Do you own a smartphone?

If so, I bet you have an Instagram account too, because it. is. awesome.

In a split of a second you can turn an otherwise boring photo into a piece of art (sort of…), so it’s not surprising that Instagram has already passed the 200 million active users mark and keeps growing.

As with all the other social networks, one might say that the aim of being on Instagram is to be, well, social – follow your friends, like and comment on their photos, and share some precious moments from your own life in return, right?

No, at least not for me.

As a marketer, I try to be more strategic about the time I spend on social networks.

If Facebook is for catching up with my friends, LinkedIn for keeping in touch with other professionals, Instagram works as a source of inspiration.

For me, photography is a hobby. Since I got an iPhone, it couldn’t be easier to stop and snap a photo of something that draws my attention in just a second.

My personal goal for being on Instagram is to learn from other photographers by analysing shots that were taken on a phone, to get inspired by seeing new angles, interesting compositions and breath-taking edits, and push my own boundaries as a consequence.

And when I say inspiration, I’m talking about shots like this:

A photo posted by ?Lost In Thought? (@jnsilva) on Oct 8, 2015 at 9:24pm PDT

Or this:

A photo posted by Adam (@bigmanjapan) on Oct 1, 2015 at 6:21am PDT

Or this:

Or even this:

So as much as I do love seeing what you had for lunch or looking at yet another duck-face selfie of yours, I decided that it’s time to stop. I realised that Instagram is sucking up too much of my time and I don’t get enough value from it, and I had to fix it.

And that’s why I unfollowed you, my friend.

But does that make me antisocial?

Not at all.

I just know that you’ll share 99% of those photos on Facebook or Twitter, so I’ll learn about what’s happening in your life in any case, am I right? 🙂

So in the end, it’s all about your goals and the social strategy you choose – and it applies to any other network or channel.

As I said, I’m using Instagram to become a better iphoneographer.

For you, it might be engaging with your friends, stalking on beautiful girls, getting some praise on how beautiful you are, or maybe using it as a tool to build a personal brand – all of that is fine (except for stalking).

What I want to say is this:

Don’t just be on social networks because everyone else is, think about the concrete goals you want to achieve and define your strategy accordingly.

This will help you manage your time more efficiently and contribute a lot more to your end results.

Now that you know why I am on Instagram, tell me, why and how are you using it? 🙂