I had to discuss my Instagram strategies with my peers this week.
I used to be a bit addicted to Instagram, there was a time where I would bulk post 5 images every few days, and for some reason over the course of 3 months I went from having only 100 followers to a couple of thousand and at least 100 likes per image – mostly bots and fake accounts. I have no idea why it happened but it became a bit of a compulsive experience every time I posted, despite knowing that the stats weren’t real.
I haven’t used Instagram as much as I used to since starting the MA last year, not sure why – perhaps it is fear of getting zero likes.
Instagram is the most immediate and accessible platform to show your work to anyone on. If I have a strategy now it would be post up to 3 images a day (when I have content) constantly use hashtags and make sure the tags you are using are actually fairly relevant in your aesthetics.
It is also really worth monitoring these tag pages or the profiles that the tags relate to because they are constantly being over taken by new pages or if they are portrait pages they just turn into a gallery of gratuitous nudes. Tagging the same magazine pages as everyone else is both good and bad in that you might get lucky and people see it or it just instantly gets lost because there are images constantly being posted with the same tags. Geo tagging is also super important.
Anything you can post as a story is worth adding but if its moving image and has something interesting about it, you might consider using tick tock and linking it to your Instagram.
You should also be looking at your posting stats to see what time of day you get the most interaction, what day of the week to post and you can get more in-depth information on the demographics of who is seeing and engaging with your content. This is the kind of information that is going to be useful for targeting any paid promotions.
The most common strategy I am aware of is to be liking and following accounts every day in the hope that they will like and follow you back.
@oliver_grab0wsk!
As much as I love it, Instagram is murky water. It is a platform of trends, all the #somewheremagazine or similar tags look the same, have the same processing on them and its a self perpetuating problem. I don’t think Instagram is to blame however. It is users chasing likes and followers who are doing this, along with a select few very talented photographers. The issue with everything looking the same means that you have to make your images Instagrammable and that just might not be who you are. It doesn’t mean your photographs are bad, you just aren’t trending with everyone else.
I will be interested to see if Instagram will maintain it’s appeal since being bought out by Facebook, we will see more ads, more paid promotion and perhaps loose the soul of the app. Or whatever soul it has left anyway.
CRJ 