Instagram for Business

Getting Started

Just getting started on Instagram? Here are some steps you can take to make sure your brand takes full advantage of the platform right away. We've included Support links for each step in case you need any further explanation of how something works.

  1. Sign up for an Instagram account and choose a username that clearly represents your brand
  2. Add a profile photo, a biography and a link to your website
  3. Connect your account to Facebook, Twitter and any other third-party sharing sites where you have an account (Profile > Edit sharing settings). This will allow you to:
    • Share photos to those services, including your brand's Facebook page if you are an Apple iOS user (we hope to make this feature available for Android in the future).
    • Let your Facebook friends find you easily when using our Find Friends tool (Profile > Find Friends > Twitter). It will also create a news story in Instagram for anyone who follows you on Twitter/Facebook and has connected their Twitter/Facebook account to Instagram.
  4. Announce to your Twitter/Facebook followers that you're on Instagram. Let them know your Instagram username and show non-iPhone/Android followers where they can see your Instagram photos.
  5. Use and search tags to connect with your audience:
  6. Start sharing photos on Instagram and across your other social networks. Fast Company has a helpful article on how to give your fans a distinctive view on Instagram. Here are a few different types of photos that other folks are sharing:
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For a photo to appear on a location page in Instagram, it needs to be tagged with that location in the Geotag field you see just before uploading your photo. All locations that appear in search results on the Location screen are provided by Foursquare's location database. Sometimes a place may not be listed here, but you can add it to Foursquare's database (and Instagram) by following these steps:
  1. Download and sign up for Foursquare from the App Store or on Google Play.
  2. Go to the Check-in tab and search for the name of the place you want to add
  3. Tap the "Add this place" option
  4. Once you've added the place to the Foursquare database, you should be able to search for it on the Location screen in Instagram and select it to tag your photo with the place you've created
  5. Upload your photo, then tap on the place name (in blue text) that appears above your photo to see the location page you've created, where your photo and all photos tagged with this location in the future will appear
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Using Instagram

  1. To connect an Instagram account to your brand's Facebook timeline, first make sure you are designated as an administrator of the brand's Facebook account.
  2. Then navigate to the Sharing settings (Profile tab > Edit sharing settings) and tap the Facebook button.
  3. If you have not yet done so, you will need to connect Instagram to Facebook on your device. When the Facebook authorization page appears, make sure that the Facebook username at the bottom is an administrator of the brand's Facebook account.
  4. If you already connected to Facebook on your device, but need to switch accounts, choose "Logout and unlink account" from the Facebook options page, and reconnect through the instructions above.
  5. At this point, your device will be connected to your Facebook account, and by default, will post to your personal timeline. To change this, tap the "Share Photos to" button.

  6. This will display your posting options, including your personal wall, and a list of any pages for which you are an administrator. Select the page that you would like your Instagram to post photos to.

  7. When you click back, you will see that your brand will replace "Wall (Default)" in the "Share Photos to" category. Later, when you are sharing a picture to Facebook, you can also verify that the photo will be posted to the correct Facebook page.
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Here are some more examples of how brands are using Instagram and our API to create compelling visual experiences for their fans. You can see a list of brands using Instagram in our Notable Users Directory.

API Use Cases

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Here's a simple way to find out who's using Instagram to take photos at your business:
  1. Take a photo at your business, then tap the Where? field before uploading the photo
  2. Find your business in the nearby results or by searching for the location*
  3. Select your business, then upload your photo
  4. Once your photo has been uploaded, tap the location name that appears in blue text above your photo to see all the photos that have been tagged with that location.
Take a cue from the Roxy and try reaching out to some of the Instagrammers taking photos at your business. If there aren't any photos on your location page yet, consider hosting a contest like the Brooklyn Bowl's to get things started. Also be sure to check out our best practices and tips for brands on Instagram.

Note that you can also view all the photos associated with a place on websites that use the Instagram API, such as web.stagr.am. Just click on the location associated with a photo to view the location page; for example, here's the page for all photos taken at the Westminster Bridge in London.

*If you can't find your business through a search, it hasn't been added to Foursquare's location database. You'll need to add it in order to create a location page for your business on Instagram. Learn how to do that here.
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This article provides a breakdown on how to use #hashtags to organize photos around a particular theme or campaign. For a case study of how the band Deftones used tags to organize a photo contest on Instagram, please read the Instagram blog post, How to Host A Photo Contest on Instagram.

Using #hashtags to organize submissions

#hashtags make it easy for you to collect photos from your followers around a certain theme. To use hashtags, simply add a hashtag (e.g. "#car") to your photo's caption, and the photo will be tagged with "Car". Then, users will be able to click on the hashtag as part of your caption and see the most recent photos tagged with "car", including your own. For common questions related to using #hashtags, please see the #hashtag help article.

RSS feed

Every hashtag has an RSS Feed associated with it, which makes it easy to subscribe to new photos. If you're interested, simply point your favorite feed reader to http://instagr.am/tags/[hashtag name]/feed/recent.rss (where [hashtag name] is the name of the hashtag without the leading #). This will allow event organizers or anyone with a feed reader to follow along with live photos as they're added.

Examples

Several brands have already taken advantage of the hashtags feature.
  • Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz wants Instagram users to translate his new song, “I Won’t Give Up,” into one image. The contest asked fans to tag their photograph with #IWONTGIVEUP. Read more about the contest and see the results.
  • General Electric asked Instagrammers to take photos inspired by three areas of GE innovation and tag them #GEinspiredme. The contest winner was flown to London to take photos of the GE aviation facility. Watch the contest video.
  • Brisk encouraged users to tag their photos #briskpic to enter their photos for a chance to appear on a limited edition can of Brisk Iced Tea (http://briskpic.com/).
  • Charity:Water uses #charitywater to collect photos of the important role water plays in people's lives.
  • NBC News (@nbcnews) uses the #TODAYconcerts hashtag to organize photos from their summer concert series; they choose a second hashtag for each show (e.g., they used #KennyTODAY for the Kenny Chesney concert).
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Frequently Asked Questions

At this time, we're focused mainly on product development and don't have the bandwidth to create custom filters for campaigns or brands. That said, this is an opportunity we look forward to exploring more thoroughly as we scale our team. In the meantime, we suggest reading about our tool that allows you to send photos directly from your app to Instagram, which would allow you to create a custom filter in your own app for photos that could then be sent to Instagram.

Please also take a look at our Getting Started article for businesses, which includes tips on how to share photos with your fans on Instagram and other ways to take advantage of the platform, including creating custom experiences using our API.
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You may download the Instagram logo attached to this article for use in your application or website so long as it follows our API Terms of Use and API Trademark and Brand Guidelines.

Relevant terms and guidelines include the following:
  • You are not allowed to use the word "Instagram", "IG" or any variation in your product name, domain name, or images.
  • If you do incorporate Instagram's logos, you must include the following statement clearly on your website: "This [application/website] uses the Instagram™ API and is not endorsed or certified by Instagram or Instagram, Inc. All Instagram™ logos and trademarks displayed on this [application/website] are property of Instagram, Inc."
  • Any use of the Instagram logo in your application shall be less prominent than the logo or mark that primarily describes the application and your use of the Instagram logo shall not imply any endorsement by Instagram.
  • You shall not use "Instagram" in the hostname of your application, i.e. instagram.mydomain.com
  • You shall place the following notice prominently on your application: "This product uses the Instagram API but is not endorsed or certified by Instagram."
Instagram Logos and Icons (.zip)
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At this time, we're focused mainly on product development and are not pursuing marketing or advertising opportunities. This may change as Instagram grows and we expand our team, and we look forward to working with you then.
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Thanks for your interest in working with Instagram! While we're not entering into formal partnerships at this time, we encourage you to sign up for an account and explore all that Instagram has to offer your fans. To get started, please read more of the articles we've collected in the Instagram for Businesses forum, which provide best practices, tips and examples for brands on our platform.
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This is a directory of notable users on Instagram. You can search for and follow these accounts by tapping Profile > Search Instagram > Users and usernames in the app. You can also find some of our favorite users to follow by tapping Profile > Find friends > Suggested users.

Music

Celebrities + Actors

Sports

Fashion

Food + Drink

News

Journalists

Politics

Non-profit Organizations

Photography

Science + Technology

Venues + Events

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Instagram API and Developer Tools

You can use the Instagram API to create compelling campaigns using the ever-growing volume of photos shared on Instagram every second. The API allows you to pull photos from Instagram and display them on your own website or app. Photos can be organized by user, tag, time, or place. We built an demo site for the API at http://demo.instagram.com/. You can also use our iPhone Hooks to send photos directly from a custom app you build directly to the Instagram.

Examples of how brands have used our API include:
  • BergdorfsShow About Town interactive map
  • ASOSFacebook page
  • Moby: To release his new album, Moby built a website that displays Instagram photos on a world map. Users are encouraged to upload photos of their hometowns at night and tag them #destroyed, and the photos automatically show up on Moby's website: http://destroyed.moby.com/
  • Brisk: Brisk Iced Tea encouraged users to tag their photos #brisk and used the API to create a microsite that displayed all these photos. Brisk then chose the best photos to display on a limited edition version of a Brisk can
  • Black Eyed Peas: Photos uploaded during the concert in Central Park were projected on large screens placed on stage

Ready to build something new? Get started using our API here.
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Please find the Instagram trademark and brand guidelines below. For examples of products that have been built on our API, please see this article.
  • You are not allowed to use the word "Instagram", "IG" or any variation in your product name, domain name, or images.
  • You are not allowed to use the Instagram icon or logo unless specifically allowed in the developer documentation
  • If you do incorporate Instagram's logos, you must include the following statement clearly on your website: "This [application/website] uses the Instagram™ API and is not endorsed or certified by Instagram or Burbn, inc. All Instagram™ logos and trademarks displayed on this [application/website] are proprty of Burbn, Inc.

Note that we reserve the right to reject any use of these terms in connection with the use of the Instagram API.

The full legal terms for using the Instagram API can be found here.
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iPhone Hooks allow any other iPhone application to interact with the Instagram application. From your app, you can:
  • Pass photos into the Instagram sharing flow (pass a photo from your app right into the Instagram filter screen)
  • Open the Instagram app to a certain photo, user, location, or tag
  • Open the app and load the Instagram camera immediately
Developers can read how iPhone Hooks work here.

Examples

Apps that have integrated with Instagram include:
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Anyone can sign up to use the Instagram API. Just visit our developer page to get started.

If you have questions after reading the documentation on the developer page, please visit the Instagram Developer Forum, which is monitored by other third-party developers and the Instagram engineering team.
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