Coursework week 10 – INSTAGRAM
Friday 22nd November 2019
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This week I want you to try and create and implement an Instagram strategy that you feel will help you reach future, potential clients (whether ad agencies, curators or potential collectors) and potentially also increase your following.
Use the space below to discuss your strategy and the results with your peers. What has worked? What has not worked? Comment on each other’s posts with constructive criticism.
I am going to cheat slightly in that I have been implementing this strategy since I began this module, so it’s not a new one. Some of it was thought out, & more organised, and some of it just happened by accident or circumstance.
My following hasn’t grown a lot since the start of the module I think by about 30-50 followers I’m not exactly sure as I didn’t check beforehand but it’s somewhere close to that, on the lower end if anything. So it is working, but slowly.
So what I have done so far is –
1) Post everyday , if I post more than once a day I spread the posts out roughly to midday / 3pm and 9pm I keep an eye on my analytics to see what time is best for me to be posting. For me personally it doesn’t vary much as being home educators it’s not like we are more available in the day time, or popping on our phones during school pick up so it’s very even through out the day with a peak at about 8/9pm after kids have gone to bed. Sundays are rubbish because everyone spends family time on Sundays presumably.
2) I always include certain hashtags to do with alternative education, home education, motherhood, and it being an MA project (as much to keep my MA work and commercial work separate as for the hashtag) , I then put in a selection of others depending on what the post is showing, all centred around my location, and subjects to do with education and parenting, the subjects of my research project basically.
3) Each time I have attended an exhibition talk or lecture I have shared this in my stories and tagged the relevant place it came from. Sometimes people have shared these in these stories ( Charlotte Jansen / TJ Boulting / Hermione Wiltshire / Jack Latham etc ) I have found these don’t really increase my followers at all, but it does push up my views on my stories. Plus, it’s just kind of polite etiquette – which is nice, it’s nice to be surrounded by nice people.
4) Sometimes I have written a message to the artist/curator/gallery but this is only if I have genuinely wanted to say something, and it’s been nothing to do with getting likes or comments etc, it’s just when I really really wanted to say something.
5) I am regularly interacting with other accounts, but only if I am genuinely interested. I don’t see the point otherwise as it pushes their accounts to the top of my stream and then I see things I am not interested in.
6) Lastly I tag the participants in my project (if they agree as I am working with children), our location (I keep this vague at just the county of Cornwall ) .
My biggest likes/increase in followers has been when people participating in the project have shared the work , and when I have written more information about what I am doing, alongside the more striking photographs obviously.
I’ve found since doing this, the random things I used to share ( not the professional images, just random things from my day) don’t really get any interaction, it’s obvious people are there to follow the project, and expect a certain aesthetic and narrative now. I haven’t lost followers sharing these images though, which is different to how it used to be. I have found my numbers are just steadily increasing, not going down at all.
All this said, I am only at 5/600 followers, so it’s small fry , and I think that makes a BIG difference in how people engage as well.
I’m just going to carry on like this … it’s working slowly but surely.