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What I’ve been up to
I did a 60 day challenge on Instagram’s social media platform. For 30 days, I only posted to the #IGM60 tag and spent the last 30 days documenting it on my blog vivian70days.com. I documented the whole experience on instagram, my blog, and on this website. The other day I was shown the stats of this entire project, and it blew my mind.
To see my profile’s statistics, click here: Instagram | Vivian60
Instagram has increased my followers 363%, Instagram engagement 973% (views per post have increased 88%), and social media followers have increased by 571%. I also earned 1301 new website views. In addition, I created an awesome 12 month blog that looks more professional than my last one (which did not reflect what I really wanted). This project has been a massive success.
My next challenge is to do a 365 days in instagram. I’ve already set up the tag on Instagram and will hopefully start this next year. I want to work on my IG game more, and getting more followers and engagement on Instagram is important to me.
My thoughts on the platform so far
So far, I like the platform. I like that it is visual and is used worldwide. It’s a nice social media site that lets me interact with friends and potential clients. It’s easy to use and I find it entertaining.
There are some things that I don’t like about the platform. The most obvious being the lack of privacy. While I like being able to view other’s content and gain insight, there is something unsettling about having so much information shared with everyone.
I’ve been on Instagram for over two months now and have received many follower requests. While this is good for gaining a large audience for my blog, it also means I am seeing a lot of photos that aren’t in line with my business or personal brand aesthetic.
Things I’ve learned
While researching for this project, I learned that people have a huge influence on social media platforms. Instagram is rapidly changing and there are a lot of different accounts that are getting popular. I learned that it is important to think about how you want your profile to look like or what your brand may be like. My Instagram looks very similar to mine, so it’s hard not to think of myself as the creator of it. I also learned that people are beginning to use Instagram as a portfolio and it’s now becoming a real source of income. There is no difference between a business and yourself, it is all about how you want your brand to look like.
I learned that your Instagram profile says a lot about who you are and it’s easy to get the impression that you are perfect. There are people who have many followers and those who have very few followers. You can end up being known for something that you didn’t want or didn’t plan for it. You should think about how people perceive you before creating your profile. You can choose the best pictures to accompany your profile.
I also learned that some brands are becoming more popular than their Instagram profiles, for example; Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics. You should think about making your brand just as strong as she is. There were many different critiques of Kylie’s cosmetics that she didn’t take into consideration when she started her business. She should have thought about how she can change her brand to make it better so that people would want to buy it.
The good, bad, and ugly
I think the good about Instagram is that it’s interactive. It’s not like Facebook where a lot of your time is spent looking at the same old profile page. Instagram allows you to interact with people you follow and see what they post, even in the comment section. I also like that we are able to take pictures and share them with our followers. I think it’s good because there are tons of inspiration everywhere. Instagram also has great hashtags; some as simple as #inspo, but others such as #igdaily and #projectinspo.
The bad about Instagram is that it’s not real. When you message people on Instagram it shows up on their phone and they can’t reply back.
The ugly about Instagram is that everybody uses fake names to protect the identity of themselves and other people. The ugly thing are the people who use “fakers.” I’ve seen some pretty bad followers, then I saw them followed back by people they weren’t following, but they had pictures of someone else’s pictures tagged as their own. It’s just random, so I just don’t follow anyone on Instagram anymore. For example, someone will be following me, I will hit the like button for their photo and when I scroll down a little bit it’ll show in a separate box that “dickory is following.” It’s very annoying. I also don’t follow people that I don’t know or have never met.
