Why you keep losing followers on Instagram suddenly?

I picked up photography as a hobby about a decade ago. I haven't pursued it as a career but I love clicking pictures and sharing them across the many photography sites. That is the best way to showcase your work and also get some work if your photographs are really good. I've been posting on Instagram primarily but I also post on Flickr and 500px.

Off-late I've noticed something strange though. I have been doling out picture after picture and trying to keep my Instagram grid as interesting as I possibly can but I keep noticing way too much deviations in terms of my followers. I keep using the right hashtags and also keep the title of my photo interesting but I cant seem to contain the ebb and flow of my followers. Look at my grid for example:

All the pictures in my opinion seem quite vibrant and are well composed. The theme is also quite constant. It mainly revolves around travel, automotive and some of my running stuff.

But still something seems amiss and I don't quite understand what. This got me to do some research and the below is what I found out. 

There are a million reasons for why one keeps losing followers but the below are some of the most common ones.

1. The baiters:

These are the people who follow you with the hope or rather hidden intention of wanting you to follow them back. I've had a few instances when some really awesome people, people I dont expect at all to follow me only to revert their like after a few hours or on the very next day. Im sure they would've done that even if I had followed them back. I've noticed this pattern and dont follow them back on purpose because I know the outcome. If this seems to be your case, dont despair. Im sure genuine followers will follow you and stay for your work rather than just baiting you to follow them back.

2. Instagram Purge

Apparently Instagram does a purge of all the fake accounts every once in a while. Im not really sure about the frequency but it does happen and in the process you will loose these fake accounts which follow you. Remember those "Follow me and get 1000 likes" or some random accounts like that? well they follow you and when these accounts get purged, your follower count reduces.

3. Bad Content

Since my interest revolves around photography, I follow a lot of photographers and I notice how high quality their photographs are and because of that I am able to draw a comparison with other profiles whose content isn't at that level. When you have that comparison aspect, you naturally tend to unfollow other accounts which have mediocre content. Most importantly, the screen resolution of our phones have also advanced so much that the content really needs to pop out on those screens to keep the user engaged. Reduction in follower count is inevitable if the content isn't. 

4. Good Content 

This is purely a personal opinion but I do notice that people who have great subjects in their photographs also tend to have an increased number of followers. By subjects I mean either some incredible cars and bikes or someone who clicks models (**clears throat**, you know what I mean). They have great skill of course but what works in their favour is the subject in the frame (could be themselves also). Profiles which don't have these will slowly start loosing followers.

5. Too frequent or Infrequent posts

This can be quite confusing actually. Who or what determines a reasonable time interval between posts? Is posting daily too much? Is one post a week ok? Whats the bench mark? There is no set formula for this. So it purely depends on your luck and of course the content. So if you fall into either of those extremes you end up losing followers. 

6. Irrelevant or irritating Hashtags

This in my opinion is the most important way to get the reach. Random hashtags or a sentence without spaces converted to a hashtag doesnt work. #Travel is a valid hasthag #Iclickedthispicturepleaselikeit is just not a valid hashtag. I wrote another blog about how hashtags work. Check it out here. Random hashtags wont get you the reach and somehow reduces the follower count as well.

7. Time of Posting 

This is another very important aspect. Considering your audience is in different time zones, the timing of the post plays a key role. Instagram is a constant feed and your post gets pushed down eventually. Some of your audience gets to see it, some don't and this impacts your engagement and subsequently the follower count.

The above in my opinion are some of the most important reasons why a profile can either gain or lose follower. I still struggle with it and I would love to hear your opinion about what might or might not be a good strategy to follow. 

You can checkout my work here:

Instagram : https://instagram.com/nitinpaulk

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/nitin_paul/

500px: https://500px.com/nitinpaul

I'd love to hear from you.  

Addiction

About a decade or so ago, addiction had a different meaning all together. It was always associated with something bad. Drugs, Cocaine, porn and a whole slew of other things that had grievous impacts on humans. Come 2000's and the things associated with addiction have changed completely. They don't have as grievous an impact as the aforementioned addictions but there are sizable repercussions none the less.

People these days are completely addicted to technology. They are addicted to such an extent that they tend to get restless in places without Wifi or even worse if God forbid they forget their cell phones at home before heading out. Memory has gone for a toss as no one remembers or even makes an attempt to remember phone numbers anymore. Simple calculations are difficult because we are so dependent on the calculator in the smart phones and so many other such tech dependencies. This technology addiction has also reached a stage where people are beginning to have withdrawal symptoms if taken away from technology.

Whats even worse is that most communication these days happens on Whatsapp or other messaging apps which has made face to face or even telephonic conversations awkward. Everything must've been discussed elaborately on whatsapp leaving very little else to actually talk about. People are physically present with each other but they are mentally absent scrolling through different social media apps looking at updates from strangers and people far away. Children are also introduced to technology so soon which in my opinion is a really really bad thing to do.

There seems to be some hope though. I noticed a new feature that was added to some frequently used apps on our phones. See for example the below two pictures from my phone about my YouTube and Instagram activity.

Apparently I spent an hour and 43 minutes on YouTube today and a total of 13 hours last week with an average daily usage of about an hour and 51 minutes.

Similarly I spend a daily average of just 37 minutes on Instagram which in my opinion is quite commendable. Not too shabby at all as some of my British friends might say.

I do not use Facebook so I don't have those statistics. Yes you read it right, I do not use Facebook. I have a profile but I do not login much.

Whats also interesting is that they have an option to set a daily reminder to put tabs on ourselves. I wonder how we could set a reasonable tab for ourselves and also what would actually happen after we reach that allotted time.  It is quite an interesting option. Need to give it a shot sometime.

We tend to grab for our phone at every given opportunity. At traffic signals, in toilets, in between conversations, while driving, just before going to bed, just after waking up, literally every single moment.

Google has also rolled out app time management controls which can be quite helpful. Read about it here.

I hope this new way of keeping track and limiting ourselves will enable us to get back into the real world.

Its really not a healthy direction in which technology is taking us. With the presence of AI increasing by the day, I dont think the day when computers will take over humans is too far away. I hope it never comes to that. 

Secret to being happy

I know the title is a bit tacky but I think its apt to what I am about to say below.

Life in general keeps kicking our butt all the time. Well at least that's the case for most of the people, unless you are filthy rich and have everything you want. You are usually working under a boss who is never really happy with you no matter how much effort you put in and while going on with the rigmarole of life, our only escape seems to be the world of social media (facebook, instagram, snapchat et all). Everyone does the methodical switching of different apps and scrolling through a few times and repeat it many times in the day only to end up a lot more frustrated than we actually are.

Facebook and for that matter even Instagram now a days has become a place to boast. Everyone seems to be having a better time than you, travelling, buying stuff and eventually they give you a constant feeling of inadequacy. A feeling that nothing interesting is happening in our lives. I've been the culprit and also the victim of this. I've been one of those who constantly posted about anything and everything I did and I have also been the victim of looking at other peoples posts and thinking that nothing interesting is happening in my life. I've had that uneasiness when I didn't get enough likes for my posts and went into useless self analysis about what might've been wrong with my post and all that. I'm sure a lot of people have been through it and must still be going through similar feelings.

Facebook had gone from a place to connect with old friends to a place to boast about anything and everything. I have a little more than a thousand friends on Facebook and if all of them were really "friends" every post I put should've ideally got at-least 500 likes which never really happens. That only means that the other so called friends are just there to snoop around to see what others are upto. It had become a sort of a authorized surveillance app.

I've had that feeling for a really long time and one fine day I had this amazing Eureka moment. I decided to stay away from Facebook for a month. I confess that it was a little difficult at first but as time passed, it became easier. I uninstalled the app from my phone which made it easier to not give into the temptation and over a period of time I noticed that I was much calmer. I stopped having the itch to click a pic of everything and post. Since I'm not looking at what other people are doing, I'm a lot more calm and best of all, my phone battery lasts much longer :) . I also noticed that I am more present in the moment rather than wanting to go live on Facebook or having to put up pics and thinking of fancy titles and hashtags.

Anyways all that aside, its been about 2 years since I've taken my hiatus from Facebook and I do not miss it one bit. I haven't deleted my profile as such but I do use it as a birthday reminder. Thankfully it doesn't need me to login and instead it just sends me a mail. The only social media app I use as of now is Instagram. I like this over other apps because you have the option to follow or unfollow people. You don't really have to unfriend anyone and that I feel is much better. Plus I use it only to promote my photography and Insta is an amazing way to get the reach provided we also use the right hashtags.

So, the gist of the story is this. We are usually unhappy when comparisons come into picture. The comparison between the haves and have nots and also between the pretty and the average. Facebook has inadvertently promoted this comparison which has lead to a lot of dissatisfaction and self loathing. I have kept away from it and I feel I am a much happier person. I don't feel the urge to post anything and neither to I feel bad for not getting a higher number of likes which unfortunately became the new sign of acceptance.

In conclusion, live and enjoy the moments, take pictures and look back on them instead of trying to be physically present and mentally absent. Disconnect to connect!

#Change, #Happiness, #Facebook