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| from Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies - because I can. |
Instagram's a funny old thing. I recently started using it after I heard someone talking about how it was a GREAT tool for promoting one's business (www.sophandson.com) particularly image based businesses (like mine). It dawned that I may well be missing a really fabulous (not to mention) free means of putting my artwork "out there". So, resurrecting my elderly and dormant account, I fumbled about in the unfamiliar architecture and got myself to posting the odd design.
And while I tried to get the hang of hashtags and filters, enter stage left Puppy Pluto. And well, you know, animals and Instagram go together like dog-sausage* and stinking farts (sorry to be uncouth). So before I knew what had happened I had daily Instagram fodder. And new people "liking" my pictures. And it was good and fun.
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| Puppy Pluto, 10 April 2015 |
Every time the phone would ping to advise that someone new had "liked" a picture I'd experience a happy and expectant little tingle and I'd click on their name, be they oskarcutiepaws, xplosivepants666, marsiegarcia, cultapparel or getlikesalot (no judgements here) to see who they are and whether I'd like to follow them...
What I found was largely unexpected. Sure, there were a number of entities who fitted the demographic I expected my artwork and/or puppy photos would appeal to – which is cool and makes sense. But there are also
- a disproportionate number of very saucy ladies with photos of their bikini'd bottoms and close ups of their bosoms, at dusk, at the beach;
- several continental and middle-eastern young men with what I can only imagine are aspirational stock images of luxury cars, jet planes and extreme close ups of their three day growths (very manly!);
- a few very enthusiastic and seemingly successful American Pentecostals with only a couple of posts but thousands of followers (not that I'm impressed by numbers but how do they DO that?);
- more foodies than you'd think;
- quite a few party girls who post photos of themselves drinking a lot with their party girl, gal pals; and
- quite a few stoners with pics of smokey, hazy, leafy, darkened rooms.
*Dog sausage is not sausage made from dog (heaven forbid) rather, it is that rolled meat stuff that used to be called Chub and smells like hell - and that's before it's even been through the dog's digestive tract.
My techno-trog tendencies keep me outside the world of Instagram... Lolly is addicted.
ReplyDeleteI'm in a deep dark hole about all this social media nonsense and the lack of numbers and the huge number of followers that ridiculous crap gets... And I have no idea what I'm even doing on the blogosphere...
I should stick to pencil and paper.
I don't even look at numbers. Truly. They give me a headache and I can't retain them in my head. I don't care. I think that's why I will never be any sort of success at anything in business or anything because I don't care to market and I don't care about the numbers. I know they are supposed to "matter" on some level but I only like the fun stuff: the making. As far as Instagram's concerned, there are some pretty pictures out there. NASA for example will knock your socks off. And there's an artist called Geninne who lives in New Mexico who has an eye you just want to poke because she creates and is surrounded by such beauty... there a people like that who I follow... Oh and willardandotto a couple of schnoodle puppies like Pluto who live somewhere nearby who we'll meet up and play with one day. But you know, like I said, numbers? Competition? I couldn't give a fig. Or a dried apricot. I don't care about any of it. I'll self publish if I ever get anything done good enough to get out there and we'll see how I go. And you have to keep writing. And you have to make sure people can keep reading it. And pencil and paper doesn't allow people to do that. So tappy tappy it has to be. Unless to buy shares in AusPost.
DeletePersonally, I prefer Pinterest. (Say that 3 times fast)
ReplyDeleteIts less about the people doing the liking and more about what people like...I like how it's slightly impersonal considering how stalker friendly the internets become...But I have a similar problem; how to get followers, how to keep them, how do I interact with others, sometimes I wonder "do i care about interacting?" ( I do like liking and pinning most of all)
@Get Lost in Lit
I hear you. And perhaps am a bit slow. Have a Pinterest account but just don't understand how it works... I'll need to look into it, I suppose. I do just like words and pictures and like to share. As I was saying to Wendy, am hopeless at the business side of monetizing although I understand the concepts...
Delete