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.  

A new post every day???

I actually started this blog hoping to add content on a daily basis, but I'm beginning to realize that its not as easy as it sounds. You either need to be a rock star with something interesting happening every single day or you need to be Casey Niestat who can make every single mundane thing interesting. You should check out his vlogs. They are actually addictive. 😉

Anyways, its a weekend and thanks to some really unfortunate (nothing serious) events, I had to cancel an amazing trip and all I did was sit home and sulk. Did that help? Not one bit. My sulking and my long face just messed up my mood, but people around me who were supposed to get it, didn't get it and eventually who turned out to be the looser? ME!! Yes me.

So saturday went down the drain and I thought I'll make Sunday at least interesting. I ran into a friend of mine yesterday who told me that there was going to be a Distinguished Gentleman's bike ride today morning. I love clicking pictures and so I thought it would be a great opportunity to get the cobwebs off my cam and go click some pics. I woke up in the morning and was at my friends place at 6:30am sharp as was decided yesterday but there was no sign of him. His maid told me that he had gotten back to sleep after opening the door for her. I thought to myself meh, lets not disturb him and went ahead to the venue.

There were hardly any people at the starting point. Another running event was taking place, so I just drove further on to see if I can find anything interesting to click. I went further on and found this amazing dog meet place and I just loved it. There was so many breeds of dogs there, some of which I didn't even know and they were just socializing. It was so much fun to see these beautiful thorough bred dogs just running around, exploring, making new friends and all that. I clicked some good pics, here are a few of them.

I found them extremely adorable and after spending about half an hour here, I went back to the bike ride venue. Luckily, there were a lot of bikes this time. I was kinda hoping that it would be a bigger event with a lot of interesting bikes, but it wasn't the case. All of them were regular bikes, a lot of Royal Enfields, a Kawasaki Ninja 300, a Harley Davidson Street 750, and loads of bike we see almost every day . There were some classics like a Jawa and a few old royal enfields but other than that, except the Triumph Tiger, nothing else was interesting. I clicked very few pics and left the place.

All in all, it was a fairly uneventful day. Hopefully next week will turn out to be more interesting.

Caught up in the rat race

Wow! Its been a really really long time since I wrote something. I think I was so caught up in the rat race that I just didn't have the time or the energy to flex my creative muscles and do what was once my my most favorite thing to do. Write.

Writing, travelling and photography are three of my most favorite things to do. I remember when I was back in mangalore many years ago, I always took the time out to go on little photo walks around where I lived and I always ended up getting at least one keeper. I somehow managed to find beauty in very small things. Here is an example of one such photo I clicked. These birds were just outside my flat, they looked like they were in deep conversation and the way it came out was way beyond my expectations. Well, I have to give mangalore the credit as well because it was so small and beautiful and almost every turn had something really photogenic to click. All it needed was an eye for detail.

Here I am now, in Hyderabad, the "Big City" and I hardly have time and more importantly a good place where I can go and click anything. The city is so fast paced and hectic that one hardly finds anything clean or even remotely photogenic to click. I recently went on a photo drive and all I could get were a few light streaks. I liked how the photo turned out, but its very common and not something that I wanted to click. That was already a few months ago and I miss doing that on a regular basis. Added to that, I've had to work on weekends as well and that made it even more difficult to go out clicking. 

Oddly enough all this came as a blessing in disguise. The last few months have been so hectic that I've had to watch vlogs and other YouTube videos to calm my nerves. I've sort of taken a liking towards vlogging and I hope some day I will be able to create my own video content, but until then I've decided that each and every single day, I will write something. Something about how my day went, my opinions about things I read, my experiences and I hope to bring back the creative side of me. I've also learnt in recent times that the only way one can get better at something is by practicing what we want to do every single day of our lives and my greatest inspiration in perusing that is my Mother.

I've never seen anyone who possessed such grit and determination. I am a little embarrassed to say this but my mom has never been good at fine arts but that never deterred her from trying a hand at it. She is always trying to do something new and creative. The downside though for the OCD me is that she usually stops mid way and I have to clear the mess but she just never gives up. She tried her hand at bonsai making, sewing, driving, playing the piano, learning Chinese and Spanish for sometime and finally she seems to have hit the jackpot with painting. She practices painting every single day and now she has become so good at it that we ourselves wonder if this was really painted by my Mom. They are proper wallpaper material and some of her colleagues have her paintings hug on walls.

Anyways, fact of the matter is that, I have decided that from this day forth, I am going to hone my creative side, writing and photography being the two major things that Im gonna work on. Lets see how this goes.