Now that you have learned how to upload your own photos and other content to your Instagram account, in the following lessons I will show you how you can communicate with the people you follow and those who have decided to follow you. The basic way to interact with other Instagram users is to like and comment on their posts. So when you go to your home screen and browse your Instagram Feed or scroll through the photos and videos of the people you follow, sometimes you’ll want to express your satisfaction, let them know you enjoyed a certain post or have a comment on a photo. The same applies if you just want to let the person who uploaded the photo know that you saw it.
To begin with, pay attention to the three buttons located on the left side under each photo. The heart-shaped button represents the Like function, which means that all you have to do is touch it to like a photo. You can achieve the same result by quickly double-tapping the photo itself. After that, your username will be added to the list of people who also like this photo, and the person who posted it will be notified.
Liking is basically to let someone know that you saw the picture and that you appreciate some aspect of it. Some people are really obsessed with the number of likes their posts get. In fact, there are apps and services designed to help increase the number of likes you get on your posts. However, this can be about more than satisfying your personal ego, especially if you’re using Instagram to advertise your company or build your personal brand. More likes almost certainly mean more followers, but we won’t go into that aspect of Instagram in this course.
A common reason for liking is the need to mark a post for yourself. Keep in mind that there’s no easy way to find photos you want to look at again, especially if it’s been a while and you don’t remember who posted them.
If you liked a photo, you can always open your profile, go to the Settings section, select the Account option and find the Posts you’ve liked item. After that, all the photos for which you have touched the Like button will appear on the screen, which means that they will be available to you in one place. I have only one picture shown, but the situation will surely be much different after I spend some time on Instagram.
I will now return to the home screen, because I would like to show you what the next button – Comment is for. You can use it in a situation where you want to say something about the selected photo. Of course, you can like and comment on it at the same time or just do one or the other, which means that these two functions are not interconnected.
To add a comment, just tap on the corresponding button and content posted by other users will immediately appear on the screen. You are now expected to type your message and tap the Post option. It will immediately appear under the picture and the person who posted this photo will immediately receive a notification that a new comment has appeared. Note that the person who uploaded this photo can also delete comments, so if you post something inappropriate or just something they don’t like, it can very easily disappear from the system. Of course, this also applies to your posts, so don’t be afraid that they will be covered with negative comments. I will talk about this topic in more detail in one of the next lessons.
At this point I would like to mention that there are other ways to comment on a post. You can easily mention other Instagram users to draw their attention to the image you found. You can also include tags to make it easier for other users to find posts with that specific tag, and I’ll explain how to do that a little later. For now, by selecting this arrow, I will go back to the previous step because I would like to explain to you what the third icon is for. It allows you to send an image to a specific user. You can use this if you come across a picture that you think someone else would like to see.
As I mentioned above, you can refer someone to a particular photo by mentioning their username in the comment, but this will also allow everyone else to see that comment. If you want to keep your privacy while sharing a photo, it would be best to tap the Sent To button, then select a user or enter their name in the search field. After that, you can type an appropriate message and finally start the Send function.
If you want to see all the messages you have sent, you can do so by tapping the button located in the upper right corner of the screen. The person I just sent a new message to will be notified and will be able to view the photo I sent them and will also be able to send me their reply. That would be all about liking and commenting on posts for now. You will learn more about this in the following lessons.