Used Paid Instagram Artist Site to Proliferate My Art Work

[Robert Zwilling]

Used Paid Instagram Artist Site to Proliferate My Art Work, what could happen, its only a picture. Deal was 5 pictures run for 5 days for $25. I thought being a site devoted to art, that it would have people on it who liked art, not that it would have to be the kind of art I create. What could happen?

Apparently because I used or misused hashtags to my own advantage, such as using hashtags to advertise my products instead of paying for ads, I get very little traction from my instagram account. It started out with a good number of followers, good interaction, but then bang, it died. Now only new interactions can happen, everything before a certain point of time there is no interaction. I read that if that happens, you need to start up a brand new instagram account to get back on track. I didn't make a new account, and that's okay by me, I use it as a gallery to post my work to, which I refer people to directly so they can see my work. Its a glorified business card.

What did happen
I only gave them one picture, the on that triggered their request to advertise my artwork. The picture goes out, lots of accounts see it. Overnight, followers went from 300 to 600. Turns out that most of them have no posts in them. Typically they have less than 10 followers but are following a thousand or more accounts. Now stuck with deleting them, unless these are the kind of account that will quit following you if you don't follow them. Not sure that is going to happen though, with these accounts having a ratio of followering to followers at 100 to 1.

Plus I got lots more requests to proliferate my artwork.

 

[Toby Frost]

That is strange. I struggle to see how Instagram works, or what rules determine what goes to the top of my feed. Usually it's something that I don't especially want to see.

Whenever I post anything on Instagram about writing, I usually get a couple of responses from what seem like bot accounts with translated-sounding names like "The Writers Magic", telling me to promote my stuff there. I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be promoting it to, there, and why these accounts exist. Another weird internet thing to avoid, I suspect.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I think you’d do better on DeviantArt and LinkedIn rather than IG. Whatever IG was, it’s now more a place for nostalgic or comedy posts, and entrepreneur characters.

My IG is more a random collection of me dancing, rants, pics of what I’m listening to, or memes. I do follow horror artists and SFX creators and often share their content but I wouldn’t dream of trying to promote my writing on IG. I think it’s a case of the right tool for the right job. If you produce short videos of yourself talking about and showing your art in them, I think you’ll have more success than just the art as static images.

Also, post to your story not just your account; I get far more views if I do a story than a simple post.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Thanks, looked up instagram stories as I never look at them. One article talked about companies needing to put out 3 to 15 stories a day. For a regular 8 hour day, that's 2 an hour plus one during the lunch break. Seems like the story feature is a Cliffs Notes so someone doesn't have to leaf through hundreds of pics. I'll have to try it. Anything that makes life easier for the reader is probably a good idea.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

I really hope it wasn't one of those 'promote it on' comments that you responded to! IG is overrun by spam bots that comment on almost every thing that gets posted asking you to promote it on such-and-such a page. They're all spam posts/accounts and the 'follows' that they get you are usually also bots.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

That's what happened. Kind of like The Soccerer's Apprentice. They just keep following. Deletion process is pretty straight forward. But it only let me delete 100, then it stopped. Guess I have to wait between deletion bouts. While I don't like a lot of what Elon Musk says, I do agree with him that instagram is worth a lot less than stated.

 

[Toby Frost]

I saw a video on IG of all places, saying that you can use the settings to block certain words from appearing. So, at least theoretically, you could block the word "promote" and stop the spam bots from appearing on your feed. I'm not sure how it's done but a google search might bring it up.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The requests to promote have dropped back to one or two. That part is manageable. There is a cap of 50 for deleting followers otherwise you get flagged by instagram. It looks like I am flagged for deleting 100 last night, as now I can only delete 15 at a time. There are third party programs that allow mass deletion of followers. I'll have to see how much they cost.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Went back to deleting followers after a short wait. Let me delete 20, then the list of followers disappeared. Now I have to wait for the list to reset. The list reset after closing instagram and reopening it. However, I can't delete them. That feature didn't reset.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

That's what happened. Kind of like The Soccerer's Apprentice. They just keep following. Deletion process is pretty straight forward. But it only let me delete 100, then it stopped. Guess I have to wait between deletion bouts. While I don't like a lot of what Elon Musk says, I do agree with him that instagram is worth a lot less than stated.

Oh, I know. They're a plague. It didn't used to be this bad, but they're gotten overrun by them now. I still use Instagram, but it's definitely gone down hill and their algorithms are impossible to keep up with. Of course, they are owned by FB so I guess that part's to be expected.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

In deleting all new followers I ran into a few legitimate ones, I do get a few once in awhile. Looking for a quick test to delete without much checking, I have 3 tests so far. First is zero posts, following thousands, those are easy. For the ones with posts, that's where I found some real ones, checking the date of the latest post reveals a lot. When the last post is anywhere from 3 to 8 years ago, that gets deleted. The third test is crypto giveaways.