Instagram is a fun social media platform to add to your growing social media presence. It’s primarily a mobile-based app designed to share photos and videos with others in the network.

With Instagram, you can follow people and people will follow you. Posting consists of posting photos or graphics with a short description and usually lots and lots of tags or keywords.

If you have a Facebook account, you can easily invite Facebook friends to follow you on Instagram, building your following fast.

Here are some samples of what people are posting on Instagram.

• Quotes with photos in the background. This is a large portion of what people are posting.
• Photos of themselves at events or with friends
• Photos of their products or that relate to their services
• Photos of co-workers or clients
• Cartoons and memes

With 600 million active users as of December 2016, Instagram has its business benefits. It allows CPA firms and bookkeepers to show their personality in a visual way. When clients hire you, it’s all about the connection and trust, and platforms like Instagram de-commoditize you; they help you show your individual uniqueness and not as just another accountant.

Instagram is a platform that enables high engagement, much more so than Facebook and Twitter. Engagement builds trust, which gets us hired.

Use hashtags liberally when posting photos on Instagram. Hashtags are simply words or phrases preceded by the pound sign (#). Examples include:

#accountant #Detroit #lovenumbers #smallbusiness #makingtaxeseasy #April15 #taxtime

Use these and other terms with your pictures, and you’ll stand out from your competition.