Architects, Instagram, and PR

With this year’s New York Architecture & Design Film Festival a wrap, we’re thinking about the evolving art of storytelling. The platforms provided by social media offer the opportunity to subtly merge art and marketing with relative ease. Instagram is a great vehicle to communicate your firm’s vision, reach potential clients, and network with colleagues. Here’s a few tips on using it effectively, and a look at two of its newest designer-friendly features.

Quality, Not Quantity. Your Instagram account is a direct reflection of your practice. Be selective in the images you share, and resist the urge to post pictures on a daily basis. It’s important to stay “on message” visually.

Curate for Consistency. A mix of completed projects, works in progress, and aesthetic influences is satisfyingly diverse for viewers, and still keeps the focus on your firm. Expanding your content to include more personal images—the office puppy or an artfully-foamed latte—can dilute your impact.

Raise Your Profile. To increase your audience, follow @Instagram and participate in its #projects. If you get on Instagram’s radar and are added to its “Suggested Users List”, you’ll likely see a surge of new followers.

Multilingual Settings. For firms doing business internationally, writing captions and hashtags in the native tongue can exponentially extend the reach and impact of their posts. Last month, three new languages—Arabic, Hebrew, and Farci—were added to the platform, bringing the total number of languages offered to 36.  #ארכיטקטורה#   هندسة معمارية

Expanding Uploads. Until last week, ‘Grammers were limited to posting photos that were taken within a 24-hour period. Now, if you choose a photo or video from your camera roll that’s more than a day old, it will automatically display a sticker that helps you add some context to the shot. As with all Instagram stickers, it’s possible to rotate, resize, or remove the date from these images before they’re shared.