When I picked up photography a few moths ago (Jul ’19) I though “wouldn’t it be cool if there were an app to upload and share my pictures?” – my 7 years old niece told me that I got there a few years too late. It turns out that there is Instagram so I create my account and start sharing. I don’t have Facebook (as yet) so all my first followers are the people I have in my phone’s contact list and not all of them have Instagram. I start uploading my pics and did not think much of it. I’d get a few likes from my friends and family and I went on thinking that that was it.
No, wrong again! In social media terms, Instagram is a big deal, second biggest in-fact only after Facebook. It reached 1 billion users in mid 2018 with an average 500 million users using the app daily; staggering considering that in 2013 they only had 130 million active users monthly. It is no surprise that businesses, brands celebrities and influencers hit hard on this platform and on top of being active users they also use Instagram for direct advertising. Now that I’m a bit more familiar with it I think the secret of this success is that its visual nature really lends itself to the way people “consume” information nowadays; tools such as “Moments” epitomises the ever growing concept of fast paced, snappy and concise delivery of a message be it a personal message or a full blown marketing campaign.
As I write I broke the 1200 followers barrier, 3 months since I opened the account. Not sure if it is a lot but it is a lot for me. I can’t find a lot about an average growth rate on the Internet but there is plenty on how to grow the followers count quick (more in this in a moment). I did not plan or aspire to the 1000 mark but I guess it happened because I started being curious about other users I did not know, started following them, liking, commenting and engaging out of genuine interest. Instagram algorithm is structured in such a way that your posts will be top of your followers feed only in 20% of the cases with the remaining 80% of cases being your posts at the bottom of your followers feed. On the other end it makes sure that accounts which are deemed active (based on likes, comments and general level of engagement from and to the account) have a better chance of being towards the top of a feed.
In my experience so far I’ve noticed that some users are after followers like there is no tomorrow but don’t really seem to get the concept of engagement right. One example is people following you after putting a lot of likes on your content and, a few hours after you start to follow them (eventually out of a genuine interest in their gallery) they unfollow you. I noticed it only in a few occasions but it is a very common thing. Last time I noticed it I unfollowed the unfollower. Sad but true a few days later here he/she is following and liking my content again like I’m his/her best friend. I had to understand, I DM (direct message) the person and ask what that was about (being very specific that I did not mean to judge or criticise). He/She writes back telling me it is a way to get followers. I thanked the person but I asked myself one question: WTF? My deeply introspective and fundamental question is rooted in the fact that I can’t see the logic in this pattern. Whether I’m a business, an influencer, a brand or a guy that likes to put pictures on Instagram sure I would want to be followed by people that are interested in my content/product. What is the logic in following 200 people per day in the hope that they will follow me back before I unfollow them? Especially for those who intend the use of this platform in a professional manner I’d think they would want to target their audience to maximise their impact. To do that you should follow your customers to at least get a sense of what they like, dislike or what are they after. This goes to extremes were there are services selling followers, likes and comments to whoever is daft enough to fall for it. You can Google it, the number of these services increases on a daily basis. Also in this case it is just hot air in the sense that, yes, you can buy 10,000 followers but they are all inactive accounts owned by the service provider and they do not interact with you with likes and comments. This lowers your engagement rate (measured in percentile) which, for a given post, is simply the number of likes + number of comments divided the number of followers multiplied by 100. If you are reading this post you probably have a functioning brain but out there there are people that after buying followers buy also likes and comments so that, in their mind, the engagement rate stays up. The way it works is that you buy, let’s say, 2,000 likes and 500 comments. The service provider will allocate these likes to a number of posts you select and add comments as well. The comments won’t be too elaborate, they are mostly emoticons and words such as “great”, “ohhh” (not even a word)…. you get the sense. That basically creates a spike in your engagement rate but just for a selected number of posts and for a very short span of time. If you are trying to pretend you are a great influencer with a huge following in front of a company that you hope it will pay you to take a selfie with their newest sunglasses on then, be aware that somebody that knows how this works, will see through it in a heart beat.
There are out there other service providers that seemingly can help you get more real life followers. One of the most prominent at the moment is Kicksta. What they do, after you give them your credit card number and your Instagram login info, is to target the followers of the people you follow by putting likes on their posts in the attempt to attract attention to your profile so that if there really is any common interest that might become a “follow”… or perhaps not. Kicksta swears to God that their service is totally in line with Instagram policies which prohibit the use of bots targeting members with likes and comments despite claiming openly that they use AI to get the job done. Isn’t AI a very smart bot? Other companies like Upleap go around the issue of compliance with Instagram’s rules by saying that a real person does the job for you. Whether that is true or not both give the opportunity of a trial period: Upleap offers a 3 days free trial (no credit card details needed) and Kicksta offers a 14 days free trial but only after you give them your credit card number.
In my brief experience with Instagram my take is that the best thing is to be clear about why you have an account there. In my case it is a great way to share the pictures I take as I learn photography and a way to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones. In the long run I hope it will be helpful to the cause of this blog and NMA as a project; my very own # for this is #fellowersnotfollowers (don’t google it, fellowers is a word I created). Whether you are a business or an influencer or a visual blogger I suggest to just be honest and clear. Look for followers that might have a real interest in you or your product and create a real community, interact with it and, most importantly, be part of it by contributing. The social media “universes” are pulling us apart more and more and some of us live in that little universe accessed through a smartphone. I don’t blame the tool (internet is a fantastic thing so are smartphones) but the use we make of it. Instead of using this marvel as a way to get to know more people and connect with them and come together as a bigger and more cohesive community, we are letting it enhance the fears, discomfort and uneasiness that might be part of everyday social life to the point where some of us exist only in the digital world. I believe there is a different and better way to use it and I hope to find through this blog other people that share this vision.
How do you use Instagram? Do you follow to follow? Like for like? Or perhaps expect everybody to to like your selfies without any engagement from your side? Leave a comment below
