The Short Story

Imagine a living, real time social magazine experience with quality, variety, exclusivity, stories, people, places, events and secrets making it tick. That’s what I think WhyWellington could become. With your help, we can make it happen.

Here’s what happens when I regram:

Your photo is watermarked with your Instagram @username
Your original comment accompanies the regram
Your clickable Instagram @username is added to the comments.
Your Twitter @username (if known) is added to the comment.
Your photo is posted to Twitter as a viewable image (Not as a link)

Here’s what you can do on Instagram to kick everyone's WhyWellington experience up a gear.

PHOTOS

Think about framing. Unfortunately Instagram and Twitter have different frame aspect ratios. Instagram uses the 1:1 square. Twitter uses a 2:1 landscape rectangle. Twitter displays feed photos cropped across the middle. Unfortunately, some Instagram images composed beautifully for the square format lose their meaning or context by Twitter’s cropping. The skill is to compose Instagram photos that will still display OK on Twitter.

Think about composition. If you’re not familiar with the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Rule, google it.

Think about photos in terms of stories. Is it a photo of a thing or a place, or is it a photo telling one of Wellington’s stories.

Think about photos in terms of answering the question; “Why Wellington?”

COMMENTS

Remember, regrammed photos get posted to Twitter which has a 140 character limit. That doesn’t leave much room between your @username credit and the #WhyWellington hashtag. Just like photos, comments get cropped so the most important stuff needs to be up front. Think about captions as adding to, not duplicating the story the photo is telling, and keep it brief.

HASHTAGGING

This is the toughest part of the changes I need to make, and where I think I’ll lose a lot of contibutors. Everyone has different reasons for posting on Instagram. We all enjoy the kick we get out of likes, comments and regrams. It’s tempting to cram comments with hashtags. Moving forward, for a more focussed curated experience for WhyWellington followers, I’m going to reduce regrams of photos hashtagged like this:

#whywellington #sharemewlg #wellingtonnz #WellyNZ #wellywood #wellington_nz #instagramwgtn #coolestlittlecapital #newzealand #NZ #kiwipics #capturenz #loves_new_zealand #ig_newzealand #instagood #au_nz_hotshotz

What this means is, you have to decide, “Is this a #WhyWellington photo?”

Want to know more? Read the long story.

Cheers

Ben Woodward

022 070 4261

[email protected]