Hi there
First time poster!
I have just taken over the as MCO on my squadron. I am most likely going to start a Squadron Instagram Page!
I have been trying to find the most popular Squadron run accounts so I can see what sort of things they post etc. The most popular i have found are:
@723_wigan_atc
@124sqn
350squadron
Any others that people are aware of? Any other Instagram advice would be gratefully received!!
TIA
Instagram is pretty good at suggesting others to follow. It will recommend similar and also tell you who the profiles you like like.
So if you start off just picking ATC units, you’ll quickly get plenty of suggestions of other ATC units.
As above, there’s no set format as such.
Keep it exciting and you can’t go wrong. However, I find Facebook to be the most popular social media tool. Most of our instagram follows are other sqns, so it doesn’t really have an impact on recruitment.
I’d link the Facebook and Instagram pages so posts appear on both platforms.
We’ve done this, but I find it too limited - no scheduled posts, only one photo…
Facebook is good for scheduling posts, but as I say, Instagram is limited anyway regarding recruitment so we stick to Facebook more.
I get a reasonable amount of interaction from young people on my sqn’s instagram. I find it’s mainly the parents on Facebook these days 
Is that currently cadets, other cadets and friends of cadets, or is it interested recruits?
Admitedly mainly current cadets, and probably other cadets.
That’s what I’ve found. You can’t really share things on Instagram and the way it works will generally stop random young people seeing it.
Imho it’s of little to no value to recruitment.
It can be a lot of work if you have parents who say they don’t want their child on social media, we have a handful and you have to make sure they aren’t in photo’s. All the cadets are happy for us to take pics so we can put video clips together for the parents to see what they are paying for and to see the cadets having fun. We use the Sqn camera and we don’t put posts up until another staff member has gone through them too. We mainly used a closed insta account to show off the cadets accomplishments to other sqn’s
This is a good point. It can be frustrating at times.
We take 2 sets of photographs. One with the child involved which their parents can have if they wish and then one which can be used for social media.
I’ve been asked to talk to one of our FS about a Squadron Instagram account, are there specific rules I need to be aware of, can’t find anything obvious on RAFAC Sharepoint. Thanks.
Padre
ACP 50 is the policy document you want to read, there’s some guidance about photography of specific activities (swimming, rock climbing, shooting etc)
But otherwise there’s not much is way of rules.
And said guidance is pretty useless and not actually applicable half the time. For example it says to not upload pictures of cadets rock climbing unless they are wearing helmets, which they have no requirement to do if indoors.
I think the biggest thing is just don’t post anything overtly stupid.
Obviously I don’t know you as an individual but in case you haven’t thought about it make sure you do not include any pictures of those cadets that have the box ticked on their 3822A form by their parents about not being included in media pictures etc. Make sure you are aware of the ToRs relevant to the role and that you are very careful in how you market the brand. Although it is good to get things “hot off the press” make sure you aren’t compromising security of your cadets and other staff by posting locations etc at the time it is happening. Make sure you also monitor your followers too as you might end up with an undesirable followers list if you aren’t careful.
There are some applicable guidelines in the Social Networking Policy as well, which you can find on the Media Hub SharePoint site.