efloraofindia on Instagram

For quite some time, I have been posting updates regarding updating our families and genera with comparative images.
Is there any use of such postings (except for getting some likes/ engagements), as I am not much familiar with Facebook working ?

On social media, posts from organizations are often for promotion of their products, and keeping the audience reminded of the organization itself.
Likes, reactions, views – they serve as some kind of indicators of popularity, following, etc. It is actually a matter of analysis. 
I too am not aware of such analysis.

There is no follow up or continuity in Facebook uploads. In our eflora compilation of data is happening, it is a ready reference to the world, just like a reference book. Our eflora is comparable to other global efloras. No doubt in it

Social media is very important platform nowadays to reach great number of people for any organisation, i am sure that posting updates on Fb efloraofindia page is useful for group but i will say we are not able to reach more people as there are less than 1K likes/followers on Fb page but i feel it will reach more people in future as our group is getting more fame being largest database of Indian Flora with number of species pages increasing significantly every year.
But what i observed in past that our Fb page is much restricted only to the group members or the botanical society, we were not able to reach common public and i will say to reach common public is equally important as we can make people plant conscious in today’s world when people are suffering from so called ‘Plant Blindness’ but for this we need to work a little  more, some of my suggestions for this are –
1). At present the posting on Fb page only includes addition of images of family/genera/species pages to site but we should be adding plants that look more interesting to common people at regular intervals say weekly means the plants that are rarer, or specialised like parasites/ mycoheterotrophs etc. along with regular near daily posting of beautiful images of those plants that are seen by common people almost everyday including ornamentals and other common plants like so called weeds in agriculture etc. that were posted on our group by any of member on to our Fb page. See Indian Biodiversity Portal IBP Fb page for this, as far as i remember they have very less followers about one year back but just in last couple of months it has reached to near 10K because of their regular postings…
2). We have some really rare plant images on our site which may also includes some of the plants that are photographed for the first time with almost no images on other sites like talking about my own post we have Impatiens glauca images (A rare unique endemic balsam only known from couple of localities and only from HP and Uttarakhand state) and there are such many other species also, similarly we have images of those plants that are recently discovered/described but their images were discussed before publication on our group so we can just add them say on weekly basis to reach more people and make group more popular…
3). Linking and adding of our official Fb page account and mail to the bottom of website home page of our group, this is done by almost every organisation/institute now so if one visit our site they can check for our Fb page also and vice versa ultimately reaching more number of people .You can check IBP home page for this also.
Now just giving an example to show how fb page of our group is/may be useful, I remember in June 2017 when this group completed ten years large number of members mainly moderators/pillars shared that beautiful poster and details on their personal Fb account, and it is only through the FB efloraofindia page i came to know about this amazing group and i soon joined this group in October after some discussion with Anil Thakur sir…
And at that time i was a novice student with hardly any knowledge but yes with great passion towards exploring our biodiversity, i still remember once i was not able to confirm some rarer species ids and i had no clues that time how to proceed further but as i started posting and interacting on our group it not only resolved all my doubts but also made my basic understanding stronger and increase interest to go for detailed taxonomic studies which i am currently doing. So i think we need to reach more people and without any doubt social media platform is best way for this mainly to reach youngsters, who knows there will be another passionate student waiting to know about our group so as to contribute and learn through this group…
Garg ji i was thinking of posting my views on use of social media for popularising group from last one week and finally your this question gave me opportunity to share my views. Also i want to add that it will be really great if we can make official page just like our Fb page on Instagram also there it is much easier to reach large number of public with similar interest than Fb we have several pages there regarding botany mainly the botanical garden pages like Kew gardens and more…
Also i am using Instagram for past couple of years and have many international friends/scientist with similar interest so the group moderators who use Instagram can make its official page there even if required i will be happy to make that and the posting on Fb and Insta will be near similar i think both pages may also be connected. And similarly connecting and adding link of Instagram pages at bottom of our site home page will be good just similar to that what i recommended for Fb page…
I am sure by doing so it will not only make our group more popular but by reaching large number of audience we will be also spread knowledge and possibly increase interest in youngsters about plants diversity around us and make awareness about the same in common public and off course people will love this …

Thanks a lot, …, for your detailed views.
….. if required I will be happy to make that ….-> Thanks, Ashutosh ji. Pl. go ahead. 

Linking and adding our official Fb page account and mail to the bottom of the website home page of our group-> what to write and how to link ?

I did not find anything at https://indiabiodiversity.org/

But how to add ? 

Garg ji its there on https://indiabiodiversity.org/ also, see at bottom in attached screenshot.

About how to add i think it might be simple just like adding other links but in this case we have to copy any freely available Facebook and Instagram icons from google and embed that link in Icon….
After some search on google i found these steps to link –
Choose Instagram/Facebook as the social media network. Signin to your Instagram/Facebook account and allow the app to access your account. Provide your Instagram account’s web address. Click Embed in Your Site (or something similar, such as Generate Embed Code) to generate the embed code…


I will make our official Instagram account tomorrow till you can try to add the Facebook and GMail there at bottom on our site home page, as i will make the Instagram account will also link that in similar way if it works…
Pl. see if the facebook icon looks Ok at /home
Shall we place it at the top?

I have successfully made Instagram page of our group and have also done few interesting postings so as to attract and reach large number of audience, i feel it will reach up to 1K people in one month or so.
I have attached a screenshot of how the page looks, you can also visit it at below link even if you don’t have IG account….
Garg ji you have perfectly linked to Fb account icon to home page but the positioning of current icon is not ok with mobile view however it looks ok in desktop view but i think it will look better at top, if it can be done as … also mentioned i have added one edited screenshot with icons i think if it is possible to insert them there it will be good looking and will attract viewers attention also…
Similarly Instagram account should also be linked to website homepage, it can be done by embedding above provided link of our IG account just in similar way like Fb.
Also please let me know if everything looks fine on Instagram account or anything that require changes/improvement, more suggestions are also welcome…

Thanks, …, for a wonderful job. Thanks, …
Pl. check three options I have shown at /home
It can not be done in the header position you have given as only one image can be inserted there, which is already there i.e. Database of plants of Indian Subcontinent ………

Very nice efforts by … Thank you very much …
Increased exposure on social media sites is a definite plus for eFI.

FB and Instagram links should be at the bottom  just below the copyright information. 

Thanks, …, That is the footer, which comes on every page. I am not able to insert it there.

I think second option where icon is inserted above main description looks best also there’s a lot of space left to right side of this, hope you can add there Instagram account link also…

And thanks Dinesh sir for your compliment, you, … and many other tirelessly working members of our group are always source of encouragement for me…

Great efforts by …

This is all I could get after hours of hit and trial:
… i just checked and found it is absolutely fine now in both desktop and mobile version as well, so i think no more changes are required now…