charlotte90marie wrote:
Or how to get your images featured on much larger accounts to get your name out there?

You gotta start submitting your stuff to those accounts. So start shooting with photographers that actively
submit and get stuff up on those accounts.

charlotte90marie wrote:
Lately most of my offers to shoot have been coming through instagram rather than her on MM. Any advice on how to get more photographers to see my page? Anyone know what hashtags model photographers are most likely to look for? Or how to get your images featured on much larger accounts to get your name out there?

Instagram is more than posting hashtags with your photos, you need to be proactive and spend a minimum of an hour a day, liking and commenting on photos every day. If you can do a half hour spread out over 3-4 times a day even better. You will start to see results. You need to start interacting more with photographers in socal, look at their feeds, look at their tags, start searching through some of their tags and keep on adding likes and most importantly comments. Comments are the most powerful way to get noticed and drive traffic.

After a couple days of liking and commenting, start to focus on the explorer page, the explorer page is populated by the types of accounts that you like and comment on so as you continue to like and comment, you will see more photographers and online mags show up on the explorer page, Instagram is bringing your target audience to you so take full advantage of it.

Do this for a week and see what kind of results that you get. Instagram is not something that you can post on weekly and let lay there on your phone. It need to be a conscious daily effort in order to bring you the attention that you are looking for.

Best of luck

Also, watch this webinar for some great information: http://www.alexbeadon.com/thesparkloung … -training/
You have to sign up for her email list but it's great information. Alex's marketing videos have been extremely helpful in helping me grow my business and they are all free on her site or on her Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ … +instagram

FilmmakerDC wrote:
Also, watch this webinar for some great information: http://www.alexbeadon.com/thesparkloung … -training/
You have to sign up for her email list but it's great information. Alex's marketing videos have been extremely helpful in helping me grow my business and they are all free on her site or on her Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ … +instagram

Thank you very much for your info!

I did my first post on September 3rd or 4th, basically 12 weeks ago. I have done a lot of research and it often lead back to the daily liking and commenting recommendation, I did this in the beginning, very diligently and posted one image a day with hashtags. So, I started to get somewhere between 20 to 40 likes on a new post with 1 to 3 comments and 1 to 2 new followers.

I noticed a few times that there are people that will follow you and as soon as you follow back, they stop following you. I guess that's a strategy to increase the followers vs. following ratio.

I stopped the daily routine of spending time on IG and slacked off on posting... but I was made aware by a very important publishing person on the importance of IG followers, that's why I actually started early September.

I will definitely check out that info you've provided, thanks again for your post!

@udorphoto

FilmmakerDC wrote:
Instagram is more than posting hashtags with your photos, you need to be proactive and spend a minimum of an hour a day, liking and commenting on photos every day. If you can do a half hour spread out over 3-4 times a day even better. You will start to see results. You need to start interacting more with photographers in socal, look at their feeds, look at their tags, start searching through some of their tags and keep on adding likes and most importantly comments. Comments are the most powerful way to get noticed and drive traffic.

After a couple days of liking and commenting, start to focus on the explorer page, the explorer page is populated by the types of accounts that you like and comment on so as you continue to like and comment, you will see more photographers and online mags show up on the explorer page, Instagram is bringing your target audience to you so take full advantage of it.

Do this for a week and see what kind of results that you get. Instagram is not something that you can post on weekly and let lay there on your phone. It need to be a conscious daily effort in order to bring you the attention that you are looking for.

OMG...... I would rather gouge my eyes out than spend more than five minutes a day on IG.
I'll stay a nobody. (At least as far as IG)

Mortonovich wrote:

OMG...... I would rather gouge my eyes out than spend more than five minutes a day on IG.
I'll stay a nobody. (At least as far as IG)

Dear son of Morton!

I wish I too were independently wealthy already!!!   

Koryn wrote:
Where do people find out what hashtags to use?

I know that different ones connect with different things, but they change so fast, how do you figure out what you need to hashtag something, before someone is using a different one?

Is there a universal hashtag list somewhere that gets updated every hour?

When I started to post and doing research about hashtags, I googled "Instagram Hashtags for fashion photography" and did several variations of it... and then I looked how many posts there were.

You want to avoid hashtags that have only one or 10, maybe 100 posts ever, because it means people don't search for them very much at all.

You also want to use only a very few hashtags that have Millions of posts, e.g. #love or #beauty, which you can use, and I do too... but those should be very rare.

You are also limited to 30 hashtags on your photos/posts. Some people advise to never use 30 hashtags, but I don't care... I use around 20 I think and more if advised.

Look for hashtags that have a few thousand to tens of thousands of posts... those move fast, but not fast enough to disappear from the screen when you post in that category. Remember, hashtags is like catalog indexing and your image/post will appear as soon as someone is searching for specific topics... e.g. fineart or something like that.

Mortonovich wrote:
OMG...... I would rather gouge my eyes out than spend more than five minutes a day on IG.
I'll stay a nobody. (At least as far as IG)

Thankfully, IG is not for everyone. Personally, I've found the reward to be well worth the effort. The networking has opened up a new revenue stream that is much needed.

Koryn wrote:
Where do people find out what hashtags to use?

I know that different ones connect with different things, but they change so fast, how do you figure out what you need to hashtag something, before someone is using a different one?

Is there a universal hashtag list somewhere that gets updated every hour?

There is a definite art to hashtags. Personally, I only use about 12 per post but I have a list of 20-30 that I pull from. Trends change but some hastags are core and I use those as starting points for my research. It depends on what you are selling and since modeling is mostly a service industry, your approach will be different than mine. I am looking for new models to network with as well as product sales (selling t-shirts, poster, online mags and zine publications) so different tags will reach different target markets.

I usually start with basics like #blackandwhite; #blackandwhitephotography #shootfilm #mediumformat #hp5, #ilford. From these I look for interesting pics to see if the model is tagged or @mentioned and then take a look at her feed. I take a look at her hastags and the photographers hastags to see if they are using anything that I can pick up on. It's essentially a big game of seek & find, trying to find what works while looking for something new.

When I'm not shooting for a while, I'll take some time off but when I'm actively casting or selling a fresh run of shirts or posters, I usually spend about 2 hours on IG every day cruising for tags, @mentions and making comments. Every other day, I also post 3 new photos on my own feed. I post one in the morning, one midafternoon and one in the evening. Spreading out the posts hits different time zones and different parts of the world. I get a lot of hits from Asia when I post early, Russia in the afternoon and the US in the evening.

Most people also feel a need to keep up a blistering pace. Sure IG is fast moving but you don't have to struggle constantly looking for interesting content to shoot and post on a daily basis. If you have a hard drive full of images and can set aside a few hours on the weekend, you can plan out your posts in advance. For example I've got my next 20 days of photos that I'm going to post (that's 60 images) in a folder on my computer ready to go.

alba_andela wrote:
Follow a lot of photographers you want to work with!

This certainly helps!

FilmmakerDC wrote:

Thankfully, IG is not for everyone. Personally, I've found the reward to be well worth the effort. The networking has opened up a new revenue stream that is much needed.

How much time do you spend on instagram daily?

navetz wrote:
How much time do you spend on instagram daily?

I use Instagram seasonally. I use it mostly from March to October. I take the "winter" (Nov-Feb.) off. This is not my full time job so it's nice to put the devices away and spend some quality time offline with family and friends during the holiday season. Even though I don't actively use instagram during this time, I'm still planning and shooting content. I look for quotes, look through photos and prepare several hundred posts that I will make once March rolls around. During this time I also shoot most of product stills and ootds to use as filler when things get busy.

I don't have a device addiction so honestly, I might check it a couple times a day. Usually when I get a text or an email I'll also scroll through my feed to see if anyone has posted anything interesting.

During the "season" however, when I'm trying to market something, I'll use it in waves. I might go 3-4 hours a day for 3 weeks straight and then not touch it for a week, then back at it for another 3 weeks straight. A lot of people automate their posts. I haven't done that yet but I'm thinking about getting that service. I know a lot of fashion bloggers that do that with their ootds. Since I prepare most of my posts in advance, automating the posting would free up some of my time.

Mortonovich wrote:
OMG...... I would rather gouge my eyes out than spend more than five minutes a day on IG.
I'll stay a nobody. (At least as far as IG)

On a serious note:

Instagram has hundreds of Millions of users per month... if you search by hashtags, e.g. #fashionphotography or #editorialfashion or whatever you personally are interested in, you can find amazing images from colleagues all over the world... they can be an inspiration or just really cool to look at.

Be selective in the people you are following, so you don't have to look at some fucktard's images you are absolutely not interested in.

It can be really amazing what you can find, so, as a visual person, you wouldn't have the need to gauge out your eyes...

FilmmakerDC wrote:
Udor,

@mrmortonovich is just blowing smoke up your skirt.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he actually posts on IG a couple times a week.

http://instagram.com/mrmortonovich

Dude!!! Help me out from under the bus!!!!! hahahhahahahah

FilmmakerDC wrote:
Udor,

@mrmortonovich is just blowing smoke up your skirt.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he actually posts on IG a couple times a week.

http://instagram.com/mrmortonovich

Mortonovich wrote:
Dude!!! Help me out from under the bus!!!!! hahahhahahahah

HOLEY SHITTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!

Fucking awesome! Just followed you... now I am one of your fans!

Designit - Edward Olson wrote:
#model

#cityYouLiveInModel i.e. #sanjosemodel or #sanfranciscomodel

#imamodel

I am going to use these but, am not sure what it will do actually.
edit:

I posted a picture and hashtaged model, lamodel, vegasmodel and Imamodel and also started following mrmortonovich too. Udor I am already following YOU!
Jen

edit: er, um, do I just hashtag the photographers? I'm tagging photos and this vital part is missing.

edit again, just found this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemer … followers/ although you all might already know this stuff!

Jen B wrote:
I am going to use these but, am not sure what it will do actually.
edit:

I posted a picture and hashtaged model, lamodel, vegasmodel and Imamodel and also started following mrmortonovich too. Udor I am already following YOU!
Jen

edit: er, um, do I just hashtag the photographers? I'm tagging photos and this vital part is missing.

edit again, just found this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemer … followers/ although you all might already know this stuff!

You post your own photos and include these hashtags for others who search the hashtags to see and find your images.
You should also search for the hashtag to find others who post images tagged with them.

Also try #clarksvillemodeling

When you find a photographer who seems to be hiring models in your area, pull up one of their posted images, then add a comment suggesting you would be interested in being hired by them.

You can come up with your own original hashtag and post your photos and tag each one with that custom hashtag, then comment on others' posts and include that custom hashtag, like #JenClarkvillesHottestModel

udor wrote:

When I started to post and doing research about hashtags, I googled "Instagram Hashtags for fashion photography" and did several variations of it... and then I looked how many posts there were.

You want to avoid hashtags that have only one or 10, maybe 100 posts ever, because it means people don't search for them very much at all.

You also want to use only a very few hashtags that have Millions of posts, e.g. #love or #beauty, which you can use, and I do too... but those should be very rare.

You are also limited to 30 hashtags on your photos/posts. Some people advise to never use 30 hashtags, but I don't care... I use around 20 I think and more if advised.

Look for hashtags that have a few thousand to tens of thousands of posts... those move fast, but not fast enough to disappear from the screen when you post in that category. Remember, hashtags is like catalog indexing and your image/post will appear as soon as someone is searching for specific topics... e.g. fineart or something like that.

Thank you for more good advice.

I just started to use the hashtags last night after this thread and I think I'm getting it a little. I used the #model, iamamodel, location where I'm going to live model, tattood model and ended up getting some quick views. Then I checked out who viewed and now I see how it works!

Jen

Designit - Edward Olson wrote:

You post your own photos and include these hashtags for others who search the hashtags to see and find your images.
You should also search for the hashtag to find others who post images tagged with them.

Also try #clarksvillemodeling

...

Hello and thank you!

Although, gladly, I move out of Clarksville next month!! To California, about midway between LA and Vegas so I am using those hashtags since I plan to visit each place monthly.

!
Lets see how it works. From posting those few pictures with the hashtags I went from my 86 followers to 91. I'm still an IG newbie.

Jen

Jen B wrote:

Hello and thank you!

Although, gladly, I move out of Clarksville next month!! To California, about midway between LA and Vegas so I am using those hashtags since I plan to visit each place monthly.

!
Lets see how it works. From posting those few pictures with the hashtags I went from my 86 followers to 91. I'm still an IG newbie.

Jen

When you choose tags, you need to look them up first to see how often they are used. For example #clarksvillemodeling has been used 108 times. Not likely to get you noticed. #modellife on the other hand; used 873,549 times. You might also toss in a couple tags that photographers and gearheads check like #Kodak; 823,372; #Nikon; 14,031,920, #shootfilm; 213,988, #mediumformat; 261,888, #ilford 184,925

Jen B wrote:
edit: er, um, do I just hashtag the photographers? I'm tagging photos and this vital part is missing.

If you post a photo and want to credit the photographer you @mention not Hastag them. For example you can say, Photographer Credit: @udorphoto.

This will create a hot link to him so that if another model sees your photos and wants to see more of the photographers work, she just clicks on the @udorphoto and goes straight to his page. This is how you build a network. If a photographer posts your photo on his feed, ask him to @mention you and tag you if he doesn't already. Tags are a whole other layer entirely.

You can also @mention friends to drive traffic as well. Say I like one of your photos and I leave a comment: Great work! Hey @udorphoto check out this feed. Udor would get a ping on his phone that I mentioned him in a comment and he would immediately check it out to see what I said and maybe like the photo and/or follow you as well.

Koryn wrote:
This has been a useful thread, with lots of good information. My Instagram isn't actually modeling-related. It's focused on food and lifestyle. Interestingly, after I read this thread last night, one ofy favorite YouTube contributors posted a video on getting more social media interest.

She pointed out that it was important, far more so than getting hashtags just right, to feel like you could really SEE and understand the individual through social media. This makes sense in a way, and while I've organically collected a few followers without even using hashtags at all, I have almost no images of myself on IG. Taking and posting selfies is something I find a little yucky. I only ever posted one on my profile page here, so people wouldn't be asking me to send them unedited snaps every minute of every day. She also talked about the importance of having really good, attractive photos of everything you post.

My modeling photos are not appropriate for IG, and I can't take a selfie worth a shit. I find this whole social media thing to just be bizarre. It's something that I struggle with, for the most part - in large part, because it seems so self-absorbed at times. I want to build my health coaching brand and share information and knowledge with people, but apparently, you can't do that without really building up YOURSELF as a person, not just the service/knowledge you are offering (my preference).

I also plan to start a YouTube channel at the beginning of 2016. As someone who is very private and introverted, it will be hard figure out how to share just enough with viewers that they feel like I'm a human being, while still feeling personally that I am distant enough to feel comfortable.

Hello,

It has been a huge help.

In my IG I think there is only one selfie as I use it primarily only as a model page. I'm at https://www.instagram.com/jenniferblockermodel/ and load other pictures saved in my phone.In less than 24 hours of using some advice from here I see how it work though getting the most comments and greatest growth of my small group of followers.
Jen
edit: somehow one of my hashtags garnered a health inspired business and I am going to follow them back.

anadari wrote:
I post around three photos a day, which every successful IG model I know has told me is necessary.

How are you shooting enough to get that many edited photos back, to post 3 images per day?

I did something like 21 shoots in the month of October, and managed to get maybe 7-10 images from those that I actually felt were "good" enough to use for self-marketing.

Are you just posting everything that people are sending back to you? Are they sending back ridiculously high volumes of images from each shoot (like more than 5)? How are you even getting that much useful TFP?

anadari wrote:
I try to do around 1-2 TF shoots a week. I get around 10-15 edited images per shoot

How are you getting people to send you back that many images? I feel lucky to get back 3 images.

I'd guess, if I do 10 TF shoots, I'm pretty lucky to get any images back from 5-6 of those people. The other half just disappear into the annals of history.

I've had several shoots over the past year that produced a far higher quality glamour work than I currently have in my portfolio. All included full makeup and hair, a rare treat for me. Each of those shoots had the ability to vastly improve my portfolio, and I have never received images back from any of them. I'd say my three "highest quality" portfolio shoots - ever - were basically just a wash that I sunk money and commute time into for....nothing. Never heard back from them again, including the one where I paid the MUA's full fee, drove two hours to the photographer's home, was there from about 3pm-9pm at night, then drove two hours home.

anadari wrote:
About 1/2 of the images were shot by photographers, with the rest being unedited. The unedited and selfies actually get about as many likes as edited work.

Photographers are allowing you to post unedited images? That's pretty....interesting.


Apparently, you're shooting with some people who're incredibly honest in their working practices (following through on trade), very liberal in their usage policies, and have super fast turnover times.

No wonder models love Instagram so much.

anadari wrote:
I post around three photos a day, which every successful IG model I know has told me is necessary.

Koryn wrote:
How are you shooting enough to get that many edited photos back, to post 3 images per day?

Lots of selfies and Insta-shots.

Magda Kulpinska wrote:
I don't want to high jack the thread but thank you for saying my profile wasn't boring.

I'm actually really trying to understand how models get work of Insta. I used to get some via Facebook but now it seems everyone is migrating towards Instagram anyways.

Maybe it's the type of pictures...? Lots of selfies...?

I am "celebrating" my first year on IG, as I had posted my first photo and broke my cherry in the first week of September of 2015...

I struggle to get organic (not purchased) followers and I am just over 1,200 followers... and I find it really hard to get ahead, as I was so later to IG.

However, I also did a lot of research and IG is paramount... however, what I find most interesting about IG analytics, published by Business Insider and other magazines, is that if you are reaching 3-5000 followers and above, with serious interactions (likes and comments) among your followers, that you will start to get noticed more.

I do have a pretty good reach, despite my low number of followers, e.g. I know get over a 100 likes and comments for many of my photos within a day, or several days. I have been told that almost 10% of interaction is a pretty promising number.

I did get contacts from interested models and publications... and earlier this year, received invitation to show my paintings at an art show in NYC (I had to postpone 3 times....) and just last week, F-Stoppers approached me for an interview and last Friday, a fashion magazine from Australia also want to interview me... all of those as a result of my IG Account.

I think that once those publications publish the articles, I may gain a few more interested followers.

@udorphoto

udor wrote:
This is a redirect from an answer I gave to Magda in a different thread.

To avoid hijacking, I post the question and answer here:


I am "celebrating" my first year on IG, as I had posted my first photo and broke my cherry in the first week of September of 2015...

I struggle to get organic (not purchased) followers and I am just over 1,200 followers... and I find it really hard to get ahead, as I was so later to IG.

However, I also did a lot of research and IG is paramount... however, what I find most interesting about IG analytics, published by Business Insider and other magazines, is that if you are reaching 3-5000 followers and above, with serious interactions (likes and comments) among your followers, that you will start to get noticed more.

I do have a pretty good reach, despite my low number of followers, e.g. I know get over a 100 likes and comments for many of my photos within a day, or several days. I have been told that almost 10% of interaction is a pretty promising number.

I did get contacts from interested models and publications... and earlier this year, received invitation to show my paintings at an art show in NYC (I had to postpone 3 times....) and just last week, F-Stoppers approached me for an interview and last Friday, a fashion magazine from Australia also want to interview me... all of those as a result of my IG Account.

I think that once those publications publish the articles, I may gain a few more interested followers.

@udorphoto

Yep, social media is a factor for sure and organic followers are really all that matter to me. I am on there now as @LAModel_superbabe and initially paid for a company that offered a three month deal to seek out followers of 5 IG profiles whose followers I wanted to target. Even still I have to clean up, delete and harvest the contacts they make from there. It takes me about three to five hours a week to sort through. I am only into month two of a three month contract but, they have selectively gotten me some good followers as well as a percentage of fakes and not realistic ones that I have to delete.

Although recently I applied to a casting and they wanted at least 1K IG followers with a minimum of 500 likes per photos, so, for what it is worth.

Jen

charlotte90marie wrote:
Lately most of my offers to shoot have been coming through instagram rather than her on MM. Any advice on how to get more photographers to see my page? Anyone know what hashtags model photographers are most likely to look for? Or how to get your images featured on much larger accounts to get your name out there?

#HASHTAG everything that has to do with your image. Camera make, lens, wardrobe, location, model nationality etc.

On the initial posting of said image.