Basic Instagram From a 15 Y.O POV
Instagram has always been a platform where users can share “aesthetic” pictures or anything that they choose. Whether it be pictures of a person’s body, your daily coffee, or just life. Instagram is an endless hole of content that is put out for the world to see digitally. But what’s the point, when there are so many other social platforms, why is that Instagram is so popular with such a large demographic. Let’s go over the core concepts of Instagram.
Core Concepts 🧠
- THE ALL IN ONE PLATFORM (Image, Text, Story)
- User Base
- Algorithms
- Followers and Following
THE ALL IN ONE PLATFORM 📲
Many social platforms are more geared towards certain aspects of sharing content. For example, youtube provides creators with money, viewers with enjoyment in the form of short/long videos. Reddit a platform for questions and answers depending on whatever niche, and Instagram a more visual platform. However, what we see from Instagram far surpasses that of all other platforms. Instagram has the ability to share photos, digital messages, share 24-hour stories, and IGTV(monetization coming soon) which is essentially long-form video. It encompasses a lot of aspects that other social media have implemented as their bread and butter. In addition, Instagram is more cohesive, allowing users to weave together these different features and make it feel as if they are one whole pie, instead of scattered pieces of a puzzle.
The Instagram User Base 👨🏼👶🏻🧑🏻
With over 1 billion active users on Instagram each month we can officially say that it’s a big platform. This user base is made of 3 types of accounts, influencers, and the average joe with 500 followers. The 3rd type includes business and theme pages. Influencers are the people/accounts that monetize their posts with sponsorships, affiliates, and other types of ways that they receive money from. These accounts are the ones that tend to have a bigger following and “flex factor”. On the other hand, the average joe usually averages 50 likes from friends and families. He uses Instagram just for fun and so that his extended family can see what he’s doing with his life. Business and theme pages usually are in the middle follower wise and are followed because of the value that they give to followers pertaining to niche (Ex. Travel page provides viewers beautiful images of Bali, SpaceX announces the success of new launch). These 3 types of accounts drive Instagram’s social aspect by providing their respected value which in turn leads to many users signing up and continuing to use the platform.
FAKE AND DEAD ☠️
However, there are definitely flaws in Instagram’s user base as we get into what are fake accounts/dead accounts. As you know, because of this “flex factor” that we talked about earlier, many believe that having 1k+ followers is the way to get clout when in reality that is just a number that means nothing. They then do whatever is necessary to get followers, which means buying fake followers through sketchy websites. But jokes on them their like count still won’t be proportional to their follower count, and the followers will also slowly diminish. However, this is not always the case can we see examples of this? Dead accounts usually make up 40% of big accounts and a lower percentage for smaller ones. So when you see Christiano Ronaldo with his 221 million followers know that over 70% are inactive or dead accounts.
The Instagram Algorithm 🔮
Have you ever wondered why you got that pokemon card ad on Instagram even though you don’t have the slightest interest in pokemon cards? Then it hits you, you clicked on a post about cards on Facebook, then ask yourself how did Instagram know? Even though I don’t know a lot about how that works all I know that Instagram’s algorithm is magical as it’s able to sort genres of content and in turn, push out whatever you show interest towards. Even if you click it once or twice, that genre of content will continue getting pushed into your explore feed. Nevertheless, the opposite also holds true. As mentioned in the previous point, influencers, a category of Instagram accounts that seek to monetize their accounts try to push out content which leads to growth, which then leads to 💰. Though this may seem easy, Instagram’s algorithm is always evolving and trying its best to push out that content to interested viewers. This may mean simply changing your caption to make it look more organized, or just posting more engaging content. Instagrams algorithm, paired with users who are dedicated to taking advantage of it allows everyone to consume the content that they enjoy. We will be reviewing how to grow your own successful Instagram page in the future.
Followers and Following 🗣
The concept of followers and following has been around for as long as I can remember. Essentially every social media app has this feature where other users can follow other users and get to see the content that they post and in turn other users following them to see the content that they post, forming a spiderweb network of people that are connected. That is the essence of what drives social media. However, as I explained in the concepts above, Instagram has developed a very cohesive platform where everything ties together along with followers and following. The algorithm, user base, simple yet usable features allow Instagram to be one of the best social media platforms in the world.
Conclusion ⚡️
Instagram is the best period, no discussion
If you enjoyed this type of content please consider following, more Instagram coming soon!!
— Tristian Xu
Disclaimer: This article is in my POV, what I see and what I understand, so some facts that I state might be false or sorta true. Please take what I say with a grain of salt and enjoy reading!!
