“Take a few extra seconds to leave a comment that shows you actually looked at the picture and you’re far more likely to create a connection.”— Natashalh, natashalh.com
“Instead of ‘cool!’ or ‘pretty!’ consider something like ‘the sky has such lovely colors’ or ‘what a neat dress.’ (This started an interesting conversation with a fellow photographer who enjoys creating pieces especially for specific photos, also fun.)”— Natashalh, natashalh.com
“I follow only if I actually want to follow, not so I can just unfollow tomorrow.”— Natashalh, natashalh.com
“Engaging with users in different countries means that you can work different time zones, so see what fits where and work it into your day. Central Africans seem to love using Instagram at around 6pm London time, and most people in the Middle East seem to have the best engagement at around midnight.”— Wrap Your Lips Around This, wrapyourlipsaroundthis.com
“Don’t inundate your feed with selfies. As a rough rule of thumb for every 10 pictures post one or two selfies or action shots with you in them.”— Wrap Your Lips Around This, wrapyourlipsaroundthis.com
“Scroll through your home feed and engage with the people you already follow and who follow you back. This has to be one of the best ways to build long lasting engagement with the audience you already have, and is likely to lead to more long term Instagram success.”— Wrap Your Lips Around This, wrapyourlipsaroundthis.com
“Avoid spammy unspecific hashtags. Some hashtags, like ‘love’ are the most tagged on the platform nearing 100 million tags! If you use that tag, it will become irrelevant in less than 3 minutes and the majority of people who use that hashtag will never see your picture.”— Garin Kilpatrick, smartonlinesuccess.com
“First rule for me, if it’s not something I would want to see in my feed, why would somebody else want to see it in theirs? If you don’t want to look at someone else’s Cheerios or sleeping cat, why would they want to look at yours?”— Garin Kilpatrick, smartonlinesuccess.com
“If you just post pictures of your food or your feet don’t expect to light up your Instagram with dozens of likes and new followers, no matter how many hashtags you use.”— Garin Kilpatrick, smartonlinesuccess.com
“Be sure to tag your clients, models, and all vendors involved in the shoot”— SLR Lounge, slrlounge.com
“Put a list of 30 maximum hashtags in your first comment rather than cluttering your caption space. Having a paragraph as a caption takes away attention from the image.”— SLR Lounge, slrlounge.com
“Some posts will do better than others and THAT’S OKAY! You don’t have to aim for hundreds or thousands of likes with every post.”— SLR Lounge, slrlounge.com
“Let’s not forget about how many likes photos of our furry friends can get us.”— Sherilyn, meetsoci.com
“Pictures with faces boost empathy, and receive 35-percent more likes. It’s the human factor we’ve seen in Starbucks’ social media strategy; people love seeing their fellow humans!”— Sherilyn, meetsoci.com
“Two types of filters had negative correlations: Saturation correlated to slightly lower views, and age effects led to lower comments.”— Courtney Seiter, blog.bufferapp.com
“Accounts with the highest number of fans tend to post a bit more than that–up to 2 or 3 photos per day on average.”— Courtney Seiter, blog.bufferapp.com
“Just find someone with photos that are similar to yours, and start following the followers of that person. They’ll get a notification saying that you’re now following them, and many of them will check out your profile.”— Emil Pakarklis, iphonephotographyschool.com
“First, reach out to your existing friends and followers from other social networks. Since those people already know you, they’re far more likely to become a follower. You can simply send a message or share a post inviting your friends to follow you.”— Emil Pakarklis, iphonephotographyschool.com