Help me instagram!

September 23, 2017 8:47 AM

I'm a total middleaged instagram newb! please help answer my super snowflakey questions :)

Hi all, I know there have been questions about instagram before so apologies in advance...

I'm a total middleaged newb who mostly just gets by with facebook, but I started using instagram to post art stuff in preparation for #inktober as I thought instagram would be more suitable. I've got some contacts taken over from facebook, but a few other arty people have been following me too over the last few days.

I guess my questions are

- how are these new people following me - is it due to art-related hashtags? they seemed to find me pretty quickly.
- is it ok for me to follow them back?
- for inktober, should I make my profile public? I am a bit worried that might cause problems for my facebook contacts who are real family/friends etc. or will the hashtag make the post visible anyway? I guess I want to get new contacts and get lots of arty types looking at my posts without compromising my current contacts IYSWM.
- for these kinds of projects, should I tag the inktober account or is that really obnoxious?

Thank you so much and sorry for sounding dumb :)

posted by low_horrible_immoral to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Best answer: I'll try to answer (I'm relatively new to Instagram myself, but like it a lot):

- Followers you don't know personally have most likely found your posts through the hashtags you use.
- If what they post interests you, feel free to follow back, but don't feel obliged to!
- Private profiles are private, regardless of the hashtags you use. Only your followers will be able to see your posts if you have a private profile. I don't see how making your profile public would compromise the followers you know personally. Yes, their comments and likes on the content you share will be visible to others, but if their profiles are private, their pictures won't be.
- No, it's not obnoxious in the least, this is what everybody does. The more (hash)tags you use, the more people will see your pics.

Have fun!
posted by Desertshore at 9:17 AM on September 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Random people will follow you and like your stuff to try to gain followers back. You can follow whoever you want. Hashtags will help people find you, yes.

If your profile is public, people can see the names of who you follow/who follows you, but they can't see someone's photos if their account is private. They can see their profile pic and bio only.

I don't use Instagram too much, but just one word of warning: a double-tap "likes" a post, so if you're creepin' on someone and digging deep into their archives and you don't want them knowing you were checking them out, be careful of the double-tap!
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:30 AM on September 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

I know a lot of artsy people who have 2 Instagram profiles - one public and one private. They do all their networking with the public one, and just keep the private one for friends and family. One of my friends shares a lot of the same pics on both feeds, but the private one has more pics of her family, and she writes differently in the captions and comments. More friendly / funny on the private one - inside jokes that may be weird if you're not inside, etc. More professional and being supportive of other artist friends and contacts on Instagram on the public one.

So, that's an option if you're worried about your friends and family privacy. Or you could just keep Facebook for that and use Insta for your public art.
posted by bluefly at 1:26 PM on September 23, 2017

Best answer: Instagram is not like Facebook where a post of a friend of a friend will show up in your feed if they've made it public, or if you like a post, it might show up in someone else's feed and show that you liked it. Perhaps this is what is worrying you? I know it worried me and keeps me wary on Facebook.

Instagram is much more straightforward. The only posts that will show up in anyone's feed are the posts of people they are directly following. If you like something, only that person's followers will see that you liked it.
posted by maggiemaggie at 2:05 PM on September 23, 2017

Best answer: The followers are a little from the hashtags, maybe some bots/junk accounts, and maybe some people trying to get follow backs to advertise their brand. Most will probably be legit, and you can tell pretty quickly by going to their profile and checking out what they are posting. No one can really do you any harm per se, but I only follow people if their feed actually interests me - otherwise their posts just junk up my feed.

I have a public profile and I have no problems. I don't get weird comments on my posts, or anything like that (though some people definitely get spammy comments). I think you'd only have to worry about your family being affected if they were writing very personal comments on your posts but since this is the internet, I assume they know better than to write stuff that they don't want public. As someone else said, hashtags or profile tags won't make them visible if they are private.

You should definitely tag inkoctober! I am not the kind of person who looks through hashtags but so many people do that, trying to find new interesting content to follow. Hashtags definitely get obnoxious for me after about 10 or 15 (more so if they are all that #likesforlikes #followback stuff) but you know, live and let live etc.

One thing I should mention, inspired by an earlier comment. People can definitely see the stuff you are liking (if it is public of course) by going to the 'following' page. I use this a lot to find related accounts to the ones I follow, but I also see some shit that I assume people don't realise I can. Like, a lot of my friends have fetishes I was not aware of until now. Good on them but yeah, eyes opened. Just like facebook, you probably shouldn't like stuff that you don't want other people to see.
posted by BeeJiddy at 3:38 PM on September 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for all your responses! I am not entirely clear if I like a friend's pic, someone else will be able to access that one pic - or not? it is not a biggy, people tend not to post personal stuff really, but I want to make sure I'm not compromising them.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:14 AM on September 24, 2017

Regarding your last question. No, if someone's account is set to private and you follow them, their posts won't appear in the list of pictures that you've liked. These pictures won't be accessible to people who don't follow this person.
posted by Desertshore at 5:21 AM on September 26, 2017