Instagram advice

[LemonMeringueThreePointOneFour]

I hope this is ok to ask...

I’ve recently started a hobby blog on Instagram and wondered whether the good people of Mumsnet would mind giving me a few tips. I’m very new to it and hadn’t even had a personal account before.

When do you use “@” rather than the hashtag?
What’s the best way to increase followers?
Any absolute no-nos? (I gather it’s bad form to ask people to follow you.)
Niche question – in French would you use “tu” or “vous” on SM?
How do people manage to have thousands of followers but very few posts?
How do people manage to have thousands of followers but hardly follow anyone?
Is it common for people to follow and then unfollow? I've seen my numbers fluctuate a little.

I think I’m doing okish as I have nearly 60 followers in three days, but am wavering as to whether it’s a worthwhile exercise or just a pointless and vacuous exercise of mutual back-slapping and overuse of emojis.

You use the @ for specific accounts, and the # for topics. So if your post is about crocheting you might use #crochet so that people interested in that topic can find your post.

Yeah you use @ to tag a person or an account in your pictures and # so people can find the post

In french I think vous is more polite but I’m not an expert

There's a whole algorithm as to how to get followers.
DHs cousin did it and you have to do very specific things
I've no idea what/how but all I know is she said there's certain things to make you get more followers

You can do all the follow train bullshit but it's not very authentic.

Hashtags are good for getting posts seen. Engaging a lot with people, commenting on posts where others will see it, sharing peoples stories or tagging them on your stories, (they will sometimes then share it back onto their story and your name gets seen). Try and find a USP within your hobby that might gets your posts shared.

I am also in quite a 'niche' Instagram community and honestly the people I have watched grow the best followings (and I am talking up to around 10k not hundreds of thousands) have put shitloads of work in, literally storying all the time, spending an awful lot of time on Instagram basically! I don't think there is really an easy way to do it.

I have 45k followers on instagram on one of my accounts.
I only follow about 150 people and have never engaged in like for like, follow for follow stuff, you want people following you that actually like what you do and are relevant not people who are just following you for the sake of it.

Use relevant hashtags, see what other accounts like yours are using.

Post in the evenings when people are doing nothing but scrolling or early before people go to work and are having a morning scroll.

Post beautiful photos. Post good content and people with higher follower numbers will repost your photos and you will get followers that way. I have had day where I have gotten 100s of followers by accounts with 500k followers reposting my photos.

Don't post just for the sake of it, post when you have quality content.

I no longer use the account with 45k followers, it was for a hobby that I fell out of love with. I started a new account for a new business I am working on about 2 weeks ago and only have about 500 followers so far but it is growing steadily, probably at the rate of about 40 followers a day at the moment.

My biggest piece of advice though would be to have fun with it. Don't get caught up in numbers, if you are enjoying what you are doing it doesn't matter if you have 5 followers or 50k followers. The minute I realised I just wasn't having fun on my old account I stopped posting, it became a chore and to be honest contributed to me falling out of love with that hobby. The constant comments, questions(esp the ones I had answered already or could easily be answered by a quick google) just made me want to poke my eyes out.

I have a new business and I got my highest amount of new ones by someone sharing my post/story (can't remember which).

A lot of my followers are people hoping I will buy their stuff though!

I have hobby account with around 30k followers and follow about 300 it's taken just over a year. I've used stories around 5 times in total but do post almost every day
Commenting and liking also but probably spend less that 10 minutes a day on there

I'm amazed by the huge followers on here, I was going to add that you can buy followers, they are just bots that put your numbers up, so don't always believe the numbers.

Unless you are selling then the numbers aren't relevant? It's the community and enjoyment surely?

I agree ^^ tbh I've no idea why I have so
Many followers but I'd be just as happy with 30 😂

It's amazing though and you must be posting create content

Vous is used for more than one person, or for one person whom you don't know very well. Tu is always singular and is more casual.

A lot of the people you see with loads of followers and hardly any posts have bought their followers - usually they're bot accounts just to boost numbers. Obviously that isn't everyone but you see it when influencers have hundreds of thousands of followers/likes/etc but no engagement with things like merch. I don't know if there are other big accounts in the area you're talking about, but it might be worth contacting them and asking to do a collab or (nicely) ask for a shout out, as then you can access their audience which is already established.

Vous is used for more than one person, or for one person whom you don't know very well. Tu is always singular and is more casual.

I know - I just wondered whether the etiquette was different on Instagram and whether people tended to be more familiar even with people they didn't know.

Thanks for the tips everyone.

I really liked the comment @Aloethere's left. I agree with the idea that it should be for pleasure, even if it is for business. Tbh, I don't like influencers that post every single step during their day coz they don't know how to make their content interesting. I unfollow them bc I don't want to waste my time watching someone else is brushing their teeth. As for me, I spend about 30 min/day on Instagram, not more. So it's important for me to see a quality content. My friend has an account for her internet boutique. What I can see from her is that I like when the posts are short (you can write nothing rather than write some rubbish), photos are pleasant and of good quality and composition. Several tips my friend learned me: 1) followers need to see an accurate acc, with nice bio, image captions, proper username; 2) it's indeed important for some people to see that you have many followers so you can be trusted, so she said she bought 1000 Instagram followers at the beginning to enlarge confidence; 3) make a schedule, it'll help you build a consistent experience for your followers and keep them in the know of your brand. You can also schedule Instagram posts in advance; 4) write comments with proper hashtags, but find hashtags that are not too populated. You have to find hashtags that people in your target audience are more likely to check. And the last thing is 5) make sure you like your content yourself.

I’d use “vous” because you are talking to multiple people. “Tu” is used when talking to one person who is a close friend or family member. Vous is polite singular or you to a group

Niche question – in French would you use “tu” or “vous” on SM?

I'm not French, but I'm a speaker of another language where we have this distinction as well, and I would use (the equivalent of) “vous” when talking to a stranger on SM, because I think it's more polite.