Week 8.2: Instagram and Hashtags

 Instagram and Hashtags

Marketing through Instagram has been incredibly important to me in the previous years, but I have often found that I need to refine my aesthetic in order to gain more of a following. One way of curating an Instagram is to look at fellow makers that provide a similar service and try to almost recreate the asthetics you like with your own product. I think it has been very challenging to me because I have often found it hard committing to an aesthetic. I don't terribly know what I want it to be... I think the most helpful thing was to previously go to craft and art fairs and look at brands that I feel drawn to and collect their names and numbers. That is how I found La Tinta Art and Carmen Mcnall as I have mentioned in my previous blog post. 

This week, I used a number of hashtags that I have collected over the years from other makers in my market. I think I further need to adjust them because some of them have too big of a following, or is too vague. I have noticed though, that I do get an additional 10-15 likes per photo when I use hashtags.

In addition to the additional likes, I have gained at least 10 followers in the past couple of weeks, I think maybe one of them was a spam account, and I need to look to possibly blocking it since, it can mess with my algorithm (Spam accounts do not interact with accounts they follow, so therefore they mess up your algorithm, or so I've heard.) 

I've also noticed that the day does matter, as with the time. For me, late afternoons Monday-Thursday work best because people are just getting off work and aren't actively doing anything. I have found the worst day to post is on a Saturday because everyone is posting and not necessarily looking.