My Instagram Experience

[TheBigE]

So I have heard via several avenues that as a photographer I need to have an Instagram Account. This is needed to be able to show my work and connect with other photographers. I am no stranger to Social Media and managing such things, so I decided to give it a go and see what all the "excitement" is regarding IG.

From a logistics standpoint it was not a tremendous amount of effort. My photos in my LR catalog are star rated and my general rating was that anything 4 or better is suitable for Social Media or sharing online. Furthermore, I used the online scheduling tool of later.com. This allows me to upload my photos and write my description for each photo and then schedule it to be posted in the future. Basically it would then pop up on my phone to be posted and uploaded to IG along with the comments would be copied to the clipboard. Overall very easy and efficient.

Having plenty of photos to share and a process setup to post those photos, I decided to give it a go at the beginning of the year. Honestly, I did not know what to expect or really what I wanted out of the experience. I setup a daily post and started the process. I ran for about 45 days.

Starting with 3 Followers I maxed out at about 70 followers and dropped down now to about 45 Followers. I know these are not big numbers but it does show a trend that I will talk about in a minute. I found the key to get my photos out there was the hashtags. On every photo I used the max number of hastags I could use (30) and found good reference lists from another website that I basically modified to suit my needs. On average photo I would gather about 50-60 likes and some comments.

Those are the numbers and more "fact" based. Now for my feelings on this "experiment" Please note this is not a discussion about the likes/dislike of Social Media or other platforms. This is just my experience with IG.

Comments were not really valuable and not geared toward improving ones photography. Generally - Nice Photo, great shot or some platitude or EMOJI. I tried making some comments on other peoples photos about how I saw the photo (improvements, likes, dislikes, etc) and it was not well received. Fine, I can understand.

Followers - People will follow you on IG and then if you do not follow them back they will un-follow you. Hence the transient performance of my numbers above. This shows me that it is more a numbers game vice a useful tool to improve ones photography.

Hashtags - I spent more time figuring out the right hastags to ensure my photo was seen by the widest audience overall.

Daily Post - In order to build anything on IG you need to be consistent and active with the community. This includes responding to comments and posting daily. I was aware of the later, but the first was a challenge. I really did not have the chance to interact enough with those posting on my photos. I really questioned the amount of work versus the return on the investment...

So my final conclusion - for me, and only for me, this is not a useful platform. I do not feel that I need this exposure and really not sure what it provides me in the long run. There is a great deal of "self gratification" out there for IG and maybe commercially if I was to go into business my number of followers would be something to promote. For me as an average Joe on the street making images, IG is really not that valuable.

Thanks for reading and any question let me know...

[Shadowman]

There's a lot of social/economical customs floating around stating that you have to conform to the way someone else does to be taken seriously. For instance one youtuber said that you need to post an image of yourself if you are going to sell images online or else people won't take you seriously and tjat thr photo helps thr buyer connect with you. I admit adding a bio might be benecicial but does a photo really help or does yout style carry more weight?

[marlunn]

Thanks Erik, your comments meet my thoughts and reflections on this social media platform. I was thinking about it but was hesitant to put in the time, I think I have better uses for my time than 'like' number seeking that IG seems to be all about and requires some ongoing daily effort to gather and maintain for a dubious value return.

[TheBigE]

Thanks Erik, your comments meet my thoughts and reflections on this social media platform. I was thinking about it but was hesitant to put in the time, I think I have better uses for my time than 'like' number seeking that IG seems to be all about and requires some ongoing daily effort to gather and maintain for a dubious value return.

Mark - from a workload perspective it was not a great deal of work. Later.com is the secret to success and free for 30 posts/month. In general I would say maybe at most I would spend about 20-30 min scheduling and creating my post for 10 days. There are templates and a great user interface that makes this quite easy. But even at this "minimal" workload I was not seeing any value for the effort...

[rpcrowe]

I see a great value for our rescue work using Facebook - especially when one of our several volunteers who are quite versed in Facebook do all the work. We get a lot of interest in specific dogs and get a lot of donations using Facebook. Facebook can become quite a PITA if you have a Facebook page linked to another (as an example my wife's Facebook page is linked to our rescue group's page and if you somehow link to another site that has numerous entries along completely different lines.

We have another volunteer who is really into social media and posts for our rescue group on virtually all the social media sites. However, except for the above mentioned Facebook, I have not seen any benefits accrued from her social media postings.

As far as Instagram, I have always considered that a "less than professional site"...

[paintingwithlight]

Comments were not really valuable and not geared toward improving ones photography. Generally - Nice Photo, great shot or some platitude or EMOJI. I tried making some comments on other peoples photos about how I saw the photo (improvements, likes, dislikes, etc) and it was not well received. Fine, I can understand.

Thanks for sharing Erik. Oddly enough only yesterday I tried to use IG for the first time in several years.

I am not active on IG and I am not a professional photographer - I'm just a guy with a camera that spends lots of time taking and editing photos as well as learning more about photography.

Unlike pros, I am reasonably sure that most people who post photos on social media just want likes or positive comments. Anything else (e.g., suggestions, critiques, etc.) may well be viewed as condescension. It can be very hard to offer a good suggestion in a positive, supporting and constructive way. I joined a different photography forum on the web and left within a few days because of the tone and harshness of the criticisms. Maybe I'm just too thin-skinned.

The think that I like about CIC is that, in general, people say something nice or they don't say anything at all unless the poster specifically requests C&C.

I've had FB friends message me, telling me that they love a photo that I posted, wanting to buy it from me. I've just emailed them the uncompressed file and suggested they get it printed and enjoy. I can't imagine that I (personally) would ever be able to make a living off photography.

Cheers,

Michael

[TheBigE]

Interesting comments - in my 45 day experiment I never really saw how IG was beneficial to a photographer, at least in the sense as I would say beneficial. For me I was looking for more feedback on my work and a bit more than the random Emoji.

However, for a professional or semi professional or anyone aspiring to sell there work, I think I would put IG into a very strong MUST DO category. Lets face it - look around next time you are outside, everyone has there phone out and maybe even looking at their phone. IG and for that matter Social Media are in fact how we largely communicate today....you can get your work seems by a large Audience and build a business around that Audience.

Further, I see also that many professional photographers use IG - but they also repeat almost exactly the same post on FB. They are covering all bases and I am sure that helps them grow their business.

[Black Pearl]

Oddly enough I was chatting about this yesterday. I went to The Photography Show (I fairly big event in the UK) with a couple of friends and on the four hour drive talk got round to social media and its usage. One lad works in the film and stills business whilst the other is a business manager at Apple so they're reasonably well connected and aware of how things trend. The photographer has made a few new contacts, got a few jobs and made a bit of money via IG so is keen to keep it simmering along with a little input each week to keep it fresh. The lad from Apple tells a similar story advising clients to use it as part of the social media platform as it can get you major exposure.

Neither use it as there only platform but both think its worth the effort in maintaining an IG account.