Would you pay for a shout out on social media to increase your followers?

willow2112 · May 7, 2018

Hi,

I’m looking at ways to increase my following on social media for my photography pages (Facebook and Instagram specifically). I was considering a paid shout out.

For those who don't know what a shout out is: where a Instagram or Facebook photography page / account with a lot of followers (50K - 12mil+) would post one of my photographs, with a link to my social media account/page, on their page/account, thereby exposing my work to their following, and directing their followers to my social media pages and resulting in an increase in authentic followers on my page. No like bots or fake followers!

The page I was considering does curate the submissions, so it's not a case of my work simply being featured because I paid (refund given if it does not). It would still have to meet their guidelines and quality standards and fit their aesthetics and overall theme.

Just wondering if any other photographers have done something similar? If so, what was your experience? Did you get a good amount of interest and followers afterwards? Would you consider it worth the money? How much would you be willing to spend if you got 100-500 new followers to your page? Are there any pages that will post a shout out for free? What kind of numbers of followers does the page need to have to be considered worthwhile for paying for a shout out? Is this practice frowned upon? Any other pointers?

PS. Not trying to make money initially from doing this, but building Instagram and Facebook pages and I'm thinking having the right followers can be leveraged for sales purposes in future.

Thanks for any help or advice :)

denisegoldberg · May 7, 2018

Do you really believe this will get you more followers?

I can't imagine this being worth it. Perhaps the individual you pay has a lot of followers - but will those followers becoming followers for you just because of a single mention on a site? Yes, you may see some click-through activity initially. I would be surprised if this will translate into real followers.

kdog · May 22, 2018

I think it completely depends on your work. You'd have to distinguish yourself from the countless fine-art photographers out there right now to grab someone's attention long enough to want to visit your website. If you're not trying to make money then I'm not sure why you'd pay money for this. I'd probably stick to Facebook and Instagram and see what you can do on your own.

monk_ · May 25, 2018

Hey, I am not sure whether I will pay for that. It depends who is the youtuber and why is he giving me a shoutout. There are those youtubers that give shout outs to random people that followed them or liked/commented on their posts. However, if they don't do shoutouts that often and they do it because it because they like my content or something like that I think a shoutout will be useful because a lot of people will respond and proceed to follow.

Dyun · May 25, 2018

Better way to get real followers is to put the work into it, comment on other people's work, get involved, make it a little more personal and just keep on truckin'. Even paying services to get you more followers is a waste of money IMO. I am so sick of all the auto-followers and obviously spammy comments like "great picture" on what is actually a video for example. I think Instagram has turned into companies spamming people, watching other companies via auto bots, and the real people get caught in the middle. I'm very disenchanted with it all.

kbevphoto · January 3, 2019

I was thinking about this as well. I've asked a few people with a lot of followers if they did this and how they're thought about it. Here are a few thoughts:

Paid shout-out - With no guarantees, it feels like it's a good way for people to monetize their large following. That doesn't mean much for you, since there's no guarantee that they have "real" followers anyway.
Promoted posts - I did this on IG with the "projected" reach around 10k. At the end, IG only allowed the post to reach about 2000 people. That was hugely disappointing, especially considering IG is in 100% control over the reach. It was a small amount of $, so i didn't complain, but I won't do it again
Unpaid shout outs - I have access to two accounts with ~100k followers and share my related content through them from time to time. While those posts get a lot of engagement, the cross over to my own account hasn't been very high. I feel like posting "Hey!!! I'm over here!!!" That doesn't bode well for paid shout outs, which is why i have never done them.
TFP shoots - Depending on the content, you may want to offer free portraits/ shots to people with bigger accounts. Then they can share on their feeds and tag/shout you out. I've done that as well, since I shoot a lot of shows/ competitions. It works OK
Paying for followers outright - I have a good friend with 260k+ IG followers for his business page. His view was that to get counts like that, if you're not a celebrity already, is that you have to pay for them. "It's a dirty game" were his words. Basically, he viewed it as a way to get the snowball rolling. I just can't get my head around this one and haven't done it.

So what have I been trying? For better or worse, I'm trying a few things. It's a lot of trial and error. In the spirit of sharing:

A) Following people that follow similar accounts/ use similar hashtags - I've grown one of my (5) IG accounts from ~600 to ~6000 followers in about 6 months. I use an app (Followers Track for Instagram) to Unfollow people that don't follow back. Basically, I'm betting that my "follow" puts my account on people's radar. I cycle up and down every 2-3 weeks. You can only follow a couple of hundred at a time/ per day, it takes a few minutes. (overall "follow" max is 7500) You can use the app to unfollow 200 at a time, with a few unfollow rounds per day before IG stops you. At some point, I will need to unfollow people that are following me. I'll cross that bridge in a few months, i suppose.

Engagement groups - A friend added me to one of these. Thus far, I'm not that impressed. bsaically its a DM group of people that agree to comment and like each others posts. When you post a pick, you forward it to the group and go from there. In understand why this works in theory, but it's my first one. I'm guessing there are better versions of this. I may start one to get a more committed group and test it out again.

C) Biz account upgrade - If you set up a Facebook page and connect it to you IG account, you can get some "Insights" into the reach of your posts and engagement. I set up two throwaway pages so I could get better insight into my posts on the two feeds I'm trying to grow. it's been very enlightening and helpful to see what content gets engagement. It's changed how I hashtag and post

D) Hashtags - THis is a mixed bag. I have several groups of tags i use. i set up Text Replacement and "ig{CODE}" tags to insert batches of tags into my posts easily. This is helpful, but I think i need to do a better job rotating them

I'm still looking for the breakthrough idea. Comments and feedback are welcomes. I'm certainly looking for ideas.

KBev

Two feeds I'm growing: @BBoyPix_KBevPhoto and @Graffiti_KBevPhoto