How to Become a Pro At Instagram in 5 Steps

A delicious-looking, meltingly warm brownie appears at your table. The enticing aroma of chocolate wafts towards you and you make a lunge for the nearest spoon. But before you can dive in, you’re stopped by an evil force in the form of your best friend who says those dreaded words “Let’s instagram it first!”

How annoying right? Everyone around you seems to be caught up in a photo taking and photo sharing frenzy they call Instagram that you simply don’t get. Well, not to worry, here’s our step by step guide to help you go from being a noob to a pro at Instagram:

1. Creating an Instagram account:

• Download and install the free instagram app on your Smartphone.
• Accept Instagram's terms of Use that basically says you will not misuse the app, be an annoyance to others, and will not post pictures that display hate/discrimination, violence, nudity or porn (sexually suggestive images included), illegal activities etc.
• Create your profile by providing a profile picture that helps people identify you, a short bio and a link to your website or blog if you have one.

You can also change your default profile settings from public to private if you want only your followers to see your posts

2. Instagram tabs

Once you’ve created an account, the next step is to familiarize yourself with the app. There are 5 tabs at the bottom of your screen:

• The Home tab is where you'll be able to view all the pictures posted, either by you or your friends in chronological order.
• The Explore tab is where Instagram will give you suggestions to follow posts or people you might like.
• The Camera tab helps you take a photo using the Instagram app.
• The News tab is where you will see notifications about the photos that your followers have liked and your newest followers.
• The Profile tab is where you can edit your profile, view your photos and the photos you've been tagged in, and the people you follow, as well as who is following you.

3. Posting pictures and videos

• Open the camera tab to click a picture.
• To record videos, tap the video icon next to the bottom right of your screen.
• If you want to post a picture from your phone gallery, tap the preview square on the bottom left of the screen that will display the last image that you took. Look for the image you want to upload and tap to select it. It will open up in the main window.

You can now scale, crop, straighten and add effects to the photo before you post it.

• Tap the icon that looks like a spanner to edit your photo. From there, you can alter the brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation, highlights and shadows in your photo. You can also add vignettes and sharpen your photo to make it look crisper

4. Now, for the fun part - Adding Filters!

Instagram offers you 19 types of filters that can lend several types of ‘looks’ to your photos. They are Earlybird, Mayfair, Amaro, Rise, Valencia, X Pro ii, Low-Fi, Willow, Brannan, Nashville, Toaster, Hefe, Sierra, Sutro, Inkwell, Hudson, Walden, 1977, and Kelvin.

• Select the filter you’d like to apply.
• Tap the filter again if you want to adjust filter strength and select the checkmark to save your change.

Once you’re happy with the way your picture looks, the only thing left is to add a caption and a location and share it! Select Next to do so.

• You can mention an instagram friend or add hashtags when you create a caption for your picture.
• You can also add the picture to your photo map and enter the location where the picture was taken.
• The next step is to choose other social networking sites to share the picture on and finally, share it on Instagram!

5. Finding friends and posts on Instagram

Using the search bar at the top of your profile, look for specific Instagramers or hashtags that specify things you like. From the options menu you can find friends that are on Instagram from your phone contacts or are your friends on other social networking sites like Facebook.

So now that you have your basic account set up, all you need to do is start clicking! We promise you, it will only be a while before you’ll be the one whipping out your phone and saying, “Let’s instagram it first!”