Do:

1. Spread the word. On the week of your takeover, post the image included in your confirmation email on your personal Instagram account to inform your followers you’ll be posting to our account and encourage them to do a takeover as well.

2. Post photos you took on your day. No photos taken by anyone else or photos taken on another day. Photos should be taken with your phone.  Use #mercurycycling and #rockmercury hashtags.

3. Show us your life. What’s your day like? Try to diversify your subject matter.

4. Edit your photos. Feel free to use Instagram’s filters or edit your photos with other apps, but please don’t post more than one multi-photo collage. Screenshots and text added on top of your images are absolutely prohibited.

5. Caption & sign your photos. Write a caption as long as you like to describe your photo, and add as many hashtags as you see fit. End each post with “Photo by @[yourusername].

Don’t:

1. Be rude. Don’t post mature photos or words of nudity, vulgarity or profanity. Be respectful of our followers.

2. Follow or unfollow anyone. The mercurycycling account only follows those who have participated in the project, as thanks to you for making it great. Feel free to follow yourself, however.

3. Change any settings of our Instagram account. It can mess things up for future takeovers.

4. Select any of Instagram’s social options when you post. It can mess things up for future takeovers.

5. Delete yours or anyone else’s photos.

6. Post photos that were taken
– with a device other than a smartphone,
– on another day,
– by someone other than you.

7. Post screenshots of other apps or images from apps like Tweegram. We don’t mind if you use other smartphone apps to edit your photos, though.

Instagram’s Community Guidelines:Above all, we ask that you don’t do anything that could get us kicked off Instagram, so please review its guidelines.

Copyright policy: You retain the copyright for all photos you post in MercuryCycling, but we reserve the right to publish them in future MercuryCycling projects, exhibitions and materials. You’re welcome to post your MercuryCycling pictures to your own feed.

Participation: The founders of MercuryCycling reserve the right to deny anyone access to the account at any time for any reason. Possible reasons could include misconduct or non-adherence to these rules and policies.

Promotional content: We strongly prefer that individuals participate in MercuryCycling, not businesses. With that said we understand that businesses are very much a part of what makes MercuryCycling awesome. The account is a lot more interesting when there is variety in the types of photos posted.

Mature content: Though we wholeheartedly respect artistic integrity of photos, we have to keep our Instagram account and the content within it in line with Instagram’s terms and conditions or our account could be deleted. In other words, please do not post nudity or mature content of any kind.

Comments: Though we encourage healthy conversation through Instagram comments and social media on any of our posts posts, please refrain from being rude. It is not an appropriate place to abuse, attack, harass or impersonate others. We will block all trolls and meanies and they will be denied access to our account.

Editing: The founders of MercuryCycling maintain this account and take full responsibility for its content. If a photo or comment does not adhere to our rules, we reserve the right to delete it. We may also delete a photo or comment at any time for any reason. Possible reasons could include misconduct or non-adherence to these rules and policies.

If all of the above rules look great...

Shoot us an email at instagram@mercurycycling.com to sign up for an Instagram takeover!