So this post is about a week overdue, but that’s OK because I want to post about the changes I’ve seen on my Instagram account since first testing hashtags. I started this little mini social media experiment on the 20th of February, and for almost a solid month, I avoided using any hashtags in my posts. This experiment was to test what type of impact using hashtags has on posts if any at all. After a month of not using hashtags, I can see a slight difference between not using hashtags and using hashtags.

Let’s break it down per post:

20 total posts posted between February 20th and March 11th

Total Likes = 985  which averages out to around 49 likes per post

Seven video clip posts with a total of 568 views so an average of 81 views per post

66 total comments across 20 posts are about 3.3 comments per post

We could break it down more, but we’ll leave it there for now. I will compare these totals to my next 20 posts using hashtags to get a better perspective of whether or not using hashtags matters. Of course, the type of content that you post would impact these tallies. I’ll post the same amount of video clips to compare it with but as I said, my content is not planned or scheduled. I post if I like something or want to make something.

There was another Instagram trick I wanted to test, but you can get banned for doing it so, I won’t be using any of my legit accounts to do that any time soon. I do see a lot of people using specific hashtags, and quite often, these hashtags do not relate to anything they post. As far as I know, you can get banned for doing this (shadow banning used to be a thing, I dunno if it still is) but it would be interesting to test just for the sake of science 🤣 Maybe that’s something I can do with a trash account when I’m bored enough to make one 🤣😂

In terms of follower count, I did say that I was going to measure this too so let’s see if it’s moved or decreased at all in the time I’ve been testing it:

CURRENT FOLLOWER COUNT: 3573 AS OF SATURDAY 23/03/2019

PREVIOUS FOLLOWER COUNT: 3549 AS OF SATURDAY 02/03/2019

Followers have increased, so that’s good. The accounts that I’ve followed tally has also increased by 18, and I’ve gained around 24 followers. I do get a lot of people supporting my account and then unfollowing which I’ve started to take notice of since I began this experiment. I never even thought it was a thing either but apparently, people do this. I don’t know why, but they do 🤣😂😂

There are some stupid things that Instagram users do; maybe it’s something that happens on other social media platforms too, I guess I never noticed. Is there something you might do on social media or have done on social media that is part of a trend? And if so, why did you decide to do it? I’d love to know because I don’t know enough about trends on Instagram or social media in general and it’s interesting to know what other people do.

I hope this information is of some use to you because I have certainly enjoyed this little test and talking about Instagram with you. Maybe I’ll do another one soon, but until then, thank you for reading, like if you like it and share if you care 🤣