Instagram

 I posted pictures to Instagram at different times of day with various hashtags relating to the images to see the response I would get each time. I got a different amount of likes each upload.

When people search popular hashtags their feed refreshes quickly as more and more images with the same tag are uploaded so it is better to upload unpopular tags as well as popular tags relating to your image so that your image can be seen for longer.

I think the hashtag fff and f4f which means follow for follow gets a couple of the likes in as lots of people search this tag to gain more followers to their account by following them for a follow back and liking their pictures to get their attention.

I often go on the 'explore' page to like peoples images (the explore feed is a random mix of images relating to people you follow and other images you like) as this is a way to get peoples attention and they may in return like your images and maybe follow you.

This shows the picture I uploaded of my cats and the hashtags that I used. I posted the picture at 1:23am on Saturday morning. I only ended up with 3 likes for this image. I feel that this is because the subject of cats is uploaded very often, with hashtag cat having 109,182,082 posts with this hashtag alone. Pictures of cats are really popular so if I post the picture again I would use random hashtags to gain a wider audience as the more popular the hashtag, the less time people will see your image in the hashtag feed. Also, the time I posted it would be the time most social media users would be out partying or essentially asleep as it was the weekend so posting at this time on this day was possibly not the best.

I posted this picture at 23:42 on Sunday evening. I ended up with 19 likes. I used some random hashtags and didn't use 'baby' as this would've had too many posts in the same feed. The tags about baby photography attracted a baby art group who followed me and liked the picture as well as another baby account like. I saw that the hashtag 'babygirl' attracted romantic accounts as I didn't take in to account that this is a nickname for a female partner. Regardless, it attracted extra attention to my picture.

I posted this image at 6:50pm on Sunday evening and ended up with 14 likes all together. I got likes from 2 dog photo accounts and a follow from a dog account. As well as hashtags relating to dogs I also posted the camera make and an editing app hashtag along with gardening and autumn to try and attract a few extra likes as the dog tags wouldn't stay on peoples feeds long as they are really popular.

I posted this image at 22:40 18/03/17 (saturday) and ended up with 29 likes, the most likes so far. I used any hashtags I could think of relating to the image to add but there was no occurrence of followers from a specific location or sunset accounts which I was confused about as I thought it was probably the hashtags that got me the amount of likes specifically but it must have been the time and day I posted it, more people must have been online at that specific time and day than the others.

I posted this image at 7:30pm Sunday 19/03/17. This was the first image I posted with hashtags and I ended up with 9 likes. I added hashtags of hub accounts but they didn't seem to acknowledge my post so this isn't something I will keep adding unless I am noticed soon. As it is a cat picture and the cat tags are very popular, I feel I should have added a few more random tags.

I posted this image at 12:27pm on a Monday 20/03/17. It gained 23 like altogether. I feel as though the city related tags are attracting likes to my images so I may add the city tags as random tags to images unrelated to the city. 

I continued to upload images to my Instagram account:

I posted this image at 22:23 on Monday evening and received 21 like altogether.

I posted this at 12:42pm on Tuesday. It gained 23 likes. 

I posted this picture at 8:30 am on Thursday 22/03/17. 26 likes altogether.

23/03/17 17:20 26 likes

23/3/17 21:26 30 likes

28/03/17 2:30pm 18 likes

I posted this image at 9:47pm on Wednesday 29/03/17.

This image recieved the most likes overall with 41 likes!!

I found that images posted between 8:30pm-10pm gained the most likes and ones posted early morning between 7 30-8-40.

I will continue to upload at these specific times to get the most views/likes/followers I can to keep my work being noticed.

I also found that I did gain likes from the subjects in my tags, for instance, I tagged #black lab #dog # doggo and ended up with follows from other dog accounts and likes from lots of dog accounts.

I think the tag #f4f and #followforfollow definitely helps gain followers but some people unfollow if you do not follow straight away so it is not the most effective way to keep followers.