Social Media 101

[Craig Alan Huber]

Greetings - I am looking for some help with optimizing my marketing reach to gain more exposure for my work on the primary social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). The platform I want to come up to speed mostly on is Instagram. Anyone considering themselves an 'Instagram Pro' willing to help?

Thanks,
Craig
www.veritaseditions.com

[h2oman]

I'm an Instagram beginner, not pro, but I think I can give you the gist of it. For starters, it is photo-based in that each post is a photo with some text. This is as opposed to Facebook, where one might post a photo, video, or just some text, a web link, etc.

You start a "feed," which is your account, where you will post your photos. Each time you post a photo, you can accompany it with some text, and with hashtags, which are the big deal in Instagram. For example (based on your work I saw at Veritas), you might add the hashtag #fineartblackandwhite or #saintjuniperoserra. Then anyone who searches for either of those hashtag will be taken to a page where your photograph will appear, along with all others having that hashtag. You can add as many hashtags as you'd like. For the photograph below, which was taken at the Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge I used the hashtags #blackandwhitelandscape, #klamathmarsh, #4x5film, #4x5photography.



Hashtags are added with a space but no comma between them and, as you can see, all the words in a hashtag are run together. The nice thing about hashtags is that you don't really need to know them. If you know a start and begin typing it in, Instagram will start giving you hashtags with that beginning, and how many posts there are with each choice. So when I type in #4x5 I see #4x5 with 162,584 posts (I should perhaps have used that one), #4x5film with 75,047 posts, etc. When you see one you want, just click on it and Instagram will finish typing it for you.

Initially Instagram was set up only for square images sized to 1080x1080 pixels. You can now post rectangular images. Horizontals (landscape) must have a long edge of 1080 pixels, and verticals (portrait) a long edge of 1350 pixels. There is some limit as to how extreme the aspect ratio can be, but I forget it. I think anything between square and about 3:2 works.

So now suppose that you post a photograph with a brief bit of commentary and some hashtags. People will only see it if (1) they search one of the attached hashtags, (2) they go to your feed because you have directed them there (maybe by putting an Instagram logo with link in a web page), or (3) because they follow you. So how do you get followers? One way is to follow other people, who will sometimes follow you in return. Or you can somehow ask people to follow you (by e-mail, business card, etc), or someone might search a hashtag, like one of your photos, and choose to follow you.

When you open Instagram each time, you get your "home stream," which is the photos of all the accounts you follow. You can then go to your feed and post by clicking the photo for your page in the upper right. I can't give you the details of how to post, because I think it varies with your operating system. I suspect it is easy with Windows or Mac. I use Ubuntu/Linux, so I had to download another app to load stuff to Instagram.

So is all of this worth the trouble? Hmmm... In maybe 9-12 months and very little effort put in, I've accumulated 65 followers, most of them friends or other photographers that I follow. I do believe that it has driven at least some traffic to my web page. I don't sell anything there, so I don't know if I would have seen any monetary benefit if I did sell. One strange thing is that when I first started my page I had some followers that, when I looked at their feeds, I would never have expected to be followers of what I offered. Those seem to be gone now - I think maybe some people follow any new page, in the hopes that they will get followed back. I still have one or two followers that I don't understand why they are following me.

So that's what I know about Instagram - you can click the link below to see what my page looks like.

https://www.instagram.com/greggwatermanphoto/

www.greggwaterman.com

[Tin Can]

Thanks for a good Instant explanation!

still never going to use it

[Mark Sawyer]

still never going to use it

But think how much better large format photography looks on a cell phone!

[Tin Can]

LOL but right now I am on an iPad Mini 5 which has a 4x6”+ screen so good enough for too small contact prints. I will squint.

When I grow up I will get an 8x10 iPad.

but I may never grow UP!

But think how much better large format photography looks on a cell phone!

[h2oman]

still never going to use it

You'll regret it when you are on your deathbed.

[Tin Can]

Already had a near death experience.

An angel saved me.

Glad to be back.

I think...

You'll regret it when you are on your deathbed.

[Corran]

But think how much better large format photography looks on a cell phone!

Just yesterday I was explaining my process and talking about my new 12x20, and showed off the first 12x20 image I made by pulling up my post on Instagram of the scan of the negative.

He is considering buying a print of it once I make a contact print, or maybe one of my other prints.

So...

[h2oman]

Yeah, so there! And now I'm going to follow Bryan on Instagram...

[lifted_spirit]

A good starter on instagram above. I'm nowhere near pro, but I've been "raised" by people that are pro. I just decided it's a stupid game to try to attain to the massive followings.

Don't use hashtags with millions of posts - yours will quickly get lost in the haze. Start with smaller post count hash tags and include a few over the million plus, in case your post goes viral. Research the hashtags. Sometimes they sound like they fit perfectly for your work, but if you actually view the posts in there, you may see that your work doesn't fit at all what that hashtag presents. You're merely wasting a hashtag that way. (you can have up to 30 hashtags per post) Don't use the same hashtags over and over and over again - instagram's algorithm apparently hates that. If you're able to see when your followers are most active, make sure to post at that time. (or just before that time) Instagram's algorithm is geared towards "showing" items that have the most interaction. If you post at midnight your time and all your followers are local, (and in bed) you'll get no interactions until they wake up in the morning and your post won't even be shown to those following the hashtags you added. Your MAIN goal with instagram (and facebook) is to get interactions on your post and get those interactions early. It's why so many people post questions in their instagram posts - to encourage interactions by people. Low interactions = low visibility = a waste of time. It also views itself as a community, so interact with other people's photos. Like them, favorite them, comment on them. When people comment on my photos that I don't know, I look at their account. If I like their images, I'll follow them after liking some of their images. Also, follow hashtags that you like. Sometimes liking a photo from a hashtag will get you interactions. Post your images to stories and post to your story in general. And finally, sometimes I post my hashtags in my post, other times as a comment to my post. I don't have any conclusive evidence that either works better than the other, but a comment is an interaction. (the algorithm probably notices it's my comment and ignores it) Finally, you can follow someone who follows you or not. Many play the game where they follow you, you follow back and they unfollow you. If you just follow for follow, you wind up with a bunch of people in your feed whose work you don't really care for. So, I don't do that, but I'm probably missing out on some followers. But...if they're going to unfollow me for not following them, they're not really into my stuff anyway. Finally, reels are new - they're small video snippets. I think it's instagram's competition to TikTok. Because they're new, instagram tends to favor them and there's not near as much "competition" for reels as there are actual photos. So, you could record and post reels in an effort to get in closer to the ground level.

I have two accounts, both with 1200 or so followers. I follow 800+ on one and 600+ on my other account. I drive some business to my website via posts on either facebook or instagram, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. And if I'm being honest, not nearly enough to warrant the time I spend researching hashtags, etc. But I've kind of gotten sick of the game at this point and not really looking to grow by gangbusters any more.

My final advice...don't compare your followers or the likes you get for a post to others. It has NOTHING to do with the quality of your work, and EVERYTHING to do with the algorithm. A person with thousands of followers will get hundreds or thousands of like for a technically garbage image while you with a hundred followers may get twenty or thirty likes. It speaks nothing to the quality of your work or the other person's work. Only that they fit the algorithm better than you. It will be a long, slow process to build up a decent number of followers. If you're patient, you may succeed. If you do succeed, the likelihood of it selling work or driving them to your website is still pretty slim IME. BTW, if you host your work on SquareSpace, you can setup an Facebook Business account and tie your work on your website to Instagram so that clicks on Instagram will take the people to your website to view/buy your product(s)/print(s). Again, I get a few clicks with each post on my business account of the 100+ likes I typically get per post. Is it worthwhile to go through all of it? Questionable. But you do get the comedy of having them tell you your picture of a small waterfall in the woods is too sexual and they're removing the product link from my instagram post.