app so I went to each municipality’s website to see if they included the link and I couldn’t find it their either. I noticed many local government websites have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube listed but have not joined Instagram yet.

Finding this out inspired me to write this post about the five things you could be doing for your town on Instagram.

1. Show Off Your Town Pride

You can take pictures of a building that is being renovated, before and afters of a beautiful landscaping project or residents at an annual festival.

 

Example

Congratulations to the 2017 a lilac time photo contest winners! First place winner Stacie Popowski, second place winner Tony Peterman, and third-place winner Jennifer Shilt. For more information visit www.villageoflombard.org/photocontest. #photography #photocontest #lombard #beautiful #nature #flowers #bloom #lilaciapark #photooftheday

A post shared by Village of Lombard (@villageoflombard) on Jun 16, 2017 at 10:22am PDT

2. Build Anticipation For Events

Keep your residents interested and informed. Create teaser photos that build anticipation for live events or for new restaurant openings.

3. Use #hashtags

Hashtags can expand your reach and can be very specific or incredibly general to your picture. Hashtag your town name, state or popular tags that fit.

Example: #knoxrocks

Home Sweet Home to me! #knoxrocks // ????: @talltalestogo

A post shared by Tennessee Theatre (@tntheatre) on Jun 28, 2017 at 9:22am PDT

Best practice is to use three to five hashtags per picture.

4. Add Your Location

Add your town’s location to all pictures that apply. Doing this will create a gallery of all pictures taken from this area. You can see the images your residents added with your location as well. Then you can like their pictures and keep social engagement going.

Don’t forget to get specific. If you’re having an event in a park tag the park name instead of the the town.

@Mention The Locals

@mention all the new and established businesses that make your city thrive &mdahs; when applicable. They will love the free publicity and will most likely join in on the social media activity.