The Location Tag Customers Use on Instagram

Photos you have never seen

When someone posts a photo on Instagram, they can add a location: a place name shown above the picture, which opens a page of every public photo tagged there.

Customers do this all the time at restaurants, salons, studios, shops and anywhere else worth photographing. For a business, those pages are word of mouth with pictures attached.

Many owners have never opened theirs. Some would not find it if they tried, because customers have been tagging a place with a misspelled name, an old name or no connection to the business at all.

The cause usually sits on Facebook rather than Instagram.

Where the place names come from

Instagram does not keep a list of places of its own. It uses Facebook's: every location offered when someone tags a photo is a Facebook place, usually a page with an address.

A business whose Facebook page has a full street address, in a local business category, normally appears in that list. The trouble starts when it does not.

• No street address on the Facebook page, so there is nothing to tag.
• The wrong category, such as company or brand instead of local business.
• A duplicate place created when a customer checked in under another spelling.
• An old name left from before a rebrand or a change of owner.
• The building or plaza, chosen because it was the nearest match.

The third is the one that grows. Once a customer creates a place by checking in on Facebook, it is offered to everyone nearby, and the next customer picks whichever name appears first.

Finding the tags customers actually use

Start with photos you already know about. Customers often mention the business by name or with a hashtag; open those posts and tap the location above each photo.

Each tap opens that place's page. Note the exact name and roughly how many photos it holds.

Then begin a post of your own on the premises, choose to add a location, type the business's name and look at every match offered. Misspellings, old names and near-duplicates turn up together in that list.

Ask staff as well. They see customers photographing things every day and often know which name people pick.

Why the right place matters

A place page gathers every photo tagged there into one grid. Split across three spellings, a popular business looks like three quiet ones.

The official place also carries the right address and map pin, and on Facebook it is the same page as your business, with its reviews, hours and website.

An unofficial place has whatever a customer typed, sometimes with the pin in the wrong street.

A worked example

A paint-and-sip studio on a busy shopping street runs evening classes where groups of friends paint the same picture, step by step, over two hours with a drink.

At the end of nearly every class, everyone photographs their canvas, and plenty of them post it to Instagram the same night.

The owner had set up the Facebook page before the studio opened, as a brand page with no address, because classes then ran in rented rooms around town.

So there was nothing to tag. One early customer created a place by checking in on Facebook with the name misspelled, and for two years most of the canvases gathered there. Others were tagged at the shopping street.

The page was moved into a local business category with the studio's street address. The owner claimed the misspelled place and asked Facebook to merge it into the page, which took two attempts.

The studio now tags its own posts with the official place, and a card by the drying rack gives the exact name. New photos started arriving under the studio's own name.

Correcting the source on Facebook

Check the page's category and address first. A local business category, a complete street address and the map shown on the page are what make it a place others can tag.

For an unofficial place, open it on Facebook and look for the option to say it is your business. Facebook asks for some proof, such as a phone call to the listed number or a business document.

Places you manage can be merged into your main page when their names and addresses are close. Expect some back and forth.

Make the right tag the easy one

Customers copy what they see. Tag the official place on every photo the business posts, so it appears first in the list and looks established.

Use one name everywhere: on the sign, on Facebook, on Instagram and on the website. A name spelled three ways on your own materials will be tagged three ways.

A line on the receipt, a card on the counter or a word from staff at the right moment does the rest.

What to do with the photos

Look at the place page every week. It shows what customers choose to photograph, which is often not what the business would have picked.

Like and comment from the business's account; people notice when the place they tagged replies.

To reuse a customer's photo on your own account or website, ask first and credit them. A photo being public does not make it yours to post.

The counter-case

A business that serves customers at their homes, or runs from a residence, should not publish a street address just to become taggable. It has little to gain from a place page.

A business customers rarely photograph, such as an accounting office, will see few tags whatever it does.

And Facebook's claiming and merging can be slow or refused, so a few stray places may remain. Fix the source anyway: one official place with a proper address, and your own posts tagged with it.

This week

1. Open three customer photos and tap their locations.
2. Type your name into the location search.
3. List every variant customers have used.
4. Fix your Facebook category and street address.
5. Claim unofficial places and request merges.
6. Tag your own posts with the official place.
7. Put the exact name where customers will see it.

Step four is the one that stops new strays appearing. Until the page itself is a place, every customer who wants to tag you has to invent one.

The rest of the Facebook page deserves the same care, as covered in the button under a Facebook page's cover photo.

Frequently asked questions

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