Today In Cat History

There's an interesting website called Quora.com filled with thousands of questions about every subject imaginable. I thought I'd give answering one of those questions a try...

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-build-a-decent-following-on-Instagram

Short answer: If they’re not already a celebrity, the ‘crazy number’ accounts are likely paying a third party company to run an ‘auto-like’ Bot. But you can do it authentically too. Here’s my story how:

I've spent a year and a half on Instagram working to develop a following that stands at 29.9k today and is growing at about 350-500 followers per week. Perhaps not a crazy number, but a following that is engaged, fun-loving, & happy to share my posts. Their laughter and comments are making my day brighter as well. Many long-term followers I consider friends, though we’ve never actually met.

This is my site: The Professor (@todayincathistory) • Instagram photos and videos

When I started wanting to crack social media, I began a year before Instagram with a blog tied to a Twitter account that was focused on movie reviews, both old and new. A lot of fun to write, but the work generated very little online interest.

Then one day I started adding in the topic of celebrities behaving badly. I put in photos that were occasionally tagged NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Those posts were viewed by hundreds of people.

I suddenly understood why Rupert Murdoch puts sensational stories and scantily clad people in his tabloids. It’s not pretty, but it gets attention.

Very quickly, however, I knew that a TMZ-style of gawking at celebrity misfortune wasn’t at all why I’d started the blog and Twitter feed in the first place. At the very least, I wanted to be a force for good. I wanted to create something that gave people a break in their day and a smile.

I changed tactics and tone and started spending time writing positive reviews of the creative things that celebrities were doing around the world. Talking up their latest books, how great their current films were, reminiscing about their past glories... Very quickly my tweets started getting reposted by the celebrities themselves, which in turn led to additional attention. It was a lot of fun. But online interest here was still in the dozens to the hundreds. It wasn’t a breakthrough, and it took a lot of time relative to the attention received.

Then Instagram was launched.

I loved everything about it. I started a personal account and began learning how it worked. Then I started a page for a friend’s business that provides tours of Europe. When I posted photos of people enjoying themselves on his tours I’d get very few likes. When I’d post a beautiful photo from Europe and tell a story about the photo, I’d get up to a hundred likes.

Topical hashtags were key, but so was taking the time to go manually ‘like’ other people’s photos on the same topic so that they’d notice my page and maybe follow the account.

While the page eventually built up to 9k followers, the audience turned out to be very niche, and progress very slow. The followers weren’t people who were actually planning to go on a tour. I can’t say that a single trip was booked from the effort.

Knowing I could do better, I thought about what types of things people used to enjoy reading every day in the days of physical newspapers being brought to the house; Comics, horoscopes, ‘on this day in history stories’, advice columns, etc.

I knew that in order for something to work, it had to be something I had an interest in, but that I could more importantly get content for on a daily basis.

Without telling anyone other than my brother what I was doing, I started two Instagram accounts just to test a response.

To be a little nutty - but still have a readily available daily source of content - I started one account going line by line through the book of Genesis in the Bible (I’m not formally religious, but what a content source!). I’d post a line from Genesis, and then find a funny or cute picture to go with the quote.

For the second account I’d post a paragraph about an event that occurred today in history with a photo or artist rendering of the event.

The Genesis account was enjoyable because the funny photo/quote combination cracked me up. The history account was enjoyable because I love history - but it wasn’t funny. In fact it was a little dry.

Followers and likes for the Genesis account were slow. Followers and likes for the ‘today in history’ account were much faster, but not amazing.

My brother took a look at the two accounts and said,”Well the Genesis one is hilarious, but people who think you’re funny probably don’t follow you because your subject matter is the Bible. And people who are seriously religious probably don’t follow you because it’s a comedic take on a topic they are serious about. What you should do to be popular online is put cat heads on the history pictures.”

With nothing to lose, I took him up on it. I pulled out Adobe Photoshop and somewhat sloppily put a cat head on a picture of Napoleon. I titled the account ‘Todayincathistory’ and added a story about what Napoleon had done today in history. I also changed his name to Catpoleon. The post got about 100 likes and 25 followers in the first hour.

I did a few more posts, getting sillier in my story telling with each one. For about every hundred other cat posts on Instagram where I’d click ‘like’, I’d get about 20 followers back on my own site. I’d never seen a return like that.

Once I started using other Instagram pages’ cat heads (with their permission) photoshopped onto daily historical photos/stories - It didn’t take long to get to 1,000 followers and a full inbox from other people requesting that I use their own cat in one of my posts.

One story a day was enough, and then a lot of clicking ‘like’ and also commenting on other people’s cute cat accounts was essential.

A few months into the effort, while having a lot of fun interacting with cat lovers online, I posted a picture of another site’s cat (no photoshop. no story from history) to celebrate the cat being featured on Instagram’s ‘weekly fluff’ post. That photo got three times the number of likes as my historical photos.

Over the next few months, every time I’d post someone else’s hilarious or cute cat, the audience response was huge. Post a historical cat photo and story - not so much. By a factor of three to one.

About 1 year into the effort I stopped doing the cat history stories altogether and my site jumped into the tens of thousands of followers. A lot of my cat history fans didn’t like seeing the historical stuff go away, but like Nielsen ratings for TV, my audience was voting to go in a different direction.

Today I post a funny or cute photo every day of someone else’s Instagram cat. I make sure to accurately tag and reference the Instagram page where the photo comes from. Then I add in my own funny or sometimes inspirational quote or modified song lyric at the bottom of the post.

The posts average about 2,000 likes per photo, about 100 comments and/or shares, and I get somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-75 new followers a day.

Lessons Learned:

-Pick a focused topic that you’re interested in and that you can get content for every day.

-Generously share and properly credit other people’s photos on the same topic. Celebrate what other people are creating.

-Women seem to share far more online with each other than men, so choosing a topic that women enjoy is helpful. If they like what you do, they’ll tell their friends. Guys will too, just not as much.

-Be bold. Turn off that little voice in your head that says you’re probably the only one who is going to like your next post. Some of my wackier stuff that I hesitated to post has gotten the biggest response.

-Respond to what your audience is telling you with their ‘like’ votes and adapt your content accordingly.

-‘Likes’ overrule comments. A vocal critic is one voice. Be primarily guided by actual total ‘like’ counts.

-Be genuine and love your topic.

-Actively and authentically engage with people on Instagram who are passionate about the same topic.

-Be funny, be kind, and consider being G rated. A personal choice, but one that makes my own posting more fulfilling.

-Don’t over-post. Max 3 per day, spaced out evenly. But post once a day, every day if you can!

-Meowser LeChat

AKA The Professor

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