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Instagramming our way into your hearts

I will be the first to admit that I had to be convinced that Instagram was a platform where the Times Colonist needed to be. There is no indication that it does what an online news editor wants: Deliver readers to our website.
first instagram
The Times Colonist's first post to Instagram on Jan. 9.


I will be the first to admit that I had to be convinced that Instagram was a platform where the Times Colonist needed to be.

There is no indication that it does what an online news editor wants: Deliver readers to our website. It doesn't allow you to include clickable links, so what was the point?

One of our web editors, a persistent Alison Pengelly, asked me about it 1,000 times (I counted), before I relented and set up an account.

You can find us here: https://instagram.com/timescolonist/

We are growing our following on the strength of 240 posts since our Jan. 9 debut with the photo at the top of this blog post.

If you're into comparisons, we were on Instagram two full months before the New York Times and have posted more than three times as many photos.

We have a penchant for showing off the great work of our staff photographers, a bit from the wire, and daily shots of our print front pages, which have proved surprisingly popular with our followers, often getting us more likes than anything else.

So, was Alison right?

It remains to be seen. But the inescapable logic is that the readership of . . . well, the world, is moving to mobile devices.

So, if you want to reach a mobile audience, you better have a presence on Instagram. It's a mobile app. It's only a mobile app.

Instagram allows us to boost brand awareness (that's buzzy language for letting people know who we are) among a non-traditional group. We have lots of friends on Twitter and Facebook, but Instagram is just getting to know us.

It's a community-driven platform and we're trying to get to know the community. The possibilities of collaborating with that community are endless and we plan to explore that, along with teasing our photography and our reporting.

There are 300 million Instagram users out there and, thanks to Alison, we're one of them.

@CaleCowan

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