Week 8 Part A: Using Hashtags on Instagram

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
 Trulyours Designs focus is flower photography wall prints. This makes Instagram's emphasis on visual posts a perfect fit and forum to showcase work. In approaching my Instagram photography business investigation, I followed the following businesses: Adobe Stock, Annie Liebovitz, Fine Art America, and roads_diverge. 

Adobe Stock 

 Adobe Stock is the premier behemoth site for royalty-free stock images, photos, graphics, vectors, video footage, illustrations, templates, and 3d assets. They have 222,000 followers and have 1,289 posts on their Instagram account. They average about two posts a week that are a mixture of videos and pictures featuring Artist Spotlights, challenges, and program recipients. The most recent post from October 5th is a video lookbook featuring Melanie Marie's FW 2021 jewelry collection. It received four comments from outsiders that are mostly flame emojis, and a thank you comment from Melanie and Adobe Stock. The majority of the comments are congratulatory emojis, and each post averages about five comments. There was one post that received 45 comments, twenty two of which were heart emojis from the artist and eleven posts from the same person that were single letters like "F" and "C." No hashtags are being used. The posts receive between 300 - 600 likes each, and the videos are averaging between 1000 - 1500 views. They are really not getting much interaction on Instagram, which validates how well known they are in their business.


Annie Leibovitz is a female American icon in the world of photography. She has been declared a Living Legend by the Library of Congress and has the notable distinction of being the first woman to have a feature exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.. At the age of 72, she is still globetrotting with her photoshoots. Her Instagram account has 606,000 followers and does not follow anyone. Her recent post from October 12th shows two pictures from an upcoming spread in Vogue entitled "Down the Rabbit Hole." It features couture photos from years past that are from Annie's upcoming book Wonderland. The 45 comments this post has received are mostly congratulatory emojis. In September she averaged about two posts a week. Most of her posts are a combination of her working on location and behind the scenes location shots. Her September 11 post of the 9/11 Memorial from Anna Wintour's office at 1 World Trade reveals a glimpse into her world. Her post of 100 year old Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest active National Park Service ranger, on her birthday, received 588 comments. The post is two portraits shot in 2019 of Betty on the job, one in color, and one in black and white. The comments are mostly about Betty and her legendary service. Annie mostly uses @ as in @voguemagazine to take you to the referenced Instagram page for her post subject matter. The only hashtag used is #Hyundai Partner for her recent work for Hyundai Journeys. Her use of @ and # is extremely business oriented. Her posts receive between 5,000 to over 60,000 likes, so she definitely has a regular following. Annie, being true to herself, is using Instagram the way she sees best, which is to give us a glimpse of her world and to celebrate the humanity of those who share it with her.


Fine Art America is a large online worldwide art marketplace and print-on-demand business. Artists, photographers, graphic designers, and illustrators sell wall art, home decor, and apparel through the site. Fine Art America's Instagram has 385,000 followers. The 147 posts from September were all finalists in their 2021 Billboard Contest, from which twenty winners will be selected to be displayed on actual billboards. The last post is from September 22nd, and the winners have yet to be announced. No hashtags are used, but there are @ that open up the artist's Instagram. Previous posts from June show art from a featured artist. These posts do contain hashtags about the subject matter like #autumn, #fall, and all had #featured artist, #faaartist, and #printsforsale. Each post mostly gets two to ten comments, which are short one to two word positive comments and occasionally customer service complaints unrelated to the post. The post that received the most comments, 51, was posted on August 5th and announced the Billboard Contest. The comments ranged from artist promotions, criticism about the contest, to emojis. Each post receives between 50 - 350 likes, with the exception of two tasteful nudes, one of which received over 2,000 likes and the other over 3,000 likes. The amount of customer service comments is detrimental to the site's image. These comments don't appear to be being handled either, and that is reflecting poorly on the business, even though really beautiful artwork is displayed in the posts. 


roads_diverge is a flower photographer and Robert Frost lover with 3,438 followers they follow back. Their floral photography is similar to mine. They do a lot of traveling, but it appears that they are based in Half Moon Bay, California. The last post from August 3rd is a close up of a dahlia that they used 21 hashtags on. The post received eighteen complimentary comments, and they replied to nine of the comments. The comments form a sort of dialogue. This is a pretty common pattern and interaction for most of the posts. They have posted 55 times since April 1, 2021. It appears that they take pictures and post at a later date. Each post averages twenty hashtags, some of which are general like #travel, #photo, and some are specific like #dahlia, #daisy, and #pink. Their earlier posts averaged 50 likes and their recent posts get up to 650 likes. Their most recent posts of flower closeups receive the most responses. Instagram is really working out for them on an engagement level. I do not see any indication that they are trying to sell their photos.

I learned the most about hashtag usage from roads_diverge, and that is to use hashtags that are both general and specific. I also learned that using hashtags is definitely the way to improve your reach on Instagram. The hashtags I will probably use will be specific flower names, colors, location, and general hashtags like nature and photography. The other point I learned is that it is really important to think about what type of Instagram engagement you are looking to receive before posting. Staying abreast of comments posted is also critical to Instagram success.

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