It can be frustrating on Instagram and social media when you are creating and sharing good content, but you are struggling to grow because you are not getting noticed as much as you want to. This happens a lot on Instagram, where one of the tactics to grow your account is by getting exposure through feature accounts.
For those that don’t know, a feature account (or hub) is an account that shares other people’s photographs with permission. The permission may be in the form of tagging, email or private message. They are like mini-communities and are a great way to grow your following. Check out my other post Tips on Getting Reposted by Feature Accounts for lots of techniques you should be using.
However, if you are still struggling to get featured then keep reading for some thoughts on why this may be. This post is more related to Instagram as opposed to tactics and techniques for other social media platforms.
Here are 6 reasons why you’re not getting reposted by feature accounts.
1. You are tagging pictures that are horizontal crop
Firstly if you want to get featured by hubs on Instagram then you should stick to posting vertical and square crop images. As opposed to landscape/horizontal crop. Although horizontal crop pictures look great on desktops and large screens, they don’t look that great on phones as the screens aren’t that big. Feature accounts know this, and I’ve found that on my hubs horizontal crop images don’t perform as well as vertical or square crops. I think this is because the viewer would see a smaller picture on their screen so it’s not quite as immersive.
2. The picture/content doesn’t fit the account
If you are tagging a feature account with the hope of being reposted, then you should ensure that the image fits the account. For example if it’s an account that only posts landscape pictures, then tagging a city picture would never get reposted. Similarly, a portrait/model type image may not get featured in an account that posts travel images.
It’s also not necessarily the subject too. For example there are some accounts that go for a certain look, such as @moodygrams post images that have a certain edit and tones.
3. The picture quality isn’t good enough
As well as the actual content of the picture not being a good fit for the account, it may also be a case of the quality isn’t quite good enough. I know it’s not nice to hear but maybe your pictures need to get a little better before they start getting reposted. For the tips and techniques, I use for my personal account head to Travel Photography.
A few things you should definitely ensure:
- That your image isn’t oversaturated
- Your image isn’t wonky
- That the image doesn’t have horrible lighting, such as harsh highlights, horrible shadows
- Your composition is clean and interesting
- There isn’t excessive noise in the image
4. The feature account may be getting too many tags
Sometimes feature accounts get hundreds, even thousands of pictures tagged to them every day. This makes it almost impossible for your image to get seen that way (assuming they are checking the tags). However, if you still want to get featured on that account then there are other ways of getting noticed. Such as sending an email or DM (direct message) through Instagram.
5. There’s too much competition
A lot of feature accounts will post several times per day, but if the account is large then they may have so many good photographs to choose from and they just don’t get round to featuring you.
I have found this on my personal account, where I used to get featured a lot by large accounts that even had a few million followers. But as they’ve got bigger and had more and more awesome content to post they would feature me less and less, or now hardly ever.
6. It’s not clear if it’s your photo or not
I’ve found as someone that runs hubs (@bestcitybreaks and @travelanddestinations) that sometimes I see great shots that are tagged, but it’s not clear whether or not the tagging account actually owns and took that photo. Such as there may be nothing in the caption except for hashtags, or the other photographs in the account just don’t match up.
It can also be a case that the tagging account posts their own pictures as well as reposting other people. This causes confusion and if my hubs get tagged with a great image, but there’s this uncertainty then I just won’t post it, and probably won’t even DM to double-check either.
Summary
If you think you are still doing everything right but still not getting featured, then try and target smaller feature accounts that have fewer followers. If you are tagging accounts that have 100k+ and get large amounts of likes, then it may be a bit harder to get them to feature you, than an account that doesn’t have that.
For photography techniques have a read of 5 Easy Tips To Improve Your Travel Photography to get started.
