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    Instagram Tips for Career Services Professionals

    All social media platforms have their tips and tricks, but Instagram tends to be the platform that gets the most engagement from our partner institution’s student populations. Accordingly, we’ve accumulated some best practices to engage college students in career development using social media.

    Link trees

    Instagram differs from other social media platforms in that standard posts don’t allow for clickable links. One place you can keep an active link: in your account bio.

    We recognize that most partners don’t have time to change the link in their bio every day to reflect the current content, so we recommend using a link tree so followers can easily find a number of relative links. CSU Pueblo’s link tree is a great example.

    Linktree is one free option we recommend.  

    Captions

    Use post captions to highlight additional details, drive action beyond likes and shares, and include image descriptions to increase accessibility.

    Due to Instagram's limitations, we recommend not putting links in post captions because they will not be clickable and there is no ability to copy text to use outside of the app.

    Instead, at the end of your caption, include a reminder to visit your link tree such as ‘(link in bio)’ so your followers know where to get additional information.

    In our partner toolkits, you’ll see this highlighted in red at the end of captions to draw attention to the fact that this is only necessary for Instagram.

    Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow you to include a followable link in each post.

    Emojis

    The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation. They also add visual interest to your text and can help delineate text for easier scanning.

    Depending on your device and whether you are pasting captions directly into Instagram or into a social media scheduler, it’s possible for emojis to get replaced by text in the process of pasting. For example: ‘Detective Woman’ instead of 🕵️‍♀️. When posting your captions, make sure emojis have copied over correctly before posting.

    Emojipedia.org is one source for adding emojis to text from your desktop computer.

    Hashtags

    You want to get your post in front of as many people as possible, and that’s where hashtags can come in handy. There are lots of tips for getting the most mileage out of your hashtags, but two of the most important are to make sure your hashtags are: 

    • Relevant: Make sure the hashtags you’re using match the content you’re posting.
    • Active: Choose hashtags that are being used by others regularly as this helps ensure people are looking at them.

    A few hashtags we recommend using when posting about Micro-Internships are #futureofwork #accessibility #microinternships and #recruitment. We’d also love for you to tag us in your posts! (@microinternships)

    Location

    Similar to hashtags, location tags also ensure that your content shows up in more searches. While users can't follow a location as they can a hashtag, by tagging your location you will help those who see your post, or other posts from that location, to see interesting content from that same place.

    Learn how to create a custom Instagram Location tag for your career center, or consider tagging your main campus or city to reach the widest audience. 

    Branding

    Instagram is centered around storytelling and the images you choose to post should help promote your brand, share your values and brand personality, and boost engagement.

    Even without an in-house graphic designer, you can utilize post templates created by Parker Dewey and easily customize them using free tools like Canva.

    If you’re not familiar with Canva, this short video covers Canva editing basics. 

    View an example graphic from our toolkit

    Stories

    Stories allow you to share multiple photos and videos that appear together in a slideshow format. Your Instagram Story is published separately from the photos and videos found in the tiled gallery of your Instagram profile. 

    Stories disappear after 24 hours, but allow for some features that typical posts do not, including the ability to add stickers, polls, and other options to boost overall engagement. 

    That’s why we recommend using the images we provide both as posts and in stories. For each post in the toolkit, you'll find recommendations for converting it into an engaging story.

    If you have any questions about these tips, the toolkit, or Micro-Internships in general, don't hesitate to connect with us!

    Connect with Parker Dewey Partnerships team
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