Hashtag Authentic Page 11

  The other big number people get stuck upon is their follower count. It’s easy to see why: since the early days of MySpace and Facebook, people have been judging their popularity – and that of others – by how many friends or followers they have. But this isn’t Pokemon and we don’t need to ‘catch ’em all’. A small, engaged community can be twice as valuable and powerful as a larger, more generic one.

  YOUR RIGHT PEOPLE

  If you’re looking to grow a big following, the most important thing to ask yourself is why, and what do you plan to do once you have. Do you make things and want to sell enough to quit your day job? Are you hoping to become an influencer, or publicize your blog? Or do you simply want to make connections and talk to like-minded people around the world?

  You might be tempted to think, ‘I don’t care who my followers are, I just need a bigger number.’ So, here’s my analogy.

  Imagine you make French indie films that are raved about by the critics. Arty, beautiful, black and white. You decide you want wider recognition and come up with a plan to get a TV exec to start broadcasting your movie mid-way through one of those prime-time super-popular TV talent shows to an audience of millions. The show stops: your movie begins. What happens next?

  Realistically, about 98 per cent of those viewers are going to squint, watch for a minute, and then switch to another channel. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with your arty French movies. It’s just that they’re not for everyone.

  It is the same with our followers online. If you were gifted 100k new Instagram followers tomorrow, you’d see huge swathes of them disappear with every post. Not everyone is there to see the kind of work we create and not everyone will get it or be our ‘right’ kind of people. And that’s totally, freeingly fine.

  Don’t take any unfollows to heart. Anyone who doesn’t like or get our work is not someone we should want to keep around. I see it as a little like panning for gold: you scoop in the dirt, give it a shake. We’re only interested in collecting those glittering nuggets of golden brilliance. Everything else is just noise, and is welcome to fall through the cracks.

  ‘My relationship with Instagram has changed recently. I realized that I was missing a lot of friends’ and family updates because I was following over 500 people and it was hard to scroll through it all! So I decided to split my accounts. Now I have a professional account for work (32k followers) and a personal one (with only 80!). It means I can post pictures of my nieces and nephews without worrying that I’m sharing them to thousands of people against their will, and it allows me to never miss a family or close friend’s post. I love my professional account too: discovering new people, supporting those in my industry and sharing my book/podcast/events. It’s the same way I used to use my blog (short-form life updates) and Pinterest (for inspiration and motivation). I set my bigger account up as a “business account” so people can find my email address and contact me. Instagram is part of my business and a small part of how I make my money. I like that the two accounts have clear parameters. I’m not saying it’s *the* way to use IG, but it’s a way that works for me.’

  @emmagannonuk

  FINDING YOUR PEOPLE

  I’ve been on Instagram for the past five years or so and yet the wonderful community still surprises me every single day. When I recently shared a very personal health story I was flooded with so much love and support – it moved me to tears. Instagram truly makes me believe in the kindness of strangers.

  @busraqadir, Germany

  So, how do we find more of those arty French cinema types – or whoever we need? The first step is to think about who our right audience is – and handily, we have a pretty good guide to this close at hand. Generally speaking, our right people are an awful lot like ourselves: they like the same things, laugh at the same jokes, shop in the same stores and have similar values. They’re the people we’d be friends with, if we met in real life. So a good place to start is to pay attention to ourselves.

  How do we discover new posts or accounts? What keywords or hashtags are we searching under? What locations or stores are we tagging in our posts? Then we can reverse engineer this, and have our content show up in these corners of the app.

  HASHTAGS

  Hashtags are a way of indexing a post, assigning it categories under which others can then search for it. As the sheer volume of content online has increased, visibility under hashtags has become less of a guaranteed win, but they are still worth using and browsing regularly yourself.

  Instagram allows up to thirty hashtags per post, but I recommend using around ten, and choosing a mixture of very active and some less popular tags to increase your odds of discovery. Put them in your caption or in a comment below – it doesn’t make any difference – and be sure to use different tags to suit each image and topic that you share.

  Look out for hashtag challenges, contests and feature accounts, such as the ‘weekend hashtag project’ or #whp (see here), which offers a chance to be featured to an audience of millions.

  I share fresh, seasonal and topical tags from the community in my monthly hashtag newsletter, which you can grab at meandorla.co.uk/hashtagauthenticbook.

  EXPLORE

  Explore is the page under the magnifying glass icon in the app – a grid showing an algorithm selection of posts that the system expects you will like. Hitting Explore is a great way to get discovered and to grow. Posts make Explore based on a complex variety of factors, but a post that attracts lots of likes, shares and comments in the first thirty minutes is far more likely to be featured this way.

  SUGGESTED ACCOUNTS

  Tap the downward arrow beside the user name on anybody’s profile page and you’ll see a list of similar ‘suggested accounts’. Anyone newly following an account is automatically shown this list, and being in one of the first few spaces on the slider is a great source of new eyes and followers to your page. You can test this for yourself, too, by logging into a second account and seeing who the algorithm is suggesting as similar to you.

  The precise metrics of how these connections are calculated are a closely guarded secret, but it’s likely to include people you often exchange comments with, are connected with on Facebook or via direct message, those who have @-mentioned your user name in their own posts or Stories, and people appealing to lots of the same people as you.

  ALGORITHMS

  Anyone familiar with Instagram has heard the grumbling about algorithms. Introduced in 2016 to rearrange users’ timelines, their official intention is to show everyone the most interesting and relevant content from the people they follow. Many people feel that these changes have impacted on the visibility of their posts, and report reduced engagement, reach and growth as a result – and I can totally sympathize. Algorithms are, by nature, flawed and overly simplistic, and in a community as intimate as Instagram, having a digital system disrupt all that human connection feels jarring and wrong. If you worked hard to build something up and saw a drop in your reach, of course that’s upsetting, and feels scary to boot.

  It’s been a few years now, though, and I’ve reached an unpopular conclusion: it’s time to stop blaming the algorithm. This is the reality of social media today. It is our job as creators to craft content that can flourish within that algorithmic eco-system, or to take our energy and invest it elsewhere. I have helped thousands of creatives grow their accounts in a post-algorithm Instagram, so I promise it is still possible. The trick is to stay flexible and follow our passion, and then we can out-create any change the system may throw at us.

  So, you’ve found a community of like-minded souls. How do you convert them into followers? The answer is simple – do as you would in an offline social situation, and start to gradually get involved in the group.

  If great content is the doorkey, then engagement is the porch light to building a community online. Authentically commenting, liking and connecting shines a light on our work, and lets people find us in an organic way.

  Share little and often. I like t
o squeeze in engagement time regularly throughout the day – when waiting for the kettle to boil, when standing in line at the bank. Five minutes here and there can add up to a whole lot of cheerleading for the others in your community, and bring a lot of love back to you.

  Reply to comments and DMs as much as possible. Not only is replying the polite and kind thing to do, but it also reminds the other user you exist and helps to build a relationship – both emotionally, and in the churning algorithm databanks of the app!

  Return the favour. Likewise, if folks are regularly taking the time to engage with your posts, it’s only polite to mirror the kindness and visit their page in return. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, but visiting their page, keeping up with their life and leaving comments in return lets people know they are appreciated.

  Make it meaningful. Short comments like ‘nice pic’ or ‘so sweet’ are unlikely to generate much response, or build great relationships. Overall, it’s better to leave fewer comments but make the ones you do count – considered, personal and genuine.

  Get out of your bubble. One major downside to algorithms is they have a tendency to keep showing us more of what we’ve already liked. Get out of your bubble by throwing some wildcard search terms into the app, and checking out accounts from the other side of the world. Google-translating popular search terms or hashtags can be incredibly eye-opening – I’ve found so many incredible Japanese fashion stores and photographers this way!

  Make it timely. When posting to Instagram, make time to be online immediately afterwards to engage and reply. As we know, the first thirty minutes or so are a crucial window for engagement and reach, so it pays to be there to interact and bring awareness back to your page.

  Don’t overdo it. A liking spree is all well and good, but leave too many too fast and you’ll find yourself locked out from engaging for an hour or so. Likewise, leaving too many short comments, or too many with similar words can trigger a spam warning and temporarily lock your account. Most users find that they never reach these limits, but it’s another reason to steer well clear of any dodgy automated software that promises to like or comment on your behalf.

  SUCCESS BEYOND INSTAGRAM

  Instagram is the best tool to express my inner mind. I can share the latest expressions of what I have cultivated so far with people around the world. It's a motivation to make new things towards the future.

  @errer_, Japan

  An audience on Instagram is a wonderful thing – a community in your pocket that you can turn to any time or place. But ultimately it is a step to something bigger, and not the destination in itself. It’s easy to see people with large followings online and think they have ‘made it’; that if you could only match that audience size your life would fall into perfect order. It doesn’t and it won’t. However perfectly styled their house might be; however little TV their kids may watch; however much sunrise yoga they seem to squeeze into their day – that following makes no difference to how they think, feel and sleep.

  That’s not to say Instagram can’t open doors, but knowing your big picture goals is a crucial step, and allows you to see much more clearly what really matters for you.

  We’re so used to success being defined by our bank accounts and how hard we work, but the growing world of online entrepreneurs allows us to draw new and different lines. Success for one person might be heaps of cash, but for another it is more time with their children as they grow, or the freedom to work a three-day week and still pay the bills. Personally, I have a chronic health condition, and being able to work from home (and from bed, when needed) was the biggest goal I had in mind when I started out.

  Crucial to making these things happen is translating those Instagram friends and all the lessons you’ve learned into the next step of your greater hopes and plans.

  YOU NEED A MAILING LIST

  Direct emails remain the best way to make meaningful contact with your whole audience. Should social media platforms dissolve tomorrow, a mailing list means you can maintain those connections.

  It’s easy to get started for free on providers like Mailchimp, and add a simple form to your website or Instagram profile URL to begin collecting people’s email addresses. (Make sure you’re explaining clearly what you’ll use those email addresses for and to comply with data protection regulations and rules.)

  IMPROVING CLICK-THROUGH

  How can we get our audience to move from Instagram over to our website? With only a single link on our profile page, we need to put it to work. Just updated your shop? Tell people about it! Written a new blog post? Make sure your audience knows. That sounds obvious but so many of us shy away from self-promotion fearing we’ll alienate our audience or seem self-absorbed. The truth is, when we create something wonderful, our audience want to find out.

  Most blogging platforms offer the option to create ‘pretty’ URLs – ones with a readable title, instead of simply a random string of letters and characters. These offer a preview as to what to expect behind a profile link, and they tend to garner more interest.

  Links in Stories generate brilliant click-through, but are currently limited to only those Verified and Business accounts with more than 10,000 followers. With or without the feature, make use of Stories to preview your off-Instagram content, sharing screenshots, excerpts and teasers to let people know what they’ll be missing if they don’t click over to see.

  MAKE IT LAST

  A truly invested audience will stay with us for the long term. The artists and bloggers I loved a decade ago I generally still love; their lives have evolved, and so has mine, but their individual voice at the heart of their work has continued to connect with me. Of course there are no ways to guarantee anything in life, but by staying authentic and connected to our passions, we stand the best chance of keeping momentum, interest and relevance in our work, long into the future.

  One final tip I’d add to that is – whenever you find yourself tempted to ‘cheat’; whenever you start Googling fast growth strategies or think of buying followers or likes: stop, take stock, and pour that energy back into your work. Inflating your numbers by artificial means is a lot like wearing one of those inflatable muscle suits and trying to win the Tour de France. You might look the part to an untrained outsider, might feel better for a while, but in the end it’s a disaster and all you’re left with is hot air.

  The real recipe for success

  I know it’s tempting to look for quick fixes, and wish for a fast route to success. The truth is, for it to mean anything, it has to come slowly, and bring all the lessons that we pick up along the way. It took about two years for me to build a really meaningful following, and another two years from there to develop a business from that. When most people say that social media isn’t working for them, it’s simply a question of giving it more time.

  If I could distil everything down to a series of tips, it would be those shared below. These are the real secrets to making it work, along with hard work, an open mind and a good dose of tenacity.

  1. Post brilliant content. That might be your most beautiful photography, your funniest video, your most relatable story – one person’s ‘brilliant’ will look totally different from the next, and it will change over time for us all. It’s not about perfection, or impossible standards – it’s just being selective and sometimes pushing ourselves.

  2. Engage, engage, engage. Unless you are Beyoncé (Hi B! Thanks for reading!) then your social media is not simply a broadcast platform; the clue is in the name, and the ‘social’ part is absolutely essential. Spend more time, daily, exploring other people’s pages than you do on your own. Like, comment, share, discuss. It’s a little like walking solo into a party and trying to make some new friends – you have to get out of your comfort zone a little, push yourself to be chatty and hang out where your people are.

  3. Be persistently curious. Try new things, and watch the results. Why didn’t people engage with that post? What was it about this one that meant everybod
y replied to your question? On social media we get to test our market, day after day, and we can use this data to gently shape how we share. I first discovered my audience loved hearing my thoughts on Instagram when I saw a huge spike in blog traffic whenever I posted Insta tips. So, I wrote more of those posts, then a free ebook, which gradually formed my classes, talks and this book. It’s that curiosity, that willingness to be surprised that defines the people who make it work.

  4. Accept there’s no magic wand. There are no shortcuts here: only by figuring out who we are and what we really want to share with the world can we build something of value online. As the platforms grow busier and busier and everyone’s attention span shrinks, it’s the people with a unique voice, a clear and consistent message and a strong sense of self who really stand out and succeed. Trust in the process, keep learning and sharing, and know that there’s nothing more valuable than all the knowledge and experience you gain along the way.

  SAFETY & SANITY

  SET A TIMER

  If you know you’re prone to being sucked into social media for longer than intended, setting a timer on your phone is an easy way to snap yourself out of an accidental binge. There are dedicated apps available to help you limit distracting platforms, or ration your time online. How long is acceptable or normal to spend on social media is entirely individual – some find joy in several hours a day, and others do best if they ration it out. The trick is to make it intentional, and not let the hours slip by without your consent.