Waiting For A New Instagram Platform

I have been missing, because I had to deal with a personal issue. Since I am waiting for a new Instagram and continue waiting, I took advantage of this time to focus on something personal. It has been mentioned by people, for every niche SEO is important, but for artists and photographers the best place to increase your traffic is through social media. That is a problem when the biggest image based platform decides to change their business model. This didn’t happen overnight as the decision to become more similar to Tiktok, had been slowly happening for awhile. Along with Facebook’s obsessive need to have your personal data, it has been tough for people to be noticed on Instagram. I was suspended for refusing to show a photo of myself. I value my privacy and I zealously guard it. Besides, there was no reason to require my photo, other then Instagram wanting to use it for other means, which I refuse to be apart of. It has been a long road to seeing Instagram destroying itself for creators. SEO is not easy for artists and photographers, as our work is visual not word play. I know from reading Reddit, many creators are waiting for a new image base platform to come. When you are one of the first there, even if you come when buzz is starting, by the time that platform is a household name, you may already have many thousands or tens of thousands of followers. That is an important head start, within a year you may have a hundred thousand or a million followers. One of the most important things with using social media is to get people from your account to your website. With a website, a blog and a portfolio, I am waiting to see what happens next. While I am doing this I am painting and trying to find new social media platforms. Every day I am adding new pins on Pinterest, even if it is just one pin, eventually it will add to something. I am trying different things on Pinterest to see what works. In the future I will write about that.

Possible Alternatives

I have tried Hyprr, it has a lot of positives, chronological feed, no ads and the ability to post both video or images. The one thing it lacks is people and I haven’t seen a lot of marketing It was hyped last year by a few people and then just become forgotten. At the moment, the most spoken about alternative is Bubblehouse, it is the social media platform and I am most intrigued by. Both photographers and artists are welcome to post. That is an important factor, it has a chronological feed and other good features. It is available on both ios and android phones. There is one issue that I have to resolve, which is how to post images taken from a normal camera. I use an itouch tablet not an iphone and at the moment I haven’t figured out how to transfer my images to post. One alternative that is mentioned is Artfoil. The major problem with Artfoil is that it is only for artists. Basically artists end up following artists who are obviously the least likely people to buy art. What made Instagram fantastic was that everyone was welcome to post images on any subject or style. As a result, it increased your chances of being noticed by a diverse group of people and earning an income. ArtStation is a little different in that it is a site for professional concept and illustrative artists to be discovered by companies. You have a portfolio with a biography, instead of a platform that requires you to post regularly and interact with people. People that are interested and looking for new artists are more likely to look at Artstation, because of the level of professionalism of the artists. You never know who will discover you and at the same time you never know when the next Instagram will come. It may come tomorrow, one such obscure platform is called Gala. Until a viable alternative comes to fruition, I will take advantage of this time to grow my Pinterest account. Even just a few pins a day may make a difference in the long run.