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Instagram Challenge Review

The Instagram Challenge was surprisingly more difficult than I first thought it would be. When I looked at the list and saw there were only 10 items, plus a few bonus items I didn't think it would be too bad. It really surprised me!

A few came easy: 
# 2 A book with social media for an author - I used this as an opportunity to highlight Elin Hilderbrand (@elinhilderbrand), one of my favorite summer authors! Her new book just came out last month, I'm listening to it on Audible now.

# 7 A government agency displaying social media - with where I work, I new we had pamphlets, handouts, business cards etc. from recruiters that I could use for this one!

# 8 A place where social media could be being used, but wasn't - I grabbed a photo of a Starbucks sign, but there was also no social media tags on either of the doors going into the Starbucks on campus (would've taken those photos, but didn't want to be too creepy!). Considering all the social media presence Starbucks has, this really surprised me, and seemed like a missed opportunity.


# 10 Overt encouragement to post - I think this one could've been in a few places, but over the course of the weekend, several spots, especially restaurants encouraged you to follow them, check in, or leave reviews.

The challenge:
# 1 Business card with LinkedIn info - I knew this would be hard for a few reasons, I wouldn't be getting a lot of business cards over the weekend and most business cards I get don't have LinkedIn on them. I usually see LinkedIn URLs on resumes. I'm curious how often people put their LinkedIn on their business cards in the professional world? 

#6 A commercial with a hashtag - I was shocked at how long this one took me to find. I guess between DVR and streaming networks, I've cut out a lot of commercials these days, but I just thought hashtags appeared everywhere on TV. I had to wait quite some time before finding one! Although I thought the one I found from Allstate, #Weddingsaremayhem was quite a gem.

Final thoughts on the challenge, I thought finding a tweet incorporated into a new story wouldn't be impossible, but after the commercial adventure seemed like a daunting task. I did find an old Foursquare check in logo paired with Facebook and Twitter!  Overall, I posted more on Instagram than I ever have, it made me notice considerably more social media, tags, and connectivity than it would have otherwise. Despite not completing everything, I'm glad I attempted it because it definitely made me look closer at things.

In considering some of our readings for this week about folksonomies, particularly, Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning (Im, T. & Dennen, V. P. 2013) I found the content about how the class decided on their tags relevant to my Instagram challenge. I always felt tagging and determining hashtags seemed slightly haphazard, it helps when you begin typing and Twitter or Instagram auto-populates a tag and lets you know how often it has been used, but when the article briefly discusses the students' rationale for how they determined some of their tags and the debate they had regarding their opinions, I appreciated the insight into that discussion. As outsiders who so often only choose tags that are pre-determined, this was helpful information to read.

Overall, while I did not complete the entire Instagram challenge, it was a great learning experience that allowed me to grow with a new social media tool, as well as think about how I might interact more with the people and places that a I frequent.

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