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You’ve heard all about it, but what is Instagram?
Instagram is a fast and fun way to share what’s happening in your life with friends, family,
and acquaintances through a series of pictures. You can take a picture or video with your
mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform its look,
then post to Instagram. Instagram allows you to experience moments in your friends'
lives through pictures as they happen. In this way, the world becomes more connected
through photos. The Instagram app is free from the Apple App
Store, or the Google Play store. Once you’ve downloaded the app, go ahead
and register. I recommend registering through your email address, although you can register
through your Facebook account as well. First you’ll need to create a username
and password. Sometimes you have to pretty creative with
your user name, since many of the ones you might have chosen are already taken.
The next thing to do is to create a password, then write down your email.
After that you’ll be asked to verify the email address you just typed in.
Next you can type in your name so your friends can easily find you. (This is optional, and
not required.)
Next you will be prompted to find Facebook friends or people in your Contacts that you
might want to follow. You can skip over this if your prefer not to do it add this
time. Click Skip.
You’ll be prompted again to find people to follow. This is totally up to you. When
you click on the bottom button that says Find People to Follow, you will come to a
screen that looks like this.
If you aren’t interested in finding people to follow right away, then just click the
back arrow up in the top left corner.
To edit your profile, just click on the “Edit Your Profile” button towards the top of
the screen.
Go ahead and enter your profile information. You can add a picture of yourself here as
well.
When you are ready to upload your first picture, go ahead and click the camera icon at the
bottom of the screen. You can either take the picture now, or upload a photo that you
have already taken that is in your camera roll.
The pictures that go on Instagram are all square photos, so I prefer to take the pictures
first using my iPhone camera using the square settings. That’s not essential though,
as you can always crop them later.
Find the photo that you want to use from your camera roll, and tap on it to select it. You
can pinch the photo in to make it smaller, or zoom out by moving your fingers away from
each other.
Next, try out some of the different filters at the bottom of the screen to see what you
like best.
You can also straighten your picture, add a frame, add a blurred effect, or brighten
it up with these tools. When finished, click Next in the top right corner.
The next step is to write a caption describing your picture.
You can also add a hashtag to your description. Adding tags to your photos and videos is
a great way to find new followers and share your posts with more people. Tags always
start with the pound symbol, then the words you want to use in your tag. Make sure to
not put any spaces between your words in a hashtag. Click OK when you finish your caption
and tags.
The next thing to do is to click share at the bottom of the page. You can share with
your followers, or you can share directly to certain people.
Here is my picture that I posted on Instagram! This is what it will look like to my followers.
They can click like to show they like it, or they can make a comment at the bottom
of the page.
If you want to search for people or hashtags, just click the star symbol at the bottom of
the page.
This is how you can find the Lakeside Union School District account. Just click on Users,
then type in lakesideunion.
You will see several choices, but the top one is obviously the right one.
Be sure to click on the blue Follow button, so you can see all the pictures that are posted
throughout the Lakeside School District.
Once you tap on Follow, the Follow button changes to a green button that says “Following.”
By default, your Instagram will be public. You can see here that the Private button
is turned off.
If you prefer to have your Instagram account be Private, then you will have to approve
every follower who requests to follow you. No one will be able to see your pictures
unless you accept them as a follower.
Be sure to add a photo of yourself for your profile picture. You can see there are
several ways to get that done. I think the easiest way is to take your picture with your
iPhone, then choose it from your photo library.
When you click on the heart at the bottom of the page, you will see recent activity
on your posts, such as when someone likes one of your pictures, or makes a comment.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started with Instagram!