Hopefully I have some interesting stats coming up linked to the social media engagement of industry-wide brands over various social media channels. Maybe early March. Stay tuned.
Turns out I used to almost work with the guy that is producing the stats albeit in a pre-the5krunner business life. When I say ‘almost’ worked with I mean we worked with the exact same companies just at a slightly different time. Ah! the good old days of being paid. Memories of helicopters and skiing come drifting back.
As part of my chats with the ‘other guy’ he told me my Instagram feed and Youtube feed are both rubbish. And I’d have to agree. So my goal for the month is to double my Instagram following from about 10 to about 20.
Instagram might be a reasonable medium to add a short-form review with a single high-quality photo. But that’s a techy argument in favour of using it.
The marketeer in me would argue that the best medium is the one that the reader wants to engage through. I’m not convinced that Instagram will work for me. Although it does work for some tech bloggers. I suppose the truth will out itself soon enough
There are a couple of practical pains with Instagram for those of you who are as new to it as me. these being:
- You MUST post from your smartphone. There are no automated shortcuts like there are for TUMBLR, TWITTER and Facebook. There are some apps that comply with Instagram’s rigorous posting standards like LATER.com and HOOTSUITE but those apps still fall short of automation. On the flip side it means that you, dear reader, may well get more original content rather than duplicated content.
- I can’t type too well on a smartphone. It will take me AGES to use it. I’m busy. I have n+1 jobs and n-1 jobs that pay for my daily bread.
- It’s not possible to add links, other than the account holder’s main website link. Although twitter-esque hashtags can be used.
#Experiment
I think twitter is pretty rubbish too for publishing and promoting content. To me it just seems to be a sometimes-convenient way of not using SMS or email to engage with someone.
For those of you who Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the5krunner/
But changes are afoot: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/30/instagram-now-allows-businesses-to-schedule-their-posts/
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Just posted a photo. 😆
My wife (The Girl) keeps threatening to take over my Instagram account because I don’t post much on it. Or that I don’t know how to use it. To be fair, I published something yesterday. Which means I’ve managed once per month this year. Apparently that’s not considered good.
no it’s not good, i agree.
but that’s a generic criticism. maybe your readership don’t use it and/or it wouldn’t drive traffic to more important places?
I guess it might raise my awareness/engagement. Probably not your stats so much in that respect
some of the stats i should show soon are things like cycling portal X post on instagram over 100 time a DAY. (X= I forgot, not that it’s confidential!) … that’s a full time job.
Yeah, my specific issue with Instagram is actually two-fold:
A) I’m too photography-focused. Rather than just posting a continuous stream of gadgets (GPLama is good at that), I tend to try and post ones that actually aren’t gadget focused, but just more general sports/fitness directed. Ideally photos that I think are kinda wow-photos, but not always. I’m not sure what the audience is for that, but that’s OK.
B) My bigger issue is what true ROI there is in Instagram for me specifically. Obviously, posting a pic to Instagram is relatively trivial. But given it doesn’t much drive traffic to the site (or perhaps, as Lama does his, it probably does), I question what value it has for my use case beyond just being pretty pictures (which is how I mostly treat it today). Given I’m not an Instagram celebrity making money off of sponsored posts, it’s kinda just more of a curiosity. What’s funny though is that I’m sure I could take my Strava activity pics (which I usually put a bit of effort into) and re-use them as Instagram pics and everyone would be happy.
someone famous said “A picture is worth a thousand words”. a few written comments by the side of a picture can’t hurt too much either (Instagram) or a bit of data and a GPS track besides a pictute too (Strava)
ROI – yes I=time invested. return is hard to quantify on a non-trivial investment over the year