Not a Module
by Ashley
Yo,
So this is completely not class related but I thought I would let you all know that I’ve been trying a little social media experiment in my free time. (What is free time even?)
I’ve started adding hashtags to my Instagram photos! Yes, I know I’m behind the times. I follow a few really good-looking people on Instagram and have often wondered how they managed to have so many followers and so many likes on their pictures. So today I googled “popular hashtags” to see what the kids are using these days, and then I copied and pasted a few onto my last selfie … and voila! 42 likes and five new followers! Anyway, I’m pretty proud of myself and feeling very popular right now.
UPDATE
Continuing to do this experiment, and the last photo of myself got 52 likes in total and eight more people followed me. Of those eight, only five are still following me since I didn’t follow them back.
I have added a new photo. Put a few hashtags on and then tried to cover them up with other useless comments on my photo so that they will still do their job but nobody will see. MY FRIEND SAW and it was a little embarrassing, but I explained to her that I’m doing this for science (a little bit for self gratification, but mostly for science).
Excellent! I felt bad when you said no one liked your stuff. I was going to volunteer, but I’m trying really hard not to commit to anything, but you got to let me know- what hashtags did you use?
Paige, I think it defeats the point a little if you get pity likes. They have to come from the heart (or from 12 year-olds on the Internet). Usually going with something LGBTQ related, something tattoo related, a combination of the both, and few that say #thisisstupid #dontjudgeme.
And #dontjudge me just provided a solid amount of entertainment.
Does Instagram sort of work like Twitter in terms of hashtags? I haven’t used Instagram myself before. And also, are the popular hashtags changing quite often?
Not really. The hashtags that are popular are usually the same: #selfie #nofilter #ootd — which, I learned, means outfit of the day — #wcw (woman crush Wednesday), #tbt (throwback Thursday) etc. But there are so many people using Instagram that I think when you use those hashtags, your photo immediately gets lost in the swirling vortex of everyone else’s selfies. So, I guess if you want to be seen you need to use popular niche hashtags that not everyone is using, but that the people in your social circle will likely be searching for.