Can someone explain this?

[DGMPhotography]

Dude I follow only has 180 followers on Instagram, and yet... each photo receives 200+ likes. I'm lucky to break 100 likes, and I have 1200+ followers.

Is he buying likes?

@lefthandedphoto • Instagram photos and videos

Don't get me wrong, he has great work. Much better than mine, but the numbers don't add up.

 

[JonA_CT]

I'm not an instagram pro, but you can get a lot of likes based just on the hashtags, and that might not necessarily translate into follows.

 

[DGMPhotography]

I'm not an instagram pro, but you can get a lot of likes based just on the hashtags, and that might not necessarily translate into follows.

That would make sense if his posts didn't have only like 5 hashtags each. All of my photos are almost maxed out with the hashtags.

 

[paigew]

That is odd...he doesn't even use very good hashtags. He could be asking for likes on various fb groups


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[DGMPhotography]

That is odd...he doesn't even use very good hashtags. He could be asking for likes on various fb groups


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Exactly, and yeah.. that's possible. Just strange that none of those are translating to 'follows' especially with how consistent he hits 200+ likes.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Who the heck cares?? lol do you want to be a photographer or popular on Instagram??

Do you know how I got an opportunity to shoot for marketing for a local team? by learning by hanging out at practices and taking pictures during warmups etc. etc. and spending hours and hours practicing til I got good enough to be able to do it when the opportunity came about. Do you know how much fun it was the first few times to get to go out on the ice and take pictures of the ceremonial pregame festivities and the intermissions with giant fake cardboard check presentations and hope I didn't fall on my butt in front of a few thousand people?? damn fun!! lol

OK I'm off my soap box, but while social media can be effective for marketing yourself, if you aren't (yet) as good as the other guy, that maybe ought to be telling you something. (Like get out and get in some practice!)

 

[paigew]

Who the heck cares?? lol do you want to be a photographer or popular on Instagram??

Do you know how I got an opportunity to shoot for marketing for a local team? by learning by hanging out at practices and taking pictures during warmups etc. etc. and spending hours and hours practicing til I got good enough to be able to do it when the opportunity came about. Do you know how much fun it was the first few times to get to go out on the ice and take pictures of the ceremonial pregame festivities and the intermissions with giant fake cardboard check presentations and hope I didn't fall on my butt in front of a few thousand people?? damn fun!! lol

OK I'm off my soap box, but while social media can be effective for marketing yourself, if you aren't (yet) as good as the other guy, that maybe ought to be telling you something. (Like get out and get in some practice!)

But the other guys isn't incredibly great, that's why it's interesting. I love getting ig likes, it makes me feel like people are seeing me/my work. I communicate to the world around me via photography....It's like a journal for me. That said, I don't think I've booked a job/client yet off social media. To me, social media is just about sharing your passion and being encouraged.


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[DGMPhotography]

Who the heck cares?? lol do you want to be a photographer or popular on Instagram??

Do you know how I got an opportunity to shoot for marketing for a local team? by learning by hanging out at practices and taking pictures during warmups etc. etc. and spending hours and hours practicing til I got good enough to be able to do it when the opportunity came about. Do you know how much fun it was the first few times to get to go out on the ice and take pictures of the ceremonial pregame festivities and the intermissions with giant fake cardboard check presentations and hope I didn't fall on my butt in front of a few thousand people?? damn fun!! lol

OK I'm off my soap box, but while social media can be effective for marketing yourself, if you aren't (yet) as good as the other guy, that maybe ought to be telling you something. (Like get out and get in some practice!)

With all due respect, it may be a generational thing, and for us social media is a very crucial component of one's marketing endeavors. It's not that important to me that he's getting more likes than me, I'm just wondering how he does it. I don't think it's solely due to the quality of his work. My work is good (and always improving), and it would be a disservice to myself to not care about marketing (and social media).

 

[paigew]

It also just doesn't make sense how he would get that many likes based on his amount of followers. The way you get people to see your work who don't follow you is through hashtags. And the ones he uses aren't popular ones or ones that others would likely search for.


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[Derrel]

It also just doesn't make sense how he would get that many likes based on his amount of followers. The way you get people to see your work who don't follow you is through hashtags. And the ones he uses aren't popular ones or ones that others would likely search for.

Indeed...seems kind of weird: his hashtags are LAME!!! None of them that I know are even in the top "like-getter" lists I've seen. But the thing is, Instagram is now referring its users to people who they might possibly like at such a pace that I suspect he gets a lot of Likes from one-time referrals of his constant stream of sexy girl / modelly-type images!

Also: it's a waste of time to Follow somebody who is only an average-to-middling model shooter: IG is FULL of top-level shooters posting very,very good work. His shots are not consistently in the upper level of model-type shots, so, yeah...the likes/follower ratio does seem a bit askew, at least based on the "old model" of IG where lots of followers are needed to generate many Likes: but again...that People You Might Like thing IG does is now hitting up a LOT of people's IG pages!

 

[tecboy]

Why are you jealous based on someone else's works? He works on instagram is pretty good.

 

[Light Guru]

You are wasting your time worrying about Instagram likes. Put that energy toward your own photos.


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[DGMPhotography]

You are wasting your time worrying about Instagram likes. Put that energy toward your own photos.


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That's a very black and white way of thinking. A business is full of grayscale. Again, my question wasn't "should I care about Instagram likes?"

My op was asking for suggestions on how this guy is doing it. You brought up a good point, Derrel. Though if that is the case, I wish that system would be a bit kinder to me lol.

 

[snowbear]

Maybe ask him?

 

[MSnowy]

Maybe he's a member of a photography forum and he wined about not getting enough likes on his pictures. So his forum friends go and like his pictures to make him feel better about himself.