 it's time we had a chat about Instagram and not because I'm an expert in Instagram by any means I am not privy to any insider information I'm just going to tell you my experience what I know about the platform and maybe it'll help some of you to understand what's going on a little bit better. There are some people who only use a small portion of what's there when another portion might actually suit your needs better. So let's talk about the parts of the Instagram website. The main thing I think of as part of Instagram is the profile page and everybody has a profile page and everything that you post as a post ends up in this grid on the profile page intermixed in with that if you do reels or videos of some kind those get put into the grid as do the carousels I do tiny tutorial carousels and those end up there they no longer have any way of sorting through some of those things I wish they did but they don't they're all in one chronological feed for the person that just created all that stuff so if you have somebody you really want to see what they did scroll through that grid the second tab is just the videos and it's now reels plus longer videos it used to be they had longer videos separated out from reels but now they're all together so you can't go to someone's profile any longer and say hey where are all the bathroom business videos because I used to do bathroom business and they were longer form videos where we just talked about art business in my bathroom but you can't find those anymore and that's sad but you know that's older content anyway so it's not relevant really anymore there's a third tab on there that is one that I think a lot of people miss out on the opportunities with and that is the tagged tab tagged items are ones where someone has tagged that creator so if you want to tag me and end up on my tagged page then you need to use the tag button you can access the tag button either by clicking on and editing a picture you've already posted and in that case the tag button is in the lower left corner in general of the photo itself the other way is that there's now a tag section when you make your post and you can use that tag in order to end up on the tagged page so if you're going to try to get the attention of some company or some individual you've used their product you've used their tutorial use that button because then you end up on that tagged page and if you're someone who's looking at content you want to see well is this teacher any good do they have students who are doing great work look at the tagged page and see what their students are making or if you're looking for other people to follow see who else is following that person or that company by looking at their tagged page then we've got the stories the stories are those circles at the top of your feed page when you log in and those are 24 hours long they don't stay there forever so they create a lot of FOMO a lot of fear of missing out and those are more quick looks at what's going on in their life or they see something on Instagram they want to share it so they'll share another account they'll share a real or a post or they'll share snippets from their life they'll share hey I've got a new post that's on my page so that if you're looking at stories and you haven't been to their page then that's their way of pointing to it or they'll share their reels that they've made or they'll share a link to a blog post that they've got or I'll I share you know link to my YouTube video for the day so if you're looking for tutorials yes you can find links to them in stories but they're actually elsewhere the content doesn't reside there all kinds of things can be shared there but they're all 24 hours long and then they go away the navigation on that one is horizontal whereas the navigation in the rest of Instagram is vertical so you're swiping up to get past things and last but not least let's talk about the feed and that's the thing that Instagram puts together for you when you want to go look at what everybody else is creating and in the feed they have said and this is the one thing that's just driven me bananas they've said the feed is eventually going to become all recommendations which means they're going to be putting that feed together with people that you don't follow because they want to give you the opportunity to locate new people and they say it's going to help small creators I don't know about that because my feet tends to be full of people who are already viral I'm not finding tiny creators in that so I'm hoping they're going to change that in time so that they start prioritizing the creators and not those those accounts they call aggregators it's things like artist picks daily where that artist picks daily page steals content from a creator and since they have 10 million followers then it goes viral on their page not on the creators page because they're just compiling everybody's art into one account I'm hoping that they start finally promoting the smaller creators but we're going to get into that in the next section something I think a lot of people are not seeing are the following and favorites toggles because you can sort that feed by the people you're following so if what you want is all the content for people that you've clicked the follow button for then use the following tab instead of yelling at instagram and saying gee whiz why can't you show me the stuff I want to see I've already told you who I want to follow use that tab because that's what's going to get you the content you're looking for so what I do is use a combination I don't like stories I don't enjoy them I don't enjoy the navigation and I own that decision that's just what I like and don't like and you can like or not like whatever it is that you use in instagram so what I do is I look for those circles at the top of the feed such and such came up up there and I haven't seen their page in a while let me tap on it and see what they've been up to and that will give me sometimes a peek into a work in progress that they're doing or if they have a sale or if they have a new class or something like that and so I just tap through a couple of them I don't spend hours scrolling through it but I keep an eye on who shows up up there I spend a bunch of my time watching reels and I do that so I can learn from them see what works see what people are engaging with and what kind of tips I can pick up from other creators and I've trained my reels tab to show me mostly art and that's because I've just clicked the like button on a lot of art videos I also spend a lot of time on the explore page that's where you'll see a lot more still photos you'll see a lot more creators that you don't follow who are in genres that you can sort by so you can look for people that you connect with to follow and if you're in stories and you find a tutorial link somewhere and you're like wow that was an amazing tutorial that so-and-so shared go to their page and look to see if they have more tutorials you might find a whole lot more there by going to their page and scrolling through it how do you get to their page you tap on their name anywhere in instagram if you tap on the name of the account that'll take you to their page and you can check out more of what they create and now it's time to deliver the hard news and I'm just gonna tell you I am suffering from the same thing so please don't feel like I'm judging anybody and I'm not calling anybody out except myself because this is an area that I'm really trying to wrestle with and that is recognizing that sometimes it's not the algorithm it's not the audience it's us sometimes our content is not good and I'm not saying the art is not good that your art is not valuable and wonderful and fabulous because it is whatever you make is good but the presentation matters if the photographs are not nicely lit if the photographs are fuzzy it's not going to work well if you're real is super shaky and no one can stand to watch it because it's super shaky it's not presented well if you're real is too long I mean you just included every step in the entire process as if you're making a youtube video people are going to stay tuned to that there's just a lot of things that go into making good content and I don't know what those are there's no guidebook for that except to make something really good and present it really well sometimes the presentation is more important than the thing itself I have a reel that went viral over on my fine art instagram account and it has taken me a long time to figure out what on earth made it hit millions and millions and millions of views I was kind of excited that at least I was not twerking in it it wasn't a dancing video or something that would be a shame to go viral for something like that it was a piece of art but it was a dumb drawing of a lizard it was an iguana but you know what what it was that made that work it's the combination of showing a close-up of the product because I did a video with an electric eraser and I was trimming the top of the electric eraser and you could see it clearly it was nice and crisp and then I showed using it but it was just like a couple of strokes of using it and then the finished art it was short it was sweet but it showed you exactly what I did with that product and how I adapted it that's not something that can be replicated with everything but what I learned from it is okay I need shorter videos I need something that's going to focus on one tip one thing and show them a nice piece of artwork it doesn't have to be the world's best piece of artwork that lizard was not great it was okay but it showed showed off the technique really well and whatever it is you create if you're trying to post still photos and make them stellar then maybe having a teaser in the front is is going to be what's going to get people's attention try and see if just having a picture of the supplies is going to get attention more than just the picture of your artwork I don't really know what to tell you except try new things don't just keep posting the same thing over and over and over again hoping that the algorithm is going to pick you up and send you flying into viral land because that doesn't always happen the other thing to pay attention to when I say make good art good content is something that I'm going to be trying in art venture I want to teach you how to play I want to teach you how to take a tutorial that you see and adapt it and grow it and stretch it that's what the watercolor pencil leaves class was all about showing you how to take one technique something on youtube take that technique and I try it with other things and you may have noticed if you watch my social media and you see she's going to draw it this way and this way and this way I'm trying to see what I can do to expand on something and discover something new because something new is what people want they want to see things that surprise them that delight them that just open their eyes to something in a new way and if you can start cultivating that kind of creativity then you're going to be generating more interest from your followers which leads to more interest from instagram and the algorithm in promoting you so that's what i'm kind of hoping to do in doing some of these classes going forward they're not all going to be free sorry about that but I do want to try to help people learn how to adapt how to take a tutorial or a class lesson or wherever it is that you got the idea from and learn how to make it your own try something different with it try a new step with it so stick around and take some of those classes as I do them and hopefully that's going to start to train your brain to think a little differently not just try to replicate something because the algorithm is not going to be friends with anybody who tries to replicate what's already been done you want to create something new and different and that kind of thinking can help you get there