As I sat nursing a warm cup of coffee, mulling over the recent content capture in Kansas City, it struck me just how much Instagram has morphed from a quirky photo-sharing app to a polished, algorithmic powerhouse. There was a time when our feeds were unfiltered windows into each other's lives; now they're carefully curated galleries where spontaneity seems like a distant memory. It has transformed into a strategically-driven platform.
The second half of our conversation touches on the rollercoaster ride of inconsistent engagement and its psychological toll on creators like me. I'll share the ongoing struggle with Instagram's love-hate relationship with its users: the unpredictable nature of story views, the craving for deeper community connections, and the search for the elusive joy in content creation. Through this introspective chat, I'll also emphasize the importance of creating impactful work that resonates, rather than playing the numbers game for followers. So, whether you're a fellow content creator or just a social media enthusiast, I invite you to join this discussion that aims to reignite the spark of genuine interactions within the digital community.
As I sat nursing a warm cup of coffee, mulling over the recent content capture in Kansas City, it struck me just how much Instagram has morphed from a quirky photo-sharing app to a polished, algorithmic powerhouse. There was a time when our feeds were unfiltered windows into each other's lives; now they're carefully curated galleries where spontaneity seems like a distant memory. It has transformed into a strategically-driven platform.
The second half of our conversation touches on the rollercoaster ride of inconsistent engagement and its psychological toll on creators like me. I'll share the ongoing struggle with Instagram's love-hate relationship with its users: the unpredictable nature of story views, the craving for deeper community connections, and the search for the elusive joy in content creation. Through this introspective chat, I'll also emphasize the importance of creating impactful work that resonates, rather than playing the numbers game for followers. So, whether you're a fellow content creator or just a social media enthusiast, I invite you to join this discussion that aims to reignite the spark of genuine interactions within the digital community.
You guys are going to have to bear with me a little bit. I just came back from a very long shoot in Kansas City and it's been a long week. It's Thursday now. My guest today has rescheduled their episode. Let's just have a casual conversation like just you and I. Let's just sit here, kick it and have a good time, spend, you know, a good 30 minutes together and we can catch up over your morning coffee or your morning commute, whatever the case is, we're just going to have a good time in chat.
Speaker 1:
Let's take it back to the days whenever Instagram was first popping up. Let's take it back to there, because that's going to be super relevant to everything I'm going to talk about here. All right, when I was in Kansas City, I was shooting photos with this like a Q2 right here that I picked up from Lens Rentals and I got to be honest. It really brought me back to whenever we would take photos for fun and we would just enjoy photography, and that's relevant to today's topic. So, before we get into it, this is my degree behind me. It's just a blur and I'm not going to throw it because it's very tattered from the previous episodes. It's really getting screwed up. Now I'm not even 20 episodes into the podcast and I'm already thinking, well, crap, I'm going to have to get another one by episode 50. Otherwise I'm going to be throwing shreds across the studio, but this is my degree.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the show where I give you a backstage pass into the life of a full time freelancer and content creator and sometimes I get to kick it with myself. Well, kick it with you, really, because we're going to chill and have a convo about social media and Instagram and how crappy it's become, in my opinion. In my opinion, whenever you think of early Instagram, you probably think of the Mayfair photo filters and the Nashville photo filters the one that had the border, that had the Polaroid text and crap and you probably think of just really crappy phone photos, because whenever Instagram first started gaining popularity, that's all we had to post on. There is, you either had a really crappy Android camera which, let's be real, it was really crappy back then or really crappy iPhone camera let's be real, it was really crappy back then. So you had two options pretty much, and all the photos were crap, even the ones that were like aesthetic and beautiful, and all that crap. They were crap. They were crap. Let's just call it like it is. None of those photos were great, because they were all grainy, blurry and not a lot of detail.
Speaker 1:
So we would post these photos just because we wanted to, because we wanted to share these things with people that mean something to us. It wasn't trying to get clout, it wasn't trying to get reach and engagement and followers. It was just posting just a post. That's how YouTube started out, too. We would share these moments that were important to us with other people and Facebook even. We would share these moments that were important with other people that are close with us, or we'd spam them with Farmville invites let's not forget about that period that I'll never let go or the Facebook pokes, which are really. Facebook really had some weird features now that I'm thinking about it, but Instagram specifically, it was just a place where we'd share these photos that we would capture in our day to day lives, and it was so casual, so carefree, so not a lot of pressure behind it. You didn't feel inclined to post. You didn't feel inclined to show up if you didn't want to. It was so relaxed. And then towards the mini mini.
Speaker 1:
The mid 2010s is when we really started to feel a shift in the platform and you started to see things like influencers, people posting two to three times a day and all of these different trends like videos, video posts started to pop up. That was an option the option to post from your cameras. You could upload things to your phone and then post it to Instagram. It wasn't just phone camera, it wasn't just phone camera with really crappy filters. There were actual photographs on there. That's when we started to feel the shift, because I think brands started to realize that they could make money on this thing and you start to see more ads. You start to see very popular people. It's just the overall tone and vibe from the content that people were posting. That was just different. Everybody was trying to be more aesthetic. Everything felt more calculated and intentional. People were just posting their morning coffees or posting things that meant something to them. They wanted the attention, the validation from people. Sino, los Angeles 2020.
Speaker 1:
I remember back then, in 2017, my first full-time job out of college was I was a digital marketing specialist for brands that produce aftermarket Rolex straps and that was my first real experience like building an Instagram with intention, and I remember I would post two to three times a day on that account and I grew that account by at least a thousand followers a week, which was wild to think about, because nowadays I think about posting two to three times and I'm sure you're thinking the same thing like that's overkill, that's a lot. But yeah, back then that was what we did. That's what we did to grow the account and I would post UGC, which, if you're not familiar with what UGC is, it's, let's say, I take a picture with this like a camera and I tag like as Instagram account and they repost it on their feed. I've produced user-generated content, which is content that other people make for a brand, and so I would post these photos, these, all this stuff. I'd post like some UGC, some stuff that I would capture myself.
Speaker 1:
I'd capture videos and photos and comment on stuff like reshare stories oh my God, stories. I don't even whatever stories first came out. This was the thing that really annoyed me is I would post a story every few hours and I would make sure that there was a new story every couple hours, which, if you think about how much content you need to have to post a story every few hours, it's so much, it's so much. A few hours a day, every day and then you'd make sure that your story never expired, so that way you always had something new every time somebody opened the app. It was crazy. But see, this is whenever I noticed the shift in thinking from I just want to post to have fun to I'm posting to stay relevant and also make money, because it was a business. They were trying to sell things. It was a business. They were showing up, building a community as a business. That's what you have to do.
Speaker 1:
So once I started doing this, that's whenever, like, I started my Instagram account the following year and I implemented the same strategies and I gained a lot of my followers back then. I'll be honest, the first like several thousand followers were from the first like two years of my Instagram account in existence, because I would post every day, sometimes multiple times. Some days I'd keep it at one because I didn't have enough content to post, but I also would sometimes just post mid content just because I needed to show up, and then I would like other people's stuff, even if I didn't follow them, and then I'd comment, respond to, store, like I would do so freaking much and it was exhausting, but I'm grateful I did it because I mean, without that I don't even know where I'd be right now. But that's whenever we started the notice, the shift, and then in recent times around the panorama is when the shop features start showing up and then you have reels and short form video and all this crap. That just doesn't feel right, like that's.
Speaker 1:
Now we have every day people becoming influencers and that's when the shift happened to why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling now, because on Instagram I have such inconsistent engagement and I genuinely don't know the reason behind it and I know some people are thinking and I also believe this to an extent is somebody that is the that is the crappiest sounding bike or car, whatever it was outside just now that was that sounded like shit. But I remember thinking I need content that people care about. I need to post things that other people are going to care about and bring value to people's lives and make just make better videos, and I agree to some extent that you need to make good videos. I think that simply posting nowadays, especially nowadays when so many people are doing so, it's not enough to be relevant, because now the competition is more. It's higher than ever and one could argue I have even argued it with. You know, just like trying to be on an outside, looking in perspective of my content, is that maybe it's just you're just not producing good enough videos or you're not producing something that enough people are going to care about to be that relevant. You know, I think all the time like have I fallen off? Have I? Has my Instagram game just like falling completely off? And it depends on the day how I respond to that. And today is one of those days where I'm like yeah, I've definitely fallen off, because the past, like week here's the reality of the situation.
Speaker 1:
I did a collab post with the Gateway Arch for a Disney collab and I made a video about the Percy Jackson and like activation here in St Louis and it performed extraordinarily well, extraordinarily well. And then I post like things on my own and like nobody sees it. Here's a high level overview. I have about 5,700 followers and I posted a story on Tuesday, tuesday of this week, when I was in Kansas City. I posted a couple of stories and they expired with 150 views. I haven't seen that low of a view count since, probably when I had about a thousand followers on my page. It's insane. It's insane that it was that low. I'm like 5,000 followers but 150 story views. What the hell is going on here? But then Wednesday I let, after I let those stories expire, I posted another thing 600 plus views why do you see what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:
And then sometimes I'll post a photo carousel or a post videos and they do exceptionally well, like they'll get you know, 10 K plus views and really good comment to like ratio, like I did an audit on my Instagram profile and it said like you're like to comment ratio and like your comment ratio for like the engagement and views on the post is insane because people comment, people engage, people interact. It's just, I don't know, it's inconsistent. It's inconsistent as fuck and it's it's so annoying because it makes it and I know you're probably thinking the same thing is like you probably have inconsistent engagement too, and it's hard to understand what's going on there, because Is it the content? Is it me? You start to question, like what is it that the algorithm just doesn't like, or what is it that people aren't liking? You know what I'm saying and it's frustrating. You try to figure it out.
Speaker 1:
But Instagram used to not be about this shit. You. Instagram used to be this casual place, this chill place, this place that you just hang out and kick it with your friends. Whatever happened to that? And now we have all these things going on and I keep seeing posts of like oh, I posted one reel and I went from like a thousand followers to like 25,000. Apparently, all it takes is one really low effort reel to get you 20,000 followers. I've seen it from people that I know personally. I've seen it from random people. I've seen it from people that I've like seen their stuff before and then I'm like whoa, one reel got 3.5 million views and now they're at 20 K. It's insane, it's annoying, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
Instagram has just it's gone so far downhill and it's such a different app now and people are so photoshoppy and fabricating their lives and trying to look cool just for social media. It's like, it's just disingenuous. Like I get on the app and I don't even feel good about it anymore. I see things and I'm just like ugh. I don't even like feel the like yeah, like I don't. I don't feel like the happiness for other people, like that's what I loved about. That's what I love about social media in general is you get to feel the community and, like I, get to see what people are up to and I'm like, yo, that's cool, that's really sick. Or like I'm like, oh, somebody that I know wants to do something similar. Maybe you two can collab and like there's a connection that can be made there. The social part just doesn't feel like it's there anymore and it's obnoxious.
Speaker 1:
Because I know, specifically with people here in St Louis and the trends that have been set, like people just watch me, like I noticed the same people in my stories. They're watching very intently because they're near, like the top of the list, the viewing list, and I never see them in my likes, I never see them in my comments and I never see them in my DMs. It's just. Instagram has become the app of the watchers. It's like the watchful eye and it's weird, like it's just, but the watchful eye is the people. They're all watching what you're doing. They're seeing what you're doing, but they're not saying anything, they're not interacting with you, they're just watching. It's almost like a zoo exhibit. They just want to see what you're up to and sometimes they'll even take inspiration or completely copy you, and that's why I have so much beef with bigger businesses and brands specifically in the community that I have created so much content around and honestly helped build is you have these pages that have, like you know, 50, 100, k, 200 K followers that they'll see things that I do Like.
Speaker 1:
I remember there was a page and I'm just going to bluntly say there's a page here that I made a video at a restaurant that I went to and I just use my phone. I color graded it a certain way and I got certain camera angles and certain panning shots and certain caption style on the video itself. That's now like you know, those freaking reels that are like POV here at this place. I did one of those and it performed okay. I got like 200 likes or something. It was fine, got like 5000 views. It's like it is what it is. I didn't really care, I was just happy to be at the restaurant because it's my favorite in St Louis, and two weeks later I see a large page do the same, like warm color tones, the same text, the same style of video, and I even DM them. I was like yo, so you, you took inspiration here. Huh, you really liked what I do, but like you wouldn't. You wouldn't like share the video, you wouldn't like interact with the video, you just did it yourself. And now it's I talked about this a little bit in the episode with Brad and previously, which I highly encourage you to listen to after this one is it's like why are we competing?
Speaker 1:
Like, why are we ripping each other off? Everybody's just it's. Everything is just so watered down now and everybody's just trying to do the same thing because everybody wants to be so relevant. That's what Instagram has become. Everyone is just fighting for relevancy and for what Some people are just like. I just want to be able to say I have the cloud, I like cloud is currency.
Speaker 1:
So here's my theory, kind of as a result of how everything's been going with Instagram. I think that we're going to start seeing the genuine content, that kind of stuff, the genuine videos where people are just shooting the shit with each other. I think we're going to start seeing like showing the imperfections, showing all that. I think that's going to make a comeback. I think it's going to make a comeback Hopefully you didn't hear that burp just now I mean, I'm trying my best to keep it quiet, but I think there's going to be a comeback from that.
Speaker 1:
I think we're going to see people just being themselves again, not trying to manufacture these videos, not trying to manufacture these scenarios, not trying to make everything look perfect for the gram and just do things just for enjoyment again, because that is what ties in with this Leica right here, because I rented this more so for enjoyment, not for oh, I want to have Instagram perfect photos. No, I got this because I wanted to have fun shooting again and, honestly, I did. I picked up this camera and I was just having fun getting photos for myself again and I shared them anyways. I posted today and I just I shared select images and I don't really care how it performs. I don't give a crap and I see more people doing the same thing. Less people are doing, you know, trendy topics and trendy shit. Like I don't know.
Speaker 1:
I've never been that kind of creator because I don't really. I don't care about the clout as much. The only thing. The only reason I care about clout is because brands care, and if I want to be able to make money, that's just how it is. I've said this many times, like I've. I'm very candid and transparent about that. I want the followers and I want the engagement because of brands, that's it. They see that and they're like okay, here's money for creating a video around this and I tried to do things differently and I feel like I'd be doing a disservice if I just did some generic shit for you, because you're taking the time to consume my content, you're taking the time out of your day to watch my videos and stuff.
Speaker 1:
So that's why, like whenever I did the Hertz collab with the Tesla and like the EV, I was like how can I make this different and how can I make this something that people are actually going to want to watch and they're going to be like wow, that was actually a good use of my time. That is a good video. I want to see more stuff like that. That's my thought process going into this stuff, because that's the stuff that resonates. Like I made the video also with Midwest Dairy or undeniably Dairy and they sent me to a dairy farm and every time I go to a gathering or event, somebody brings up that video. Like people approached me and they're like yeah, I saw, you did that dairy farm video. That was crazy.
Speaker 1:
It's like I want to make content like that that resonates with people, that people remember, like people still to this day. And then, like whenever I did the video about Amazon and all those one star Amazon products I got. They were like that was hilarious and they like mentioned specific. I want content like that. I don't care about the cloud and like saying, yeah, I want, I want all these followers, I want to have three million followers and I want to be Mr popular. Like no, I just want to make cool shit that people care about, and however many people care about it. You know, of course, I'm not going to say no to three million because I really want the numbers and I really want brands to be able to like pay me better, but that's how I feel. That's how I feel that's how I feel it's weird.
Speaker 1:
It's like this whole trend of how content creation is going, specifically with Instagram, like I don't even get enjoyment, I don't get any fulfillment from posting on it. I don't get any fulfillment from interacting on it, because all I see is just like the same recycled shit that I'm tired of seeing and I'm over it. I'm overseeing the same videos over and over again. Just like this one's a zero sugar version, this one is a gluten free version, this one is a low calorie version. Like I'm so tired of seeing the same trend but different variations that, essentially, is just the same thing at the core. I'm tired of it and I'm tired of seeing like everybody's a rip each other off because what? What the hell's the fun in that? I'm tired of it. Dude, this app has me so exhausted and tired.
Speaker 1:
That's my thoughts on Instagram. I'd love to know what you guys think. Send me DMs on there, because I don't know another platform that you can reliably contact with me and connect me. Connect with me. I don't know if I even said that right, I think I just stumbled. But, like I said, I'm running on very little sleep. It's been a very hectic week and I've had to improvise today, so bear with me. But yeah, it's just I.
Speaker 1:
I want the fun back in social media and I try to keep it in every piece of content that I share and hopefully it resonates with you. Because I enjoy having these conversations with you, because we get to just take time just to talk and not be so serious for a little bit, and it's fun. It's fun, it's cool just to catch up. Sometimes I know these solo episodes are honestly my lowest performers of the podcast, but, to be honest with you, it's just fun being able to have these conversations. So I want to see the podcast grow. I want to see the podcast continue and I want to see things improve for the better, because I'm having fun and hopefully you are too.
Speaker 1:
With that said, thank you for tuning into this episode of this. Isn't my degree, because it's not. That is back there and now I do social media instead of that, which is still weird to think about a lot. But thanks for tuning into this episode and next week, like I said previously, you're going to start having Riverside chats in each episode, or it might be supplemental. I haven't fully decided how I want to implement that. It might just be an additional video each week, so we'll see what that's going to look like. But I have a lot of cool interviews coming up and, yeah, that's what I got for today.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to go get some sleep because I'm fucking tired. I'm going to be honest. I am so exhausted and I go through these sprints sometimes. Honestly, this degree helped me prep for this kind of lifestyle where there are days that I know that I'm not going to get a lot of sleep that night and I just have to run on caffeine. I've become a coffee person. I didn't drink coffee until like late college and then I started to get a lot of sleep Late college and then I started drinking coffee almost daily. Now, damn, that's kind of crazy. But yeah, I'm excited because I'm also going to a Valentine's Day dinner tonight on at rated test kitchens, so you'll be able to see photos of that on Instagram as well. So, thank you. This is a long winded goodbye. It's a Midwest goodbye, I guess we'll call it, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, subscribe and share the pod Peace.