Audience first; filters and hashtags second

A few weeks ago, I sat in a room listening to a ‘social media expert’. Preceded by roughly 20 PowerPoint slides full of data and tips, they said ‘Twitter is dead, everyone is using Instagram, so use Instagram’. Well, they weren’t the expert’s exact words of course, but that was the big point being pushed to the audience. The expert was a very genuine person, full of passion and enthusiasm, but their comment pushed a button in me.

Let me explain.

I understand the recent data says Instagram is on a significant rise compared to other social media platforms. For example, trends from the end of 2013 say that Instagram gained 23 per cent growth in active users, compared to 9 per cent for LinkedIn, 6 per cent for Pinterest, and 2 per cent for Twitter(Source: GlobalWebIndex, an international marketing research firm, based these numbers on a survey of 170,000…