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Instagram - A grind or for pleasure ?
- Thread starter jasonsony735
- Start date
This, really.
You shouldn't confuse professional success with 'success' on Instagram. They're two very different things. It's like thinking Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg get big hits on Youtube. Does not compute.
Man of Honour
My 500px account has a couple of thousand followers but Instagram is currently sitting just over 970. I never really paid attention to the follower numbers until I started understanding the algorithms Facebook (and a ssuch, IG) uses to rank your account and posts (if using tags) among the crowd based on engagement, promoted content and suchlike.
I just don't care for paying for likes either, I have seen accounts that have 30 or so uploads but have thousands of followers?! IT's pretty clear many are just bot driven followers or paid likes. There are also huge groups of chat channels on IG where people post their latest uploads and members will engagement share with each other to to play the algorithm. Instagram changed how they deal with this not long ago though but it still happens.
End of the day you know if your work is good or not, you don't need a stat to tell you so. Your loyal followers will continue to support your work and they will recommend you if you offer paid services so will have a steady stream of clients over the years.
I'm going to likely delete my Flickr account as it's reaching its free upload capacity and the platform has gone stale somewhat whereas 500px has continued to thrive with Quests, contests and a more receptive community.
I just don't care for paying for likes either, I have seen accounts that have 30 or so uploads but have thousands of followers?! IT's pretty clear many are just bot driven followers or paid likes. There are also huge groups of chat channels on IG where people post their latest uploads and members will engagement share with each other to to play the algorithm. Instagram changed how they deal with this not long ago though but it still happens.
End of the day you know if your work is good or not, you don't need a stat to tell you so. Your loyal followers will continue to support your work and they will recommend you if you offer paid services so will have a steady stream of clients over the years.
I'm going to likely delete my Flickr account as it's reaching its free upload capacity and the platform has gone stale somewhat whereas 500px has continued to thrive with Quests, contests and a more receptive community.
Soldato
Get a lip job, fake boobs, a small dog of some sort and cover yourself in tatoos and you'll be at 10k followers in no time.
I'm about to hit 10,000 followers and it's genuinely taken a lot of work with a lot of research to reach that number. That number isn't huge by any means but it's a triumph for my account which is a niche of a niche and not the usual IG fare by a long shot (antique and historical weaponry). Also, I seem to get shadow-banned a lot and I can't use the advertising service because Zuckerberg thinks flintlocks are bad.
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Associate
I tend to have people who I hope to see Likes from. The overall number of likes isn't that important. If I post a picture of a tasty car, I hope that my car-loving followers will like it. Similarly with landscapes and my adventurer followers.
I realised a long long time ago that creative integrity means absolutely jack on social media. You can quite literally be casting pearls before swine. So I stopped fretting about it.
I realised a long long time ago that creative integrity means absolutely jack on social media. You can quite literally be casting pearls before swine. So I stopped fretting about it.
Associate
Will be interesting when Instagram removes 'likes' across the board. Lets see how long the baps and tats accounts last without the false love.
Associate
They’ve tried it in a few places already, apparently they’re going to try it across the US next. I really hope so.
I guess it thinks were Americans. I have seen that if you click on it you can see how many people have liked your posts, its just hidden from the public now.
Recently talked to a few photographers who have substantial followings on Instagram - you can spend 24/7 working on playing Instagrams game and testing the algorithms. Or you can put that time and effort into working on your photography.
Most brands approach now via Instagram first and websites second, if your feed is visually inspiring or different enough then it'll stand out. Regardless of numbers.
Most brands approach now via Instagram first and websites second, if your feed is visually inspiring or different enough then it'll stand out. Regardless of numbers.
Soldato
Rather than creating a new thread I thought I'd add here, does anyone use any apps for managing their instagram account, more so in regards to tracking follow/unfollowers?
Associate
Is it really that important? (Genuine question, is it a big source of income for you to warrant putting that much time and effort into it?)
Soldato
Not in the slightest however I do find metadata/statistics/trending data quite interesting and looking at an app that provides some of this is hardly putting much effort/time into it.
Associate
Yeah fair point. Our marketing team at work tend to use HootSuite for analytics across all social media platforms, that might be worth a look (no experience of it myself).