**The Power of Context: Unlocking Success on Instagram**

When it comes to creating engaging content on Instagram, there's more to consider than just sharing your work with the world. The platform's vast audience demands context, and understanding its importance can make all the difference in building a loyal following.

One concept that plays a crucial role in achieving success on Instagram is context. Context refers to what surrounds an idea or message, making it meaningful and relatable. It's the narrative thread that ties your content together, giving your audience something to attach to beyond just a talking head sharing photography tips or reviews. By incorporating recurring themes, characters, or stories into your content, you can create a more immersive experience for your viewers.

For instance, if you're creating a series of videos showcasing your new studio, you can develop a character around that theme. This way, your audience knows what to expect and can follow along as you share your journey with them. The same concept applies to still photographs – by including context in the form of captions or storytelling, you can create a rich experience for your viewers.

However, many creators struggle with this aspect of Instagram content creation. They often get caught up in thinking about how their work will be perceived by others, rather than focusing on building a connection with their audience. This mindset is rooted in a fundamental human need: the desire for recognition and response to our work.

According to psychologist Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, one of the most basic human needs is the need for reception or response to our work. This is not a unique need to Instagram creators; it applies to anyone who produces content. By recognizing this fundamental human need, we can shift our focus away from expecting fame and towards building meaningful relationships with our audience.

The key to success on Instagram lies in understanding your audience and creating content that resonates with them. It's not about the number of followers you have, but about the quality of engagement you create with those who do follow you. By focusing on context and storytelling, you can craft a narrative that draws your audience in and keeps them engaged.

A great example of this concept is Robert Frank's book "The Americans." Published in 1958, it's widely considered one of the most influential photography books of all time. While not directly relevant to Instagram, Frank's work demonstrates how context can elevate an artist's reputation. The title alone, "The Americans," sets a specific tone and theme for the reader, making the book more relatable and memorable.

Similarly, Henri Cartier-Bresson's concept of "the decisive moment" revolutionized photography. His approach to capturing fleeting moments created a new standard for documentary-style photography. By understanding his work within the context of its time and place, we can appreciate its significance and relevance today.

In conclusion, creating successful content on Instagram requires a deep understanding of your audience and the importance of context in storytelling. By incorporating recurring themes, characters, or stories into your content, you can create an immersive experience that draws viewers in and keeps them engaged. Remember to focus on building meaningful relationships with your audience, rather than expecting recognition for your work alone. With patience, creativity, and a willingness to experiment, you can unlock success on Instagram by understanding the power of context.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back everyone in this video i want to address the topic of social media so i got an email and this is actually from somebody that i've known for a number of years i haven't talked to in a while sent me an email out of the blue and i did respond to this individual but i thought this would be something actually to bring up in a video and open it up as a conversation with you guys so let me read you what he wrote it says dear ted love your show i have a question about promoting my work how do you get followers and traction on instagram i've been working at playing to the algorithm for a whole year now using hashtags etc and it seems i can't grow at all do you have any advice for someone who's literally posted hundreds of images and can't seem to gain any ground so that is the million dollar question that i get asked very often and so i wanted to address it in a video because i think people do not look at social media or instagram the right way sometimes and i just want to be very realist about all this so instagram is a very popular medium for photographers videographers because it is a visual medium it is a visual social media where you can post your work and you can build an audience of people to look at it so how is that so hard to do these days first off you have to realize that instagram has been around for a while and instagram today is not the same that it was in 2012 so eight nine years ago i don't remember what year facebook actually acquired it but it has grown substantially and it is very saturated now and let's be honest instagram want you to pay for advertising for visibility because they're owned by facebook and they do the same thing it doesn't mean you can't build a following it just means you need to be realistic about how saturated things are on instagram today the other thing that bothers me and i hear this actually a lot and it's in this message too it says i've been working on playing to the algorithm for a year now with hashtag so guys algorithms are something we need to talk about so algorithm is a generic term that people like to throw around describing the engine or the software that recommends content on any given platform be that youtube facebook instagram twitter whatever it is an algorithm probably is more than just one formula it's probably multiple algorithms that do different things to suggest content they may even work together and the hardest thing about understanding algorithms today is most of these companies i guarantee you are on the cutting edge of deep learning ai and they're engineered in a way where the computers all handle it and so the engineers basically say this is the result we want and then the algorithm will develop itself and experiment with things to try to get better at achieving that goal i know this is kind of engineer speak but that's what it does my point is don't worry about the algorithms you're never going to crack it and i guarantee you most people who even have jobs at these platforms people who work at instagram don't understand exactly how the algorithm works so they couldn't tell you how to crack it either so the reason i say forget about the algorithm is let's look at the bigger picture why does an algorithm exist well it's trying to do something in terms of curation that a human can't there's an end goal that the algorithm is trying to achieve for the platform so let's take instagram since that's what was asked about what is the end goal commodity of instagram i would argue that it's people's time on the platform in other words the longer that you're on instagram the more often you go during the day the more you're going to potentially be served an ad which is how that company makes money and that's fair it's an expensive platform to run and that's how they monetize it and so what they're going to do is they're using these algorithms to look for content that is more engageable i guess for lack of a better word so in other words what do people want to see what do they come back to see how often do they engage with your content how this often do they spend or how long do they spend looking at it are they actually leaving a comment are they hitting the like button all those things go into that equation so knowing that rather than trying to crack the algorithm if you look at the bigger picture and you realize where these companies are trying to go it's a much smarter method to try to just deliver content that's going to be for the platform so you're probably thinking hey ted that doesn't make any sense my work speaks for itself i shouldn't have to sell it like i would a product i'm on instagram i should be able to have access to the audience and the people who followed me well i agree with that but it's actually arguable that it is not your audience it belongs to the platform and you have access to your audience that's really their audience if that makes any sense i know that sounds harsh but that's just kind of how things work in the world so for instance look at something different like let's say netflix netflix is not a social media they pay a lot of money to have their content produced and you can't just get anything onto netflix that has to kind of go through their vetting and it has to be something that they feel is going to be accessible that people actually want to watch and so i would urge you to look at your content the same way what is it that people want to see now you don't have to do this if you feel your work speaks for itself or maybe you're in a very specific niche that just is not going to have a big audience and that's actually something to address too the size of your audience is probably the most dangerous metric for any creator myself included we've all been through it you're frustrated because it's not growing or you see somebody else who's having enormous amount of success and then you start looking at like well i can do what they do why how come they have this huge following that i do and see here's the thing your audience your size it's all irrelevant because i've seen people that have had very much successful businesses with like an audience of like maybe a couple hundred people and i'm here to tell you that because i've been there if you can't handle an audience of one or two hundred people who follow your work you're probably not ready for an audience that is going to be the size of like a million let's say now i don't have a million followers on instagram but my point is is that if you're there for the followers then what reason have you given anybody to want to see your work other than i want to be followed there are of course people with egos that big who do make it work but my point is is that if you're asking yourself the question why isn't this working i think the first thing you need to look at is am i delivering the kind of work that people want to look at so as i go through this think about people that you follow that you look up to that you enjoy the work of and how they're producing what we're about to go through and talk about so first thing you definitely want to post great work if you're a photographer you want to put your best images up there if you're into video you want to put the best videos that you can make up there too i mean that's essentially what it is that we're going for but my point is is that if you're just doing that now it can be done but it's going to be harder unless you're a national geographic photographer or somebody who's already a big name and people are already identifying with that work i think it becomes more difficult if you're not known because why are people looking at these images and what makes them interesting it's also important to consider not only the types of things that you can post but the different ways that you can post on instagram as a platform so you have the feed which is where you just post an image and you can write something about it and you can post multiple images you can have a little gallery of stuff in one post you can mix that up you can have video and still photos then there's different ways you can post we've only talked about putting things in the feed there's also instagram stories there's reels there's igtv these are all multiple places that you can actually push content out and it's also multiple formats and i would be willing to bet you that a lot of you are not actually taking advantage of not only the multiple content types but the multiple places that you can be putting these things i just rattled off about four different ways that you can reach four different audiences potentially and a different approach to how you're looking at putting your stuff out on instagram another thing that i like to do when i plan content for something like instagram is i don't look at it in terms of oh i should post a video today or i should put a still image up what i look at it in terms of is conceptually what is it that i'm communicating what kind of story am i telling here and then what is most effective for doing that a lot of times this happens just very spur of the moment other times it's very planned out but i think that's a really important thing see because a lot of times photographers we get very consumed with our own work because like let's be honest that's what we're there to share and so just posting your photographs are only telling a very small part of the story there's another very important key element that you have to this and that is your process and this belongs on instagram because i think this is what people relate to they want to understand they want to see how things are done some of the people that i follow that i really enjoy that i think are the most successful at this are it's not so much that they're treating instagram as an art gallery in fact they're not they're not there just to say oh look at me here's my wonderful work but they're there to invite you in and show you what goes on behind the scenes and what that process is that goes into that that's what's going to be a little more engaging and i think it's going to actually build relationships with people because they get to know you i've always said think of social media as the virtual cocktail party if you're going to go in there and stand against the wall and not introduce yourself to anybody or not get involved or not share personal details then you can't expect to have a lot of friends walking away from the cocktail party and it's really not that much different it's just in a virtual world online i realized that a lot of you are probably thinking of this and you're thinking oh wow i've got to film myself talking on camera now some people are very comfortable with it obviously that's what i'm doing right now some people are not but there are still ways that you can communicate you can show people what you're all about and you can show process is what i'm talking about documenting that behind the scenes and then i also want to get into what i think is kind of the most important thing that ties all this together but real quick i want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who actually are very fitting because if you're looking at trying to find new ways of creating really cool stuff for social media you need to check out the awesome folks over at canva creating eye-catching content to stand out visually is a challenge in today's crowded world of social media and this is where canva comes in canva empowers the world to design and communicate through video and it couldn't be easier to get inspired and make it part of the content that you post animated posts and videos always get more engagement you don't have to spend a lot of time or be a professional editor or animator to get that professional look canva provides thousands of stunning templates created by content and marketing experts you can animate static posts in one click and choose from canvas library of beautiful stock images or even upload your own want to create moving stories canva is full of simple ways to create content designed to move your audience so check out canva using the link below this video and you can get free access to a full 45-day trial check them out and see what they can do for you and your content and i want to give a special shout out and thanks to canva for sponsoring this video so when i'm talking about showing process yeah filming yourself talking is a great way of doing that especially if you're going to get into like instagram live or doing live videos those take the pressure off considerably because you really don't have to have your thoughts as prepared you're just engaging people in the moment and that's kind of interesting now i know that there are a lot of people that really are uncomfortable being on camera at all sometimes you can do it through your work you could do it through still photographs you could just have behind the scenes stuff you can have i like the idea of recurring themes some people call this characters and a character could be like a person in real life or a character could be like you know i've just moved into this new studio right that's something that i do in all my videos and so it's something i can kind of refer to along the way and it gives people something to attach to that's not just a talking head talking about photography all day or reviewing a camera or whatever it is that i'm doing it gives a little bit of a narrative that goes in with that that can be done in still photographs just as easily as it can be done in video you can do it without involving yourself necessarily and so that's a really good technique to get a lot of this like going in terms of telling that narrative story the most important thing tying all of this together is a concept called context context really is everything so what is context you might be asking let's say that i just gave you the punchline to a joke chances are it's not very funny if you didn't hear the beginning of the joke and that's what context is context is what surrounds the idea that you're delivering and makes sense out of it and this is something that's really important and i had a great conversation with ralph gibson who's a mentor of mine i had a chance to study with him actually a couple months ago and we were talking about creating personal projects bodies of work and let's just say for the sake of our discussion here this is something that i'm putting work on instagram i'm talking about people kind of know what i'm working on they can expect and he said you know context plays such an important role in all this he said if you look at um two of arguably the most famous photography books of all time so henri cartier-bresson's the decisive moment and the other being robert frank's the americans both of those are seminal books not just that they're widely famous people understand those books so in the history of photography and and all the books that have been published through the years and we're talking a half a century or longer there's been thousands if not hundreds of thousands if not millions so why are those two books household names and the rest aren't and it was interesting because ralph said well notice he gave it a title it's called the americans it's not just ralph's 20 greatest hits and i think the same holds true for henri cartier-bresson now robert frank actually did have a that was the title of that project and it was his view of traveling through america during the mid-century i think arnold cartier-bresson was absolutely brilliant the way he did his there was a less cohesive of a collection it was he was a photojournalist so it was a lot of his greatest hits but it was not called honor cartier-bresson's greatest hits it was called the decisive moment and i love that and so a lot of these things i know that i've kind of gone a little conceptual here but i think the mistake that people make is when they look at instagram in terms of i want to just be famous i want to get followers i want to have that response to my work now we all have you know look at the hierarchy of needs there is a need for reception or response to the work that you're doing and that's actually normal nobody likes to talk about it but it is normal but you want to be getting that out of social media but i just think that most people go in it with the wrong mindset they're going in of what can this do for me in fact i think in many cases there's an expectation of this should be doing something for me and they're not looking at it in terms of how am i communicating with the audience that i have built and i don't care if that audience is for people it probably isn't for i mean you've got friends and stuff that you probably communicate with on instagram and i think the platform's a little nicer than that but my point is is that a small audience or a large audience that number doesn't matter what you're saying and what you're doing does and so i think that if you can follow that and you can create something that people want to see and you've given them a reason to follow the content that you're making i think you're going to find success i'd love to know what you guys think so drop me a comment below i'll see y'all in the next video until then laterwelcome back everyone in this video i want to address the topic of social media so i got an email and this is actually from somebody that i've known for a number of years i haven't talked to in a while sent me an email out of the blue and i did respond to this individual but i thought this would be something actually to bring up in a video and open it up as a conversation with you guys so let me read you what he wrote it says dear ted love your show i have a question about promoting my work how do you get followers and traction on instagram i've been working at playing to the algorithm for a whole year now using hashtags etc and it seems i can't grow at all do you have any advice for someone who's literally posted hundreds of images and can't seem to gain any ground so that is the million dollar question that i get asked very often and so i wanted to address it in a video because i think people do not look at social media or instagram the right way sometimes and i just want to be very realist about all this so instagram is a very popular medium for photographers videographers because it is a visual medium it is a visual social media where you can post your work and you can build an audience of people to look at it so how is that so hard to do these days first off you have to realize that instagram has been around for a while and instagram today is not the same that it was in 2012 so eight nine years ago i don't remember what year facebook actually acquired it but it has grown substantially and it is very saturated now and let's be honest instagram want you to pay for advertising for visibility because they're owned by facebook and they do the same thing it doesn't mean you can't build a following it just means you need to be realistic about how saturated things are on instagram today the other thing that bothers me and i hear this actually a lot and it's in this message too it says i've been working on playing to the algorithm for a year now with hashtag so guys algorithms are something we need to talk about so algorithm is a generic term that people like to throw around describing the engine or the software that recommends content on any given platform be that youtube facebook instagram twitter whatever it is an algorithm probably is more than just one formula it's probably multiple algorithms that do different things to suggest content they may even work together and the hardest thing about understanding algorithms today is most of these companies i guarantee you are on the cutting edge of deep learning ai and they're engineered in a way where the computers all handle it and so the engineers basically say this is the result we want and then the algorithm will develop itself and experiment with things to try to get better at achieving that goal i know this is kind of engineer speak but that's what it does my point is don't worry about the algorithms you're never going to crack it and i guarantee you most people who even have jobs at these platforms people who work at instagram don't understand exactly how the algorithm works so they couldn't tell you how to crack it either so the reason i say forget about the algorithm is let's look at the bigger picture why does an algorithm exist well it's trying to do something in terms of curation that a human can't there's an end goal that the algorithm is trying to achieve for the platform so let's take instagram since that's what was asked about what is the end goal commodity of instagram i would argue that it's people's time on the platform in other words the longer that you're on instagram the more often you go during the day the more you're going to potentially be served an ad which is how that company makes money and that's fair it's an expensive platform to run and that's how they monetize it and so what they're going to do is they're using these algorithms to look for content that is more engageable i guess for lack of a better word so in other words what do people want to see what do they come back to see how often do they engage with your content how this often do they spend or how long do they spend looking at it are they actually leaving a comment are they hitting the like button all those things go into that equation so knowing that rather than trying to crack the algorithm if you look at the bigger picture and you realize where these companies are trying to go it's a much smarter method to try to just deliver content that's going to be for the platform so you're probably thinking hey ted that doesn't make any sense my work speaks for itself i shouldn't have to sell it like i would a product i'm on instagram i should be able to have access to the audience and the people who followed me well i agree with that but it's actually arguable that it is not your audience it belongs to the platform and you have access to your audience that's really their audience if that makes any sense i know that sounds harsh but that's just kind of how things work in the world so for instance look at something different like let's say netflix netflix is not a social media they pay a lot of money to have their content produced and you can't just get anything onto netflix that has to kind of go through their vetting and it has to be something that they feel is going to be accessible that people actually want to watch and so i would urge you to look at your content the same way what is it that people want to see now you don't have to do this if you feel your work speaks for itself or maybe you're in a very specific niche that just is not going to have a big audience and that's actually something to address too the size of your audience is probably the most dangerous metric for any creator myself included we've all been through it you're frustrated because it's not growing or you see somebody else who's having enormous amount of success and then you start looking at like well i can do what they do why how come they have this huge following that i do and see here's the thing your audience your size it's all irrelevant because i've seen people that have had very much successful businesses with like an audience of like maybe a couple hundred people and i'm here to tell you that because i've been there if you can't handle an audience of one or two hundred people who follow your work you're probably not ready for an audience that is going to be the size of like a million let's say now i don't have a million followers on instagram but my point is is that if you're there for the followers then what reason have you given anybody to want to see your work other than i want to be followed there are of course people with egos that big who do make it work but my point is is that if you're asking yourself the question why isn't this working i think the first thing you need to look at is am i delivering the kind of work that people want to look at so as i go through this think about people that you follow that you look up to that you enjoy the work of and how they're producing what we're about to go through and talk about so first thing you definitely want to post great work if you're a photographer you want to put your best images up there if you're into video you want to put the best videos that you can make up there too i mean that's essentially what it is that we're going for but my point is is that if you're just doing that now it can be done but it's going to be harder unless you're a national geographic photographer or somebody who's already a big name and people are already identifying with that work i think it becomes more difficult if you're not known because why are people looking at these images and what makes them interesting it's also important to consider not only the types of things that you can post but the different ways that you can post on instagram as a platform so you have the feed which is where you just post an image and you can write something about it and you can post multiple images you can have a little gallery of stuff in one post you can mix that up you can have video and still photos then there's different ways you can post we've only talked about putting things in the feed there's also instagram stories there's reels there's igtv these are all multiple places that you can actually push content out and it's also multiple formats and i would be willing to bet you that a lot of you are not actually taking advantage of not only the multiple content types but the multiple places that you can be putting these things i just rattled off about four different ways that you can reach four different audiences potentially and a different approach to how you're looking at putting your stuff out on instagram another thing that i like to do when i plan content for something like instagram is i don't look at it in terms of oh i should post a video today or i should put a still image up what i look at it in terms of is conceptually what is it that i'm communicating what kind of story am i telling here and then what is most effective for doing that a lot of times this happens just very spur of the moment other times it's very planned out but i think that's a really important thing see because a lot of times photographers we get very consumed with our own work because like let's be honest that's what we're there to share and so just posting your photographs are only telling a very small part of the story there's another very important key element that you have to this and that is your process and this belongs on instagram because i think this is what people relate to they want to understand they want to see how things are done some of the people that i follow that i really enjoy that i think are the most successful at this are it's not so much that they're treating instagram as an art gallery in fact they're not they're not there just to say oh look at me here's my wonderful work but they're there to invite you in and show you what goes on behind the scenes and what that process is that goes into that that's what's going to be a little more engaging and i think it's going to actually build relationships with people because they get to know you i've always said think of social media as the virtual cocktail party if you're going to go in there and stand against the wall and not introduce yourself to anybody or not get involved or not share personal details then you can't expect to have a lot of friends walking away from the cocktail party and it's really not that much different it's just in a virtual world online i realized that a lot of you are probably thinking of this and you're thinking oh wow i've got to film myself talking on camera now some people are very comfortable with it obviously that's what i'm doing right now some people are not but there are still ways that you can communicate you can show people what you're all about and you can show process is what i'm talking about documenting that behind the scenes and then i also want to get into what i think is kind of the most important thing that ties all this together but real quick i want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who actually are very fitting because if you're looking at trying to find new ways of creating really cool stuff for social media you need to check out the awesome folks over at canva creating eye-catching content to stand out visually is a challenge in today's crowded world of social media and this is where canva comes in canva empowers the world to design and communicate through video and it couldn't be easier to get inspired and make it part of the content that you post animated posts and videos always get more engagement you don't have to spend a lot of time or be a professional editor or animator to get that professional look canva provides thousands of stunning templates created by content and marketing experts you can animate static posts in one click and choose from canvas library of beautiful stock images or even upload your own want to create moving stories canva is full of simple ways to create content designed to move your audience so check out canva using the link below this video and you can get free access to a full 45-day trial check them out and see what they can do for you and your content and i want to give a special shout out and thanks to canva for sponsoring this video so when i'm talking about showing process yeah filming yourself talking is a great way of doing that especially if you're going to get into like instagram live or doing live videos those take the pressure off considerably because you really don't have to have your thoughts as prepared you're just engaging people in the moment and that's kind of interesting now i know that there are a lot of people that really are uncomfortable being on camera at all sometimes you can do it through your work you could do it through still photographs you could just have behind the scenes stuff you can have i like the idea of recurring themes some people call this characters and a character could be like a person in real life or a character could be like you know i've just moved into this new studio right that's something that i do in all my videos and so it's something i can kind of refer to along the way and it gives people something to attach to that's not just a talking head talking about photography all day or reviewing a camera or whatever it is that i'm doing it gives a little bit of a narrative that goes in with that that can be done in still photographs just as easily as it can be done in video you can do it without involving yourself necessarily and so that's a really good technique to get a lot of this like going in terms of telling that narrative story the most important thing tying all of this together is a concept called context context really is everything so what is context you might be asking let's say that i just gave you the punchline to a joke chances are it's not very funny if you didn't hear the beginning of the joke and that's what context is context is what surrounds the idea that you're delivering and makes sense out of it and this is something that's really important and i had a great conversation with ralph gibson who's a mentor of mine i had a chance to study with him actually a couple months ago and we were talking about creating personal projects bodies of work and let's just say for the sake of our discussion here this is something that i'm putting work on instagram i'm talking about people kind of know what i'm working on they can expect and he said you know context plays such an important role in all this he said if you look at um two of arguably the most famous photography books of all time so henri cartier-bresson's the decisive moment and the other being robert frank's the americans both of those are seminal books not just that they're widely famous people understand those books so in the history of photography and and all the books that have been published through the years and we're talking a half a century or longer there's been thousands if not hundreds of thousands if not millions so why are those two books household names and the rest aren't and it was interesting because ralph said well notice he gave it a title it's called the americans it's not just ralph's 20 greatest hits and i think the same holds true for henri cartier-bresson now robert frank actually did have a that was the title of that project and it was his view of traveling through america during the mid-century i think arnold cartier-bresson was absolutely brilliant the way he did his there was a less cohesive of a collection it was he was a photojournalist so it was a lot of his greatest hits but it was not called honor cartier-bresson's greatest hits it was called the decisive moment and i love that and so a lot of these things i know that i've kind of gone a little conceptual here but i think the mistake that people make is when they look at instagram in terms of i want to just be famous i want to get followers i want to have that response to my work now we all have you know look at the hierarchy of needs there is a need for reception or response to the work that you're doing and that's actually normal nobody likes to talk about it but it is normal but you want to be getting that out of social media but i just think that most people go in it with the wrong mindset they're going in of what can this do for me in fact i think in many cases there's an expectation of this should be doing something for me and they're not looking at it in terms of how am i communicating with the audience that i have built and i don't care if that audience is for people it probably isn't for i mean you've got friends and stuff that you probably communicate with on instagram and i think the platform's a little nicer than that but my point is is that a small audience or a large audience that number doesn't matter what you're saying and what you're doing does and so i think that if you can follow that and you can create something that people want to see and you've given them a reason to follow the content that you're making i think you're going to find success i'd love to know what you guys think so drop me a comment below i'll see y'all in the next video until then later\n"