Share your Instagrams! Click to have a bunch of grognard goons follow you

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Share your Instagrams! Click to have a bunch of grognard goons follow you

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

If you like wildlife photos, especially owls:
https://www.instagram.com/greyghostnaturephotography/

What's the deal with gaining followers and then a few days later they unfollow? Am I supposed to follow them back and people get pissy when I don't, or are these some type of bot accounts?

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 21:37

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 02:33

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Follow me if you like birds and other wildlife.

https://www.instagram.com/greyghostnaturephotography

# ¿ Jan 7, 2018 22:13

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

rio posted:

I seem to remember bringing this up before but I�m wondering if you all have the following experience. I�ve been with Instagram since the beginning. Back then I wouldn�t have called myself a photographer and it is actually partially what got me interested in learning (combined with the dorkroom, which is really where I learned the most for better or worse). Anyway, back then there was always a steady and slow stream of subscribers finding and I always limited my subs to things I actually wanted to look at (it was all cats for a while).

Fast forward to now and I�ve had 520-550 subscribers for longer than I can remember. I always get subscribers when I post, sometimes a handful and sometimes a pretty good chunk of them, but then it levels out back to around 530. I assume everyone is subbing and then unsubbing. Is the expectation that if someone follows you it is to get a follow back? I have a little over 100 subscriptions and I don�t think Instagram would be enjoyable with a poo poo ton of subscriptions since I wouldn�t be seeing what I wanted to having subscribed to every transom person who subbed to me. Are people not actually even looking at the photos they are subscribed to at a certain point and only liking and subbing to get their own subscribers? I feel like this is an old person post and that I don�t �get� how it works or how people use it. I know there are others who keep their subscriptions low, I assume because they also want to actually look at photos taken by the people they have chosen, but the whole thing seems bizarre when I will get like 15 subscriptions in a day and then they are all gone not too long afterwards. Or are they bots (assuming instabots are a thing)?

I'm in the same boat. I've been stuck at ~930 for months now even though I post regularly. If you use any popular hashtags you'll get a lot more follows that drop off after a week. If you try to research how to get more followers most of the videos tell people to do exactly this so I'm not really surprised.

The thing I have never understood is how to get follows from "regular people". The kinds of people who follow because they just want your pictures in their feed. I'm obviously doing something wrong but I've given up trying to "get" this platform.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2018 14:12

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

ansel autisms posted:

post photos that are interesting and people will follow you. its easy

This is objectively false. Several of my photos have received the "sparkle award for excellence in painting with light" awards on Flickr yet posting those same photos to instagram has been a bust.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2018 14:26

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

I just went back in this thread and saw my post from October where I mention I had 940 followers, and a few months later I've barely picked up another 40 despite putting a decent effort in to trying to grow that number. I know follower numbers are meaningless and all that, but given how my side-hustle is selling my photos those followers kind of aren't meaningless for me in reality. I would truly appreciate some advice if I can change anything about my instagram posting to increase followers (aside from "post better photos" since that's the obvious one).

https://www.instagram.com/greyghostnaturephotography/

# ¿ Jan 26, 2019 18:24

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Thom12255 posted:

Are the hashtags you are using ones for pages that are likely to share your kind of work if they see it or just random search phrases? You could also try tagging some pages and see if it gets you any more attention. You have good pictures up there but getting followers on Instagram is hard these days with how most people already follow enough niche things to get their fill.

If I'm posting a photo of an owl I'll go look at #owl and see what hashtags the top images there are using and use the same. I used to tag all those relisting pages and got "featured" by them plenty, but no one ever traces those photos back to the source and all that happens is they get more followers and I got nothing.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2019 20:15

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

elgarbo posted:

Posting photos and tagging them isn't enough to drag in followers. You gotta engage with the community, man.

By this you mean commenting on other people's photos, because I don't know of any other way of engaging on Instagram but I still don't see how this can bring in more than a handful of people. At the risk of sounding old, I just don't really understand how a typical instagram user actually uses the app.

rio posted:

I’ve followed you for a while and love what you’re doing. However, the “post better photos” thing, despite what people say, doesn’t mean much since there are complete garbage accounts with a slew of followers and then people like you who deserve more but pick them up very slowly. I think it’s because it is just social media - people want followers and to be paid attention to, not to look at photos and those that seem to get a lot of followers either also follow a lot and are essentially reading follows for follows, or they did that but then waited a few days to delete those follows hoping the other person didn’t delete them. I am constantly getting follows but have broken even around 530 for years now. I got most of those when instagram wasn’t as huge and seemed to be more about small communities of people who actually cared what they were looking at. Nowadays though I don’t feel like playing the social media game and don’t really anticipate to ever pick up a significant amount more because I’m not willing to do the follow for follow bullshit.

I’m sure there are obviously still people who do want to look at photos on the platform btw. Just the vast majority are using it as another form of social media to stroke their fragile digital egos and probably couldn’t care less about photography in any meaningful way.

Yeah, this is kind of what I thought as well, but I was just curious if I was missing something fundamental about the platform. I just try to post a few photos a week, post some interesting info with the photos, and keep promotional stuff to a minimum. I had hoped this would bring in followers who just wanted some nice wildlife stuff in their feed but I guess there's not as many of those users out there as I thought.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2019 18:11

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

bobmarleysghost posted:

InternetJunky I'll be honest here, the stuff I see on your ig is just boring. Maybe that's why you're not getting the points or likes or faves or whatever?

I don't find anything interesting in those shots, it feels like I've seen them all before.

I don't want to sound like an rear end in a top hat, but there is no other way of putting it and also why sugar coat anything this isn't kindergarten.

My concern was that I was doing/not doing something on instagram that i could change up to get better results. If the answer to that is "post less boring stuff" I'm ok with that answer, although I probably can't change anything in that regard unless I want to drop to posting 10-20 times a year.

Thom12255 posted:

I wouldn't say it's boring, it's just real life. But when you're up against a few people on Instagram who can make reality look like a different world in their shots you are going to have a hard time. Magazines and stuff love those kind of shots but they don't WOW in the way that Instagram caters too.

https://www.instagram.com/settysphotography/

I follow this dude who is semi-big and all his pictures feel rich in color and depth in a really cool way to see pop up on your feed. I think it might help that his niche within wildlife, for the most part, is Deer pictures which gives a specific reason to follow him.

How that guy is posting one of those photos every two days is a mystery. I haven't seen his stuff before but that level of quality and consistency is certainly something to aspire to.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2019 22:08

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

ansel autisms posted:

They're all variations on the same boring photo

It's not like he's photographed the same deer a thousand times on one outing and then is releasing a slightly different photo of it each time. Unless he's a deer farmer or he's taking all his photos at a zoo he's got some admirable skills to get so many consistently good shots of what are presumably wild animals.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2019 23:46

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

my turn in the barrel posted:

They are all tagged to a public zoo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushy_Park

Oh.

Compliment retracted.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 00:41

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 02:33

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

I was (mostly) joking. The photos look fantastic and I'm not trying to take anything away from his ability to produce nice-looking shots, but posting zoo/farm shots as a wildlife photographer is prying open a can of worms that is probably outside the scope of this thread to get into. Most of my admiration of his work came from the belief he was getting those results photographing wild animals. It takes some serious effort and skill to do something like that (check out Morten Hilmer's youtube videos if you want to see what's involved).

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 03:02

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