How to Get More Likes on Instagram as a Photographer
Instagram is quickly becoming one of the most popular applications for photographers to display their craft. It is particularly geared for images captured on cellphones, though any kind of image can be shared. In this sense, what you post becomes a visual extension of your personality, and when you receive validation through likes, it can build your sense of self-worth and confidence. Read further if you want to know how to get more likes on Instagram.
Beyond this psychological benefit, getting more likes on your posts can result in increased exposure and a larger audience of followers.
But, there is an art to managing Instagram, and popularity is not always easy to acquire. In this article, we discuss 7 techniques you can use if you want to know how to get more likes on Instagram.
1. Use Hash Tags
Many users explore content on Instagram by searching for particular keywords and phrases. By using hash tags strategically, you can maximize the chance that users will encounter your posts. Using a combination of popular hash tags and more obscure ones is the most effective technique.
Even if interested users don’t follow you, you will probably at least get a like out of them. And on Instagram, tipping points are crucial. A simple like should not be underrated. Like the flapping of a butterfly’s wing, it can literally change the world.
2. Include Links to Other Work
People on the internet love links. Most of the time, they are using social media to procrastinate finishing some task. Unconsciously, they want to get lost down a cyber rabbit hole and never return. You can help them achieve this.
One way is to always include a link to another website whenever you post. This can also force you to create posts that are conceptually dense and require further explanation and researching to unpack.
Even better, include a link to more of your work. Lead users onwards into the fire of your creativity, dangling the carrot of your artistry until they are cornered on your personal website with nowhere to run, and are forced to purchase that series of nude black-and-whites that only your girlfriend has dared to order.
3. Make Creatively Alliterative Captions of Verbose Poeticism
The three P’s: Puns, Poetry, and Prolix.
Puns always receive likes, no matter how terrible or undeserving the corresponding image is. You could probably post a blank photo, but if the pun was on point, it could set the internet on fire.
Genuine poetry is so rare in today’s overly-literal world of selfies and food porn that the occasional stanza of symbolic serenity could inspire your followers into giving you that coveted like.
And people these days are dull. They’re exhausted. They are literally scrolling through their feeds as they drool over their half-finished cafeteria food at lunch break. You need to repeat things multiple times in multiple ways, and only then, perhaps, you might get through to them.
4. Cater to your Followers
It never hurts to give people what they want. Resistance often takes more energy than surrendering anyway.
Take the time to get to know your followers. Learn their preferences. Study their eccentricities. Pick them apart one by one, following their activity, following who they follow, following their followers, following their follower’s followers.
It’s the internet, people. There’s no such thing as excess.
Remember, however, to stay relatively loyal to your social media persona. An occasional contradiction is okay, yes, but don’t post cat photos every day simply because your grandma follows you.
5. Make People Emotional
A tear every now and then never hurt anyone. Make them weep. Move them. Shake their day up. This means posting on every major holiday, even if you don’t celebrate the holiday.
6. Post Often, But Not Too Often
If you never post, it should go without saying that you won’t get any likes. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, if you post every hour, not only will people unfollow you, many others will stop liking your posts.
Even if the post is amazing, eventually people will tire and seek to unconsciously sabotage your success. It’s just psychology. You want to make people subtly jealous of your artistry, without deconstructing their failures, fears, and inadequacies back to their face.
If you’ve posted every day for a while, and each post has been groundbreakingly unique, then maybe take a break for a day or two. Let your audience breathe. Absence makes the heart grow stronger, remember?
7. Follow Other Photographers
The photographers you follow are equal to the photographers that follow you. Paul McCartney said that, right?
Our Final Thoughts on Instagram Likes
While getting lots of likes on your posts is important, it’s not the end-all-be-all of social media. More important, perhaps, is your enjoyment of the platform, for after all, it’s there to serve your pleasure and desires, right?
While utilizing these techniques can help increase your popularity and even elevate your craft to new levels, it certainly won’t guarantee you happiness or health. For those, you must venture out into the world and experience it like the artist that you were born to be!
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