We live in a beautiful town. Boulder is filled with smiling faces, gorgeous surrounding sceneries, and a facade that makes us reminisce of a small mountain town. There are parks, trails, historical points, and far too often are there sun rises and sets that shake the word beautiful to the core. It’s a instagramer’s dream. There are pictures that can captivate waiting around every corner and why that matters is because Instagram is becoming more embedded in marketing strategies for businesses both big, and small. There are over 150 million users per month and if there isn’t a message being sent by your company, well, that’s a big market to be missing out on.

Colorado is just begging to make a profile stand out, too. Standing out either from the creative culture, landscape, people, and all of that makes interesting photos. Stand in a great caption…forgetta’bout it. You don’t have to be some magician with an iPhone, or a master photographer; all you need is the community you walk around in everyday and an idea for a story you want to tell. Point and shoot. Just let your eyes wander, light shade and contrast, and bring your brand to life via the community that it is built in. There are visual stories everywhere. And don’t worry about being a “pro” – what you get, you got and use the editing tools from the app make it look pretty. It’s as easy as that. Your company’s philosophy is somewhere represented in this community, so find it and take lots and lots of pictures of it. That is your new content. That content can be spread on all your other platforms and adds another way people can discover your brand. Bada-bing-bada-boom.

The Instagram community is creative, too, and they are crafty, great writers, and are consistent. (C.O.N.S.I.S.T.E.N.T. Also known as the key to social media success.) The heaviest users and most successful business users don’t look at the app as another social media platform to keep up on, but a venue to visually tell your brand, life, the good times, and oh yes, all that can be coupled with an amazing caption.

Right, there are captions. You not only have an amazing picture that says what you’re thinking perfectly, you have a paragraph or five to say something more. It’s the two most effective visual components and all waiting for your business to start using. That’s why being able to tell a story, share a thought, shout someone out, recap, or bring a visual to life through words is just as important as pictures. In almost all cases, I immediately scroll to the caption and read about the picture before I look. I want to know the story, be influenced, and feel the connection to not just the picture, but the instagramer, also. Again, since people follow other users, it’s a community and people feel very connected to the pictures they scroll by everyday.

(Figure out what your community is hashtagging by using this hashtag search engine: http://www.hashatit.com)

Boulder is a great place to start your insta-journey and connect with your community, and the world. A business can be in front of their customer’s eyes everyday and with some creative hashtags, be in front of even more. This is a app that can take your brand to another social level and bring you, to them. In the simplest of marketing worlds, any free and creative way to share your brand should be considered, if not always capitalized on.

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Gavin B. Griffin Director of Business Bloggers