The One Instagram Trick That Works! (and other things I learned)

August 14, 2020August 14, 2020Leave a comment

Three weeks ago, I wrote about how I got an Instagram account that had existing followers and what I learned in that process. Sad to report it’s now down even more followers, but hey, I love learning stuff.

Today I want to talk about an Instagram trick that works! Forming a pod! No, not like dolphins. Well, maybe actually. An Instagram pod is a group of people who are in an chat together and you send a message to the group when you post something new and they like and comment on the post.

Not only do I actually like being friendly with strangers. It feels like what social media is should to be. Social. Artists supporting artists is among my favorite internet related feelings. But I have noticed an metric uptick in likes and otherwise engagement since joining one.

Each group normally has a niche. Fitness people hang with fitness people. Artists with artists. I’m sure there’s an analytical rational there too, but honestly, you just want to join a pod where people post things you wantta see.

I found my pod via reddit, but if you want to skip the looking and just join mine DM me @fyeahasexual.

Everything else I tried to boost your posts seems to reference old versions, or very very inconsistent. The idea to stick with tags that have a Goldilocks effect of not ‘too big not to small’, and tagging related businesses seems like a winner, but Instagram in 2020 favors likes and comments. Making pods, not only useful, but in my opinion just the best way to use Instagram. It helps me casually compliment the art of strangers as well which seems like a net good in the world.

Here’s some other things I learned about Instagram and it’s algorithm. Checking the tags of stuff you like, or the tagged photos from a company (copic, for example) is a great way to find people who post similar things as you. Follow them, instead of the tag.

By having a second account I am now able to follow strangers far more easily because I don’t have to worry about not seeing my personal friends. This is absolutely the problem I had with twitter. No matter how I tried to combat that with lists, no matter how many accounts I had, my “friends” would get lost and random “industry” or “community” tweets would get doubled. Instagram, for the most part, manages this juggle slightly better.

Also my ads tend to be slightly higher quality but I’m not sure why since I don’t see an option to target an account based on followers.

At the time of this posting, I’m close to losing the magical 10k number. But I’ve found a new way to use Instagram that I really challenges me to do things I love. Look at my drafts, I’m so excited to post them because it’s something I’m really proud of.

Whatever lessons you find in my recently Instagram blog posts, I hope you also find the new joy I have. (But so it would be pretty cool if you could help me keep swipe up by following lmao)

I brought an Instagram account here’s what happened next.

July 26, 2020Leave a comment

People like to wholesale blame social media for the ills in the world, but having a formal education in IT, I look at these platforms as the separate systems that they are. Recently, I’ve talked about twitter, and tumblr, and in the past facebook. Let’s look at Instagram today.

It’s an interesting platform because it’s the only platform that only allows you to link to things if you are a business with over 10,000 followers. I think there’s a lot you could say about instagram’s business model literally being “Commodity yourself to the point that you gain basic features that are known to create the best turn over.” But this article is about what happens if you buy an account with 10k+ followers already.

Curiosity is what lead me to googling “Can you buy instagram accounts?” on Tuesday and having an account by the stroke of midnight. I’ve never seen that for social media before, only for video games with some sort of item or currency that can shared. Instagram doesn’t have those, it has “Swipe Up” functionality. After a weekend of playing with the account that’s really the only gain.

My first question about Instgram’s algorithm was if having more follows meant more views, likes, or comments. If you have a tiny account, you’ll be happy to know that nope, it does not. My account with 300+ followers got 94 to 175 views, while the “huge account” got 20-38 views. This proves that the amount of followers doesn’t matter as much as followers you actually on Instagram, and possibly being followed by accounts that don’t follow thousands of people.

Discovery on the account was overall less as well. The first image is the bought account compared to the baseline on my personal account. Also note that I took over the account on Wednesday.

The next curious thing I learned is how fast Russian account farmers grow an account. The account I got had 6 posts all from June 30th each post had about 400-550 likes. When I first logged into the account the photos were still actively getting likes every few minutes for about another 30 minutes. So not only was this account farmed, but the farmers also have bots that liking other farmed account’s posts. Meaning those posts must have been entered into a database somewhere and removed once the account was sold. The longer I had the account the more insights into the analytics instagram started to show me.

This account did get more interactions. It’s possible it was because I posted more, six posts versus three posts. There was also two website clicks that my author account did not get. Which for a business could actually really matter if sustained.

Now let’s talk about getting that magic 10k followers number looks like when those bots build the accounts. While the first images were posted in June, +10215 were added from July 15 – Jul 22. (About +5645 from July 15-17).

The good news for people looking to keep these accounts above 10k, is that account of unfollowers is becoming less and less. I assume the accounts unfollowing are largely deleted by Instagram. However those “additions” from July 22 and on were not recorded anywhere else. They don’t show up in followers and there was no notifications for them. This suggests something funny and behind the scenes is still going on. Overall since buying the account lost a total of 153 followers from Wednesday to Sunday. Which includes two days I don’t have stats on. Another hopeful factor for those wanting to keep swipe up feature.

In summary, is buying accounts a good business practice?
Probably not. I personally love swipe up, I like making Instagram stories more when I can link places. Makes them feel like they have more value. I also realized in this process that I like having two Instagram accounts. One where I can be me with random photos, and one that dedicated to dedicated grid based themes.

There is still the risk of Instagram taking the account away, or forever losing followers. But this experiment was a brilliant reminder for how fake metrics can be. How 30k followers on Instagram can be worth as little as $140 dollars. (Same with twitter accounts) And how all our focus should be on our own creative sustainability more than following Instagram’s unspoken rules to gain a needlessly removed tool that Instagram turned into a status symbol.

If you ever thought about buying an account, wanted to learn more about Instagram itself, or just like analytics:

The blue canary in the coal mine

July 17, 2020November 18, 2021Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media and the activism that takes place on it. Largely on twitter, but similar could be said about Facebook and Instagram, and the general “Headlines Only” absorption of news and the increasing polarity of people.

But let’s focus on twitter. In college, I gave a speech about how activists during the Arab Spring used twitter to effectively organize and fight back. And as a disabled person, digital activism allows me to participate in ways inaccessible before. Since there’s so much advertising on Twitter it’s also useful when trying to reach a company to ask for change. Which makes it’s impossible for me to just shrug and say “twitter is pure evil what can I say.”

As I was discussing this with the ace community, someone anonymous messaged me to say, ‘twitter is also more full of minors than tumblr. And minors are more prone to spreading misinformation about events because they weren’t there for it.

And I thought on that for a second. It absolutely is common issue that queer history not being taught. And I don’t think this behavior is for a lack of critical thinking either on “the youths” part, or compete lack of care for it. I think it’s an issue of speed.

Twitter moves at such a fast pace, and with so many people trying to get attention on so many valid concerns that in order to even attempt to address all the ills in the world you have to juggle it all. Sometimes literally only taking a second to decide on an issue. “Does that sound like some other thing? Close enough, toss in the same pile. Whatever, we got 12 other things to focus on.”

Since twitter comes at you so fast, and often in an such unfiltered way, it’s overwhelming. So instead of technology adding in productivity that leads to a next level of consciousness type of singularity, it creates more of a mental DDOS attack.

And it’s not all that different from capitalism demanding you be productive at all costs, and that by the end of the day you are so tired you can’t sort out things. That’s a feature of it, not a bug. You want to strike for better working conditions? Have fun risking starvation during the process.

And I think the “turn yourself into a commodity via your tweets” is most evident by the fact that any popular tweet’s second reply is often “I don’t have a sound cloud to promote but here’s my—“

It’s actually kind of funny because a big sticking point of people leaving tumblr a few years ago was that it was too slow. Without realizing that twitter is a multi-lane highway that every user often has to cross on foot. And that result ends up with a bunch of banged up people who feel so beaten down that any criticism is meet with “please don’t cancel me!!” Which is not anyone’s goal when correcting false information or asking for accountability.

I’ve gone on multiple twitter hiatuses after abuse I’ve faced on the platform and each time to do I’m struck with this sense of how quiet it is despite twitter’s feed making no noise. It feels like you just left a room full of people screaming, that to some level had been such a constant you didn’t realize just how loud it was until it wasn’t there anymore.

Maybe you hear it too.