i have a confession to make. i get caught up in the whole instagram thing. i see other people with these massive accounts and i don’t really get how they grow. so i watched a bunch of youtube videos yesterday and no matter how many items were on the lists of dos and don’ts, they all boiled down to these points:
don't cheat - buying followers or playing the follow unfollow game is not worth it. fake engagement isn’t what i’m after anyway, so no cheat codes.
use hashtags - little did i know there are actually apps that generate hashtags for photos by type, location and other parameters. wild! so i tried one of these out today and it definitely worked. i followed the advice of one youtuber who suggested using the iphone’s create keyboard shortcut function to plug in 30 hashtags so all i have to do is type the word “portrait” and 30 hashtags magically appear.
use instagram stories - stories, especially stories that are hash tagged, generate a lot of traffic, and that brings people to your page. i’m not seeing a massive influx of visitors to my page as a result of this, but there is certainly a steady trickle.
engage with other people on the platform. - leave real comments that mean something and give people a reason to engage with you, too.
maintain a unified look and feel for your page - while i don’t really want to agree with this, i’m sure there is logic to it. personally, i don’t like the idea that i should have to create one account for trace photography, another for macro and miscellaneous photography, and another for portraits. i think if the sole focus is on being huge on instagram, then this probably works wonders. but i also think that pigeonholing ourselves and creating too many channels has more drawbacks than it does benefits. i support the omnichannel approach, but being a huge instagrammer isn’t my focus. instsgram is my daily photo blog, a place to show my photos and be engaged with others who are doing the same.
so those are my five takeaways from hours of youtube content. and the lesson i learned along the way was twofold: listen to those who have been successful, but don’t take what they say without scrutinizing it and putting it through your own filter of desire and intent. take the rules, mold them to your purpose, and make them work specifically for you. that is going to be my approach. i will chase realness and see where it leads.