Week 8 Part A: How to Expand Your Reach on Instagram by Using Hashtags

    Hashtags are one of the most powerful tools that new content creators should take advantage of especially on Instagram. My own business is based all around visual content because it is a print shop. I looked at some of my favorite print shops as well as favorite artists that have their own shops to research and explore how they utilize hashtags for their own brand and businesses.

OMOCAT

    OMOCAT was originally one single artist that turned their brand into a print business; the business represents the original artist's work (original and fan) as well as many other artists' work within the company and artists who collaborate with them. They tend not to use many hashtags for their own original artwork or shop releases but will tag the original media if it is a fan work. The business posts about 3-4 days at a time sometimes posting twice in one day. Instagram is a highly effective platform for them with the artist's work regularly achieving 20k+ likes and promos for their prints and apparel line garnering about 10K-20k likes. This success is largely due to the huge fanbase that the original artist accumulated over the years, the hit game "OMORI" that they released in 2020, and the large amounts of fanart that they post which has helped the Instagram reach 179k followers; this means they're most popular posts, those of original and fan art or their game, have about 11.1% of their audience's(and some non-follower's) likes. Most of their recent posts also have high engagement with the bare minimum set at 50 to their most comments set at about 400. 

    My biggest takeaway from the OMORI Instagram is that posts should be at least weekly to keep an audience aware of your presence even in between shop releases.

OniCake CO.

    OniCake Co. is moderately sized print and accessory shop ran by one individual artist with the help of friends. They use a variety of hashtags, around 10-20, centered around the products they sell and the type of items they are such as "kawaii", "pinshop", "pastel", "itabag"; the business also uses hashtags that include Japanese characters to reach Japanese audiences that primarily speak that language. They currently sit at 23.6K followers with most posts hitting about 1.5k likes and comments range from under 10 to up to 40 on their more popular posts; their like to audience percentage sits at 6.4% which is relatively average. In the past, it looks like they posted about once a week but in recent months posts have tapered down to once a month with the last post going up today. The content that has the most engagement are related to sneak previews of their accessories like their bags.

    One thing I noticed while exploring their page is that branding was very important to the success of the post. The posts that aligned with the brand's pastel and cutesy aesthetic tended to do better while posts with more plain or muted backgrounds had far less engagement; this most likely indicates that their audience wants to see bright and cute images related to the shop and are disinterested when the duller images come across their timeline. 

CosmicSpectrumArt

    CosmicSpectrumArt is a popular freelance artist that also sells prints through their own shop. They use hashtags for their own original content such as "gloamingvale" but also use trending hashtags like "inktober" as well as use hashtags describing the medium of the work(digital, traditional, ink, clipstudiopaint,etc.). Their last post was today and they post about 2-3 times a week for most months and the content centers around their creation process and their finished products without outwardly advertising their shop and other payed content. They have 508k followers with most of their posts reaching 20k likes with most posts reaching about 50 comments on average; they do have some outlier viral posts that have reached 45k likes with over 400 comments which speaks to why they have so many followers and have a large amount of likes and comments on their other posts. Their average posts have about 4% of their audience that engage with the content but on their more viral posts they have about 8% engagement. Instagram is a mixed bag for this artist because they do get plenty of engagement but because they have viral posts and a not so loyal follower base they don't average the best engagement for their account size.

    One thing that I picked up from this account is that in order to get more engagement and followers it is best to appeal to current and popular media and create content based off of it. It also may be hard to keep engagement up if fan content is not regularly scheduled.

PlushUnagi

    PlushUnagi is the account and brand name of Ash, an independent and moderately popular artist, who sells prints and stickers as well as digital media like emotes. Like OniCake Co., the account also uses many hashtags that relate to the business and the type of prints that are made; "furby", "kawaii", "artist", "colorful", "small business", "etsy" are some of the 20+ tags that are used in every singly post that goes up. They have about 12.6k followers and garner about 1k likes per post with about 15 comments per post; this means they're engagement is about 7.9% which means the platform is highly effective for them. Their content that revolves around pop culture cartoon characters gets the most engagement with things like emote sheets having the least engagement on them. Their last post was yesterday and they post about everyday some weeks or almost everyday for most weeks.

    I think there are two things that I can take to improve my own standing on Instagram. The first is to be consistent and post often so that an audience is reminded about my business multiple times per week and this will hopefully have followers interact more which will push Instagram to reach more people. The second is to use many hashtags that describe my business and the type of content that it puts out; I have heard rumors that posts that excessively use hashtags don't always get promoted more in those tags so it'd be best to make sure that I don't add in over the amount that PlushUnagi is using and maybe even less than that.