No Incentive To Go The Extra Mile
I've been spending some time on Instagram lately. Most of the accounts I follow on there are small to medium sized accounts, and are run by people like me - photography enthusiasts and camera geeks. The content is usually also similar to mine - exploring the beauty in everyday things and places. More often than not , the photos are shot on film cameras.
It's no surprise that even though analogue (film) photography is quite the rage right now, my Instagram page actually doesn't have that many followers. The photos I post on there also don't get the crazy engagement you get from some of the larger accounts that post other types of content.
I have been spending some time trying to understand why those larger accounts get so much engagement. I'm not talking about the 'instagram babe' accounts. The reason for engagement there is somewhat obvious I think. I'm talking about the beautiful lifestyle and travel accounts.
It turns out there is one thing they all do - they take their posts very seriously! Each post is meticulously prepared, usually with so much text that it resembles a blog post. Once posted, they also embark on a kind of marketing campaign to promote the post to get the engagement.
What I'm saying is, those large accounts don't take for granted that they already have so many followers. They don't sit around and wait for the engagement, they go out and get them!
I wasn't totally surprised to see this to be honest since I used to do the same thing. Not on Instagram though - on YouTube. When I first started my channel on there and really wanted it to grow, I used to go the extra mile. I would make sure the videos were very well made, create all the SEO tags and text, ensure the thumbnail is attractive, post at an optimum time of the day to get the most engagement, and so on. I would then spread the word by posting links to the video on Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus, Internet forums related to photography, and so on!
That was the amount of work that used to go into every post!
It's different now. I just post and leave things be. Perhaps I'm not as concerned about virility anymore, or maybe I'm just a little jaded. I wonder if I could start doing the same sort of thing on here.
The big difference, of course, is that on Steem, it's not how many eyes you can get on your posts, it's whose eyes. That kind of doesn't encourage people putting the same level of effort on promoting their posts. That is one of the fundamental issues we have here when it comes to attracting content consumers from outside. There's just not that much incentive to do so.
That's it! The incentive is missing.
Peace and Love ✌🏿
Adé
All copy and photos are original content by me.
© adetorrent.com
It's certainly a different experience. On Insta and the likes you have to be the very very best to make a little money - by being an influencer and receiving clothes or tools or... even money for sharing a post from someone else. On Steem it can be really good or okay content and more or less the same rewards come your way. Plus as RS above says: we have no tools here to make things look pretty. I do like the steempeak.com/@soyrosa/portfolio though - that's really the best thing we have on Steem. Also on steempeak you can now make a post with multiple images and pick which one is your thumbnail.
Progress. Patience. Great pic by the way, very 'innocent' look - very Insta-worthy ;-)
Thank you haha. Very innocent indeed :)
I should put it on Instagram :D
It's very true, do you use the same content on there as here, cross posting?
Oh no. I'm a content beast. I have to hold back otherwise I'd post every 5 minutes haha.
I do use some of the same photos though.
And the tools!
It's not easy to make something look pretty on Steem. At least not blogs and pictures -
(I guess with vids it's less of an issue as all the editing has to be done offline).
Posted using Partiko Android
Yes you're right. I think you can still make things look great here, but you have to put in a LOT of work. I've seen some posts (especially back when Steem was high value) where people created posts using graphics and tables and all that to make things look nice. The tools were all external of course - Canva to create beautiful texts - saved and posted as images within normal text... but yeah.. the tools are missing for sure.
Instagram is rigged. Just getting worst by the second 😭😭😭
Posted using Partiko Android
This is very true, so maybe the path gets harder.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Congratulations @adetorrent! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!