A tiny bit hopeful: day 22

I stayed up till 1 am last night watching videos on YouTube. They first started off as Motivational talks and then switched to beauty content. Before calling it a day, the last video I watched was by Teni Panosian, an influencer who has 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube alone. The video was of a light-based makeup tutorial to do at home, especially on the days when you just felt like getting ready. I watched it through to the end. Already decided I wanted a day like this, to just wear some makeup, which I haven’t touched for three weeks, apart from wearing mascara to the grocers. There’s no rule about wearing makeup in the house. 

Waking up this morning at 10.30 am was quite a struggle, I could’ve continued to sleep on till 11 am. But alas, my mind would not allow it. It fought off the sleep in my eyes. I wasn’t half surprised by the late wakeup. I knew all those early rises would catch up one day.

I go downstairs to make myself a late breakfast. But breakfast has been cancelled it’s now turned to brunch. My first meal of the day was rather different. Before I could reach the kitchen door my mum had already made an omelette. The pros of living at home. I happily accepted the egg-luscious dish. 

The whole household was up and working long before me. Taking the hot breakfast to my room, I got started on two drawings, to add on to both my Instagram accounts. This pretty much took up my whole afternoon. 

I’m liking the featured images  are going in. My latest image is from Unsplash. It’s simple and my favourite colour, pink. I’d take any excuse to work with pink. The original image was of a pink Pantone card. I edited it by adding a light yellow card underneath. I used the pen tool to draw a vector silhouette of long wavy hair and cut the shape out of the pink card, to reveal blonde hair. I then drew a black mallet and placed it under the Pantone name. I call this piece legally blonde.

Feeling a little different today, I prepped two things for lunch, my lazy kebabs and sweet potatoes. I was in no mood to rationalise.  Taking the meal back to my room, I continued to get on with my productive afternoon. Eating as I worked, the two ingredients tasted good in front of my computer. I made sure I finished the food while it was still warm. I’m not a fan of hot food going cold. 

Once I finished both artworks. I uploaded them on to their destined Instagram accounts, hashtagging the likes out of them. I’m not sure if those hashtags are getting me onto any search feeds. Whenever I look at my insights I only get a couple of impressions. A little more doubles taps and saves would be nice.

I turned to Google to see if it was only me experiencing the little to none hashtag fame. Within seconds Google displayed a list of sites that also spoke about the same concerns. Browsing through each site I hoped to find some helpful tips and tricks that will at least lead me to double-digit likes, be it 10. Apparently, with a shift to Instagram algorithms, the content engagement is far less than what it used to be; #artoftheday doesn’t get the same results as it once would’ve. 

Here’s what I learnt:

The dilemma: You’ve taken 10 picture’s, deleted the blurred ones, spent time editing them and now you’re ready to post. You upload a good quality picture, have an aesthetically pleasing theme going on and have scattered hashtags under it. But alas you’ve only got 4 likes. How? How do you reel in more likes?

The solution: First and foremost research. I spent some time browsing the hashtags I was using and found its content being updated every second. Though I had just uploaded a picture a minute ago, my post was lost amongst 100 others within seconds. I realised popular hashtags such as #art will only lose me in the crowd.

#Art is also very generic and probably has over 1 million tags under it, who can compete with that? Being creative doesn’t end at the picture or description, it also continues on to the hashtags. Instead of #art use something that relates to the post and subject, try #pinkart (that was off the top of my head). 

Another thing I’ve learnt is some hashtags have been banned and can lead to blocking. I’ve not gone over which ones they are, but I will be so I know what to ditch. 

Also, alternate between hashtags especially if you’re posting frequently. Rotate, don’t copy and paste from the previous posts. Seems like a big job, but it will be worth it. To make things easier, I’ve started a spreadsheet of hashtags that I can use for my content.

The majority of hashtags per post is 30. The aim is to reach for that number, so of course, the more the merrier.

Dinner wasn’t far off the different list either, I guess it was just meant to be a distinctive kind of day. My mum had made spaghetti with mincemeat. Which I happily scoured down. Now for an early night, but before I doze off, I’m curling up to a good book.