The best thing about Social Networks is that you can post what YOU like. Nobody cares if it is your pet, food, new gadget, present or yourself unless there is something interesting for your followers.
Since, there are no strict guidelines on how to market your products on social media platform, everyone has their own way of social media marketing. Today, “Instagram” is highly accepted and mostly used social media platform to showcase your product, talent, work or art. It had over 600 million monthly active users (reported by expandedramblings) stated as of 12/15/2016. With that amount of traffic and ocean of content nobody definitely would like to be unseen. To increase the presence over Instagram there are several apps which would want you to buy them to stand exceptional. Some would sell you followers, others would insist you for organic growth. I personally have tried none but recently my friend recommended me ‘InstaGrid’ (A unique way to showcase your work with a big gallery grid on Instagram). Though, I didn’t invest in the app but I do commit that I made my own grid using Photoshop and tried the concept.
Honestly, the way it looked on my instagram page was exceptional until I really noticed how it’s really impacting me and my work. For those who don’t know what is Instagram Grid and how it works — It’s a tool / app which can make 3x3 or 2x2 grids of your picture so they look big and cool on your profile page.
Without taking much of your time here are 4 things I noticed on how Instagram Grids can impact your marketing, work or art.
Loosing Followers
Had you liked the image above if it would have popped up on your Instagram feed ?
Instagram Grids do make your pictures look cool on the profile page but they are placed on your followers feed as multiple parts of one image.
Your followers keep coming back to your instagram page because they like your work and since this image is part of a full image (which doesn’t make any sense) nobody wants to take a look at it.
Result: You start loosing followers since now they are not interested in your work.
Divides your reach
With instagram grids one picture is now divided into 3,6 or 9 pictures. Each time a new like, comment comes to your image, it is specific to that grid of big picture.
If you see the image above, it’s the actual data from my Instagram account which sums to around 1000 likes or reach. Since, I had this in a grid now my reach is divided per image / grid.
Result: Accumulated reach is now the reach per grid of the same image.
Loosing Quality Content
If you are well versed with Photoshop and it’s potential, you can probably create this grid in Photoshop and upload each image with it’s high quality resolution to your Instagram Account otherwise you will end up using one of the third party apps.
How these apps work is they upload your picture and re-save it to create small part images and download them back to your device for you to upload them one by one. With all this process of conversion and creating grid to show your beautiful picture in a beautiful way, you eventually lose on the quality.
Result: Your effort of bringing a beautiful, high rez image to Instagram is now not only converted to Grids but low quality as well.
Publishing a new picture will be a multi step process going forward
Since, Instagram uses Grid style to showcase your pictures, the complete is pushed by 1x1 grid once a new picture is uploaded. Now, the moment you want to upload a new picture the grid view of last set of pictures to showcase your work is misaligned and messed up.
Now, you got to stick to uploading set of 3x3 grids of your pictures to instagram everytime you want to upload a picture to maintain previous grids becasue Instagram doesn’t allow you to delete previous pictures (Unless you use any cleaner apps to do that).
Result: You end up following more steps / work to show your picture to your followers everytime you do an upload.
Conclusion: Instagram grids is a nice way to showcase your work only on your Instagram profile page especially if you are a photographer. Though, it comes with a lot of limitations, pain, loss of customers and unwanted work.
All the pictures I used above are the original work of mine I used to try Grid view of one picture on Instagram. Honestly, I find it painful and I have lost some of my followers since they were pissed off and annoyed.
How you manage your posts on Instagram? Do you use any grid apps or 3rd party tools? Do let me know by commenting below and share your thoughts on this blogpost.
Follow me on Instagram to see how these grids look individually and on profile page. If you like my work, do like my facebook page and subscribe for my newsletter through my website.
