Social media now days is not only an amazing tool that we can use to keep up with those that we love, but many people create a lifestyle as well as businesses around the idea of good exposure. Photographers use social media in order to connect with prospective clients, bloggers connect with business owners to create a two way relationship to aid both in exposure to new audiences, and YouTube stars have made entire careers based off of sharing bits and pieces of their lives. Many people have tried to sneak into the world of social media in one way or another but have found it difficult to make a solid foot print or be noticed right away, and that is only to be expected. The world of social media, while it may come of as simply posting whenever you feel motivated and snapping photos of food or your babies, it is extremely complex. With all of the sheer talent and so many professional "instagrammers" out there already you are left with no choice but to work hard at getting noticed! It is not as easy as posting just any photo anymore, if you intend to put serious time and effort into your page it should be treated as a business adventure!
1.
Create a Target Audience, then Create a Theme.
If you look at instagram pages of those who have found great success you will see that they all have a "flow". There is more or less a theme to their photos, whether they are all cropped in a special manner, some focus on bold and bright colors or maybe soft neutrals, maybe they take photos of only nature and want to appeal to that audience while others like myself attempt to appeal to the mothers of the social media world. Create a target audience and a feel for your page. While you feel you may be narrowing yourself, you are in fact creating room for greater success. My page without a doubt appeals to the category of parenthood, those who follow pages geared towards exploration and travel may not seek excitement in my page as much as a mom-to-be will. If I had no target audience and/or no theme or feel I may confuse my audience and lose followers of
all backgrounds simply because they are confused as to what my purpose is. The goal is not to appeal to everyone, but to appeal to those who share the same passions as you do!
2.
Clear, bright, properly edited photos!!
I cannot stress enough that having bright beautiful photos is a
must in order to grab anyones attention! If your photos are dull, blurry, dark or pixilated people won't see the message that you are trying to relay. Having a professional camera is an added plus, but not entirely necessary to the path of success. If you have proper editing apps on your phone it can be done just as easily! I have included a photo from one of my previous blogs and wish to show you just what went into that photo before it was posted. The same amount of effort goes into each and every photo that I post!
The photo that was taken with my camera alone was far from pretty:
The first step I always take in my editing process is to crop and rotate as needed, in this photo specifically I have a knob that I want cropped out and my body is almost crooked. By cropping and rotating we came up with this:
Next, up your exposure (i.e. brightness) almost more than you think you should, if you have the tools to edit your "white balance" this is the time to boost the whites in your photo. As you can see above, the whites in my photo are nearly grey, however I desire a clean white background. For the purpose of this blog post I have not edited my "white balance" as not everyone will be able to have access to that tool!
As you can see, while the brightness was boosted, the photo becomes slightly "washed out" this is due to the fact that adding the artificial brightness can hurt the contrast of the photo. Boost the contrast up to gain back the defined colors that belonged in the photo, this will also aid in the whites that are in the photo:
Our next step is truly a two step process, and one that can go very wrong if not handled properly! There is nothing as great as a clear
sharp image, and on nearly every editing device (including the instagram editor itself) you have the ability to add sharpness to a photo. Something that you may not know is that the more "sharpness" you add to a photo the more "noise" it created. The higher the sharpness the higher the little pixilations will boost sometimes making your photo that you worked so hard on look poor after the long process you just endured by editing it! There is a way to obtain a clean image with a highly boosted sharpness, you have to combat the sharpness you just added with a softening tool or noise reduction tool. If you notice pixilations as you will see in my first photo below, add a little noise reducer and see that they vanish yet the image is still sharp and clear:
(adding sharpness, notice the fuzziness you see in my arms)
☟
(after adding a softness/noise reduction)
After this point you are ready to post! While this process may have seemed difficult or time consuming, it took less than three minutes to finish and get posted to instagram. By taking these few minutes of my time I have been able to provide a much cleaner, more eye popping image that will receive more likes as well as more audience members to read my posts. Below is a before and after for you to view how important it can be to put in that little bit of added effort!
3.
Participate and Remain Active
Followers who want to read your posts and stay involved in your life want you to interact with them! If they comment and ask you a question, there is nothing more insulting than ignoring them. Sometimes you may not see their comments at the time they are posted but it is important to go back through your photos often and see if there are any unanswered questions that you have yet to get to. They ask because they care, they want to know your recommendations and that is what we are here to accomplish as bloggers. If someone comments something super sweet, than thank them! Use this like you would with any conversation you would have face to face, if someone compliments your dress or asks where you purchased it while in public would you just ignore them? Absolutely not!
There is must more than simply gaining thousands of followers, but maintaining a relationship to the best of your abilities is necessary. I know that personally I wouldn't follow anyone who seemed that they could care less what is was I had to say to them. Give off a friendly vibe and let your followers know you appreciate that
they take the time to keep up with
you. Like all relationships this must be a 50/50 or you will see them start to disappear.
Something that I have noticed that followers enjoy is something they feel that they can participate in, little videos to get to know you where you answer their questions, blog posts that you want to feature them in, small games that you might host with the help of blogging peers. All of those keep people active as well as involved with your page! When I first started doing little activities like these, I believe that I maybe had 5 people who wanted to participate, however after time passed and I made them a regular attribution to my social media pages they grew into something that we all enjoy together!
4.
Ways to Keep a Growing Audience
Don't view who unfollows you. Why? Because it truly doesn't matter! I have hundreds each and every day I am sure, but while I could easily get discouraged by that number it is important to realize that hundreds of your followers delete their instagrams each and every day. They probably didn't pick you out of a bunch and decide you weren't "interesting" enough for them, and then there are some who will! And again, this is okay! If they aren't interested in what you are posting then they are unlikely to be an active follower and theres no need to force them to stick around if they don't want to in the first place.
I do everything in my power to
keep my opinions on hot topics out of my social media, because we are all human and we all disagree on the paths of life! Something that will help you from losing multitudes of followers is realizing that you are posting to a WIDE variety of men and woman who all think differently, and no one is right.. therefor no one is wrong. I would never in a million years post how I feel about something such as abortion or marijuana use during pregnancy. Why? Because those opinions are personal to myself, as well as those who are following me. My goal is never to make my followers feel uncomfortable or unwelcome by posts that I make, and knowing that in real life I would never judge or say hurtful things to those whose ideas differ from mine is carried over to my social media outlets. You will never be able to avoid all controversies, I have posted photos of myself feeding Carter a popsicle and had people tell me that I am sugaring him up too much, but while that may get some angry try approaching the situation with grace! Saying thank you for the information is always appropriate, then it is left up to you to decide as a parent what you will do from there. Most of the time people will say things such as this only because they care!
Participate in giveaways, mommy circles, follow fridays.. all of these are wonderful tools in gaining followers! If you are wanting to expand your page connect with those around you who share the same audience and interest as you will grow your followers as well as help you create life long friendships! It is important to try to stick to collaborating with people who have the same audience as yourself to avoid an unfollowing spree. If you do and "shout outs" or follow fridays with people who may not have hardly any people specific to your audience (such as my audience of mothers) you may see all of the people you gained slowly start to face away once they lose interest in your posts.
(photo of a previous giveaway featuring @SnapBibs )
Hashtag your little heart away! During my pregnancy I use common hashtags such as #pregnant #pregnancy #18weeks and so forth because people viewing those hashtags are likely in the same situation that I am in and will enjoy seeing my feed after finding my through the hashtag! If you are a twin mom don't be afraid to hashtag your photos #twinmom, similarly if you have two kids under two a great hashtag would be #2under2. Draw people in using all of your resources!
(example of the most used/liked hashtags on Instagram)
No one likes drama... this is self explanatory. While connecting with so many woman is bound to bring up loads of estrogen, if you wish to grow and treat your page as a business adventure then act in a professional manner always. Bar none!
Do not be afraid to reach out to brands that you love and respect to
collaborate a review or a giveaway. Small businesses love bloggers, they are a great way to get their product out there in the eyes of the public and gain more clients. Don't hesitate to reach out and see if someone is interested in a collaboration, because chances are they would love to in one way or another. And guess what? The worst things that could happen to you is that they say no! By collaborating on reviews and helping these wonderful small businesses they are likely to tell their clientele to come and view your review and through that you not only were able to grab some amazing hand made goodies but grow your audience as well. A collaborative relationship is a beautiful one, however you
absolutely must, without a doubt keep up your end of the deal. If they take the time to send you a product you MUST take the time to write a thoughtful review. If you fail to keep up your end of the deal, word travels fast and people will share that you were unfaithful to your relationship and you will find yourself unable to collaborate again.
(photo of previous collaboration featuring
+ReSqueeze LLC )
I hope that you were able to take out some insight from our post, and seek ways in which you can improve upon your pages and take the world of social media to a whole new level! Using it to your advantage can change your lives in ways you could have never imagine. We will soon be offering social media courses for those wishing to grow their pages that will include all of the above and more! Overall, enjoy yourself, enjoy what you do, and enjoy what you post!
-T
| email us at tdddiaries@gmail.com to find out more on our social media courses |
