Have people found a place better than IG? I stopped using IG for a couple of years and this year found that my number of likes is only 20% of what it used to be. Apparently the algorithm worked in a way that only a fraction of your contacts are seeing your posts, and now that number has been cut to only 20% of what used to be. What's the point of posting if your friends can't see the images?
foto16 wrote:
Have people found a place better than IG? I stopped using IG for a couple of years and this year found that my number of likes is only 20% of what it used to be. Apparently the algorithm worked in a way that only a fraction of your contacts are seeing your posts, and now that number has been cut to only 20% of what used to be. What's the point of posting if your friends can't see the images?
It's insane. I follow 40 people on my personal account and still miss half of their posts.
foto16 wrote:
Have people found a place better than IG? I stopped using IG for a couple of years and this year found that my number of likes is only 20% of what it used to be. Apparently the algorithm worked in a way that only a fraction of your contacts are seeing your posts, and now that number has been cut to only 20% of what used to be. What's the point of posting if your friends can't see the images?
Yes, it's become very discouraging indeed, and it's all thanks to the [creepy] Adam Mosseri at IG who decided to abandon (and now punish) all the photographers who made IG successful in the first place, in favour of being another juvenile TikTok (like we needed another one of those). So if you post lots of video/reels, you will be pushed, but if you stick to stills, like I have, you will indeed start to hear crickets. Over the years I enjoyed a steady growth of followers, but it's been stuck with zero growth for the last year or two.
One little tip: Every time you open up IG, click on the Instagram logo in the top/left corner and then click on "following", and you will now only see the posts of those you follow, not all the crap and ads that IG thinks you ought to see. Unfortunately you have to do that each time you go to IG, as the setting doesn't stick.
Colin F wrote:
Yes, it's become very discouraging indeed, and it's all thanks to the [creepy] Adam Mosseri at IG who decided to abandon (and now punish) all the photographers who made IG successful in the first place, in favour of being another juvenile TikTok (like we needed another one of those). So if you post lots of video/reels, you will be pushed, but if you stick to stills, like I have, you will indeed start to hear crickets. Over the years I enjoyed a steady growth of followers, but it's been stuck with zero growth for the last year or two.
One little tip: Every time you open up IG, click on the Instagram logo in the top/left corner and then click on "following", and you will now only see the posts of those you follow, not all the crap and ads that IG thinks you ought to see. Unfortunately you have to do that each time you go to IG, as the setting doesn't stick.
One worrying thing on just about every platform except for TikTok is engagement. Just glancing at your account, you're getting 500-1000 likes on average for each post, from a follower base of 40k+. Best case, that's a little more than 2% of your following seeing and engaging with your work...and note this isn't a personal dig, it just is what it is with IG these days. You don't post reels, you don't get shown around.
I'm coming around to the idea of Youtube being a great medium for sharing your photos due to the fact that people watch on larger screens and TV. What a load of extra work though...
I actually stopped caring about social media at all, with the exception of Facebook (which I still loathe). I made a real website, post pictures to FB, and promote my website and prints there, and have gotten far more traction, engagement, and sales than IG ever got me. The beauty is I don't need a single follower to do it. I'll throw a pic on IG every now and then so that if someone stumbles onto it, they can see what I do and offer, but all of my links funnel to the contact page on my website now.
