Your Instagram Analytics Are Only The Beginning  to Understanding Your Social Influence

Low Engagement Short-Circuits Your Feed

Recently, there have been numerous reports that Instagram is only showing your posts to ten percent of your followers. If that ten percent doesn’t engage with your content, it will not be shown to the other 90%. That should be a “holy shit-aha moment” for you. You can spend a lot time, money, and resources making content for your audience and that audience’s low engagement will guarantee that no one else sees it. So your total influence is meaningless regardless of your follower count.

Engagement is the Key to Real Influence

There are a lot of freelance models that depend on their social media audience for growing their influence. It helps land jobs and garner sponsorship from major brands. As an independent model, you have the same challenge as everyone else on Instagram. Indeed, you have to constantly create and share engaging content to garner attention on Instagram. As the Instagram algorithm matures, it’s putting a premium on audience engagement. That means models need to work with photographers that have both a creative eye and the resources to bring a provocative vision to life.
Selfies are dead. Booty-shaking videos are dying. Either, raise the bar on your content or find a new audience.
A while ago, I posted an image that got tremendous engagement that simply said, “Greatness is Complicated.” When you’re trying to beat the ever-evolving Instagram algorithm, those words have never been more true.

Modeling Hourly Rates and Instagram Analytics

I’ve talked with a number of models that believe that they can demand anywhere from $40/hour up to $500/hr for model photography. This mindset has inherent weaknesses that undermine the model’s ability to create great images that he or she can share on Instagram to grow their audience engagement. Since the photographer owns the rights to the creative expression of that image, the more it costs her to make that image, the more likely it will not be shared for free on Instagram. Additionally, the model will have been compensated for his or her modeling and have no high-quality, fresh creative to feed their audience and the algorithm.
It’s not a Catch-22. Models and Photographers need to align their goals to achieve higher quality results that drive frequent audience engagement so that they can increase their share of influence.

Making it Real in the Dallas-Fort Worth Market

Recently, I connected with a model that has a 3.4:1 Influencer ratio. When I dug into the measurements that matter, I found that she had only a 5.37% engagement rate on her posts. In a real world case, any images I make with her would only benefit from being seen on my profile-not the model’s. Her profile’s low engagement rate would not influence her audience to seek my profile and follow me. Any investment in making a photograph would be cut short.
In contrast, my engagement rate is 18.73% per post. That means my influence would have more of a benefit for her even though I have fewer followers than she does. Simply, my followers are three times more active.

Exceptions to the Rule

There are always outliers that challenge the facts that I’ve presented. One outlier is the current ultra-hot model Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) with 103M followers and following 128 profiles for a whopping 804,688:1 Influencer Ratio. That doesn’t begin to tell the story of why brands love Kylie though. Her audience engagement on Instagram is also low at 4.13% per post. I’m sure their are exceptions in the algorithm for celebrity Instagram profiles. Why? While Kylie’s engagement is lower than 10%, 4,253,900 people are actively engaging in her audience. If you’re a brand and you want to get your product in front of 4 million people in one moment, you’re going to send it to Kylie and pay her handsomely to make a clever post. That could start a microtrend to produce the next hot thing. If you only have 1,200 followers and 4% engagement, only 48 people will see your post. So…4M versus 48…hmm?

The Bottom Line for Instagram Analytics

As more people become aware of the data, it won’t matter what your strategy is to beat the Instagram algorithm if your audience is passive. Models should align their hourly rates to their true market influence and focus on growing that influence with intention to increase that rate. Professional photographers should invest in getting the analytics on the models they photograph to ensure that they aren’t making gross investments in someone that will have low or limited return on that value.
Meanwhile, as a creative community, we need to find clever ways to consistently produce art that matters commercially and builds audience engagement. These powerful combinations will drive our collective influence without having to worry about beating an algorithm every time it changes.

What’s Next for Social Profile Analytics

If you’re a model that’s currently working with MADEGRANDBYCAM and you won’t know how your Instagram analytics stack up, send me a message. I invite the conversation and the deeper understanding. In the meantime, I’m going to start scoring the 300 models I have identified and ranking them based on their social profile analytics and hourly rate. This insight will help me focus on high-value folio engagement versus developmental folio work. If you live on earth, there’s high percentage chance you’re on my list. I look forward to that fierce conversation.
Leave your comments and questions in the discussion below. I invite you to follow me on Instagram and all social media platforms and please engage with me!

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