How to use Instagram to showcase your environmental sustainability
Photo by Dominik Dancs
In the past, Earth Day (April 22nd) marked the day where people put aside time to engage with nature and the need for environmental protections.
Nowadays, every day can be earth day thanks to the help of social media platforms like Instagram. Because of the platform’s unique features, which present various ways to interact with friends, family and environmental causes, it can be a game-changer in the discussion around environmental sustainability. In this article, we will give examples on how to use Instagram to showcase your passion for environmental sustainability and give back to the planet!
What Is Sustainability?
In the Cambridge Dictionary, sustainability means:
noun[ U ]: the quality of being able to continue over a period of time
Generally, the concept of sustainability means meeting our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. The concept of sustainability is composed of three pillars: economic, environmental and social. In this article, we are going to focus on environmental sustainability, which can be understood as sustaining earth’s natural resources and liveability for future generations.
You or your business can promote environmental sustainability by, for example, encouraging the use of solar and wind energy, combating climate change by preventing global warming, sharing your sustainable travel experiences and influencing others to use less single-use plastics to prevent the burden of marine plastic pollution.
How to use Instagram to showcase your environmental sustainability
(Sustainability is not a choice, but a necessity) I came across this title in an article and couldn’t help but think how appropriate this was. People have to see sustainability as a necessity to really make an effort to change.
But how can sustainability be made known as a necessity?
The impact of sustainability can be grown by promoting sustainable business practices, spreading the word via environmental activists and by people who care about environmental sustainability on the biggest stages. Here, social media can be the perfect tool to spread the word to the largest audiences.
Instagram, with its unique visual and text features, finds a special place among other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Tik Tok, etc. Now, Instagram has more than 500,000,000 active users. As a result, Instagram could be one of the best social media channels to reduce waste and spread awareness around protecting local biodiversity. In the next section, we'll introduce several ways that Instagram can be used to do just that!
1. Run an Instagram campaign
You can create content for your followers on Instagram to increase their awareness on environmental issues. To do so, you can reach your audience by running different campaigns.
Example being, Nestlé, who ran a campaign on Instagram, prompted followers to share a photo on their Instagram via a post or in their story with a specific hashtag and mention to spread awareness on recycling to reduce plastic pollution. (#NotTrash and @PolandSpringWtr).
Poland spring sustainability recycling instagram
In the end, this campaign aimed to teach followers how to sort recyclables while at the same time helped boost the company’s engagement and brand.
Another successful example of using campaigns for engagement and awareness is James Whitlow Delano’s Instagram account, which showcases a diverse group of photographers from six continents who collect photos worldwide. The photographers use a specific hashtag (#everydayclimatechange) to share their takes on humanity's relationship with nature.
Delano began recruiting photographers to contribute to this challenge to increase people's awareness of the emergency of climate change worldwide.
hashtags instagram sustainability environment climate change
By adding a hashtag like the #everydayclimatechange hashtag in your Instagram stories or posts, your photos become much easier to find and may even be shared. So, don't forget the power of hashtags on Instagram. The hashtag is the heart of Instagram because it enables people to find and share your content.
2. Be a sustainable influencer on Instagram
How many times have you been inspired to buy something just because you see your favorite influencer promoting it? Or how many times have you gone to the gym because one of your Instagram influencers shares her/ his positive opinion about going to a gym? If you said yes to either of these, then this confirms the power of the influencer! Sustainability influencers can help the environment and promote sustainability while making a career out of it!
You, as a sustainable influencer, can choose different categories to focus on. Sustainable fashion, sustainable travel, sustainable lifestyle, sustainable beauty, sustainable health/fitness, and recycling are some of the niche fields you can focus on. After you choose your domain and niche, you should boost your Instagram activity and engagement to generate a larger impact via your audience. There are different ways to gain more followers. Reposting stories is one of these ways; you can read “How to repost Stories on Instagram?” article to learn how to use this strategy to gain more followers. Using particular hashtags, as mentioned before, is another way. For example, if you are a sustainable travel influencer don't forget to use #travel, #sustainability, #ecotourism, #travelstyle, #greentravel and once again, don’t underestimate the power of using hashtags and do research on the hashtags that get the most hits!
3. Use Instagram to introduce your green activity
When you run a green activity, you need powerful media to advertise your activity in order to get your audiences' attention. Instagram could be the best option to promote your green activity.
Hotel Jakarta in Amsterdam is a great example of using social media to share their sustainability efforts with prospective guests. See below how they share this in their messaging:
hotel Jakarta green sustainability Amsterdam
By highlighting that they are the “Greenest Hotel in Amsterdam” in their bio, it makes it apparent to their followers that they have made strides to become a sustainable business. This is further reiterated on their sustainability website page and in posts, where they provide concrete examples of how they have made operational changes to their business positioning them as the “Greenest Hotel”.
Companies and hotels can likewise use social media as a tool to inform followers about how they are operating differently compared with their competition, which boosts their brand among followers, increases transparency and shows that they are not greenwashing.
_____________
So, there you have it, the more people that are informed about your sustainability efforts, the faster your goals of generating impact will be achieved. Therefore increased engagement on social media will undoubtedly boost your brand on Instagram, get you more likes on your posts, and bring more attention to how your brand is different than your competition. The bottom line is, if you are curious about promoting sustainability within your brand, Instagram is the tool you need to use to show the world what you are doing for environmental sustainability.