When Bobby Ferro '16 came to Union, he also brought along his 6,000 Instagram followers.
The Bridgewater, N.J. native has racked up thousands of followers on the photo sharing site, which is consistently one of the most downloaded free apps on iTunes. Instagram recently surpassed Twitter for number of mobile users in one day with about 7.3 million users uploading pictures everyday.
After moving to Schenectady in September, Ferro turned his lens to Union landmarks through the app's colorized filters, garnering hundreds of likes on each picture. Read more about how he became popular on the site, and follow him on Instagram @BobbyFerro. Follow the College @UnionCollege.
How did you get started in social media?
Friends got me into Facebook and Twitter, but after I got the iPhone I was looking for photo-sharing apps and came across Instagram.
When did you get started using Instagram?
I posted my first Instagram picture 53 weeks ago.
You're almost at 6,000 followers. How did you get so many?
I had Instagram when most of my friends didn't even know what it was. At first, I didn't know how to get people to see my pictures until I was told to use hash tags. After tagging my pictures, I gained about 300 followers. On my fifth week, one of my pictures made it to the app's popular page, which got another 50 followers that day. Since then, I have had 87 different photos make it to the popular page, and many of my followers found me through there.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in social media and wanting to encourage more followers?
Now that the popular page is mainly celebrities, the best way to gain followers is to take good pictures, tag them and share them through Facebook or Twitter.
What is your favorite place on campus to photograph?
Jackson's Garden and the Nott.