Post by num05410 on Jan 10, 2023 9:22:59 GMT 9
So I work in the tourism departmentand one of my duties when coming here was taking over the English instagram started by my pred. We have around 400 followers tend to get around 50 - 60 likes per post, but a large portion of that is local Japanese residents so it's kind of pointless imo hue. I've been working on making reels instead of just posting pictures and such but am still having a difficult time increasing post engagement and recently the number of likes and and views have even been decreasing. Does anyone have any advice for running a tourism / pr sns aimed at foreigners? I don’t really have any experience in photography / editing so I am trying to improve those skills. (We also lack a solid English tourism website to link to which is something I am pushing for but that's another story) As far as increasing followers / engagement, apart from paying to boost posts I’m not sure how else to improve this…
Here is the instagram I’m running if anyone would be willing to critique it (There are a lot of things I want to change from my pred, including cleaning up the story function but I haven't gotten around to it yet)
Hey hey! I took a look at the instagram and followed it! (my account is Experience.Ofunato)
So take my advice with a grain of salt since mine isn't all that far from engagements/likes/views/etc. compared to yours.
One thing i keep in mind is that although my account is aimed to broadcast to the world(ppl outside Japan), I try to aim things towards my current followers who are mostly locals (AKA add some japanese here and there.) The reason for this is to increase activity and followers, putting away the idea of the users being locals or foreigners.
- Because my thought process is: If the locals don't like it then why would any foreigners like it and trust the informations on the post?
In connection with activity, I also 'try' to be active with at least 1 post per week. (The world try is important, haha.) Be it a picture of ramen or just a random food at a restaurant.
Also, going around liking/commenting/following other people's/association's accounts are something you can try becuase this too will increase your own engagement in the long run.
(ie. you like their post → they'll 9/10 like your post too, OR He/She seems to be working hard → i want to root for them.)
What I've also tend to notice after a year of doing this is that rarely people read the comments.. hue
So my alternative is to add words in the picture itself. (I tried to stay away from the cliche Ad like post I've given in to that.)
Instagram generally reformats the pictures to a 1:1 thumbnail so recently I've been shifting to edit the pictures as such since long horizontal pictures tend to be cut off and even if they're not, the spacing makes it hard to see on the phone. (Using GIMP to edit)
On that same line, reels are generally played back vertically versus horizontally even if you're seeing it on the pc or on the phone.
As such, in my opinion if you're going to post videos on the reels then it might be better to take the video vertically so that the users dont need to squint to see whats actually shown.
(I dont take much reels, but Ive heard that 'CapCut' and 'VLLO' (both apps on the phone) are pretty good editting apps.)
As for the English website, there are free website making sites (I use wix) that you can try out.
It is honestly not for everyone but I tend to deskwarm a lot so its fairly entertaining. haha
If you want to take a look i think the link to my website is located in the description of my instagram account.
(Also when i circulated this up to my department, i made the site somewhat visible first so that they have a better image of what to expect. I also stated the fact that information need to be kept on the web to be searched for and at the time we only had a google-auto translate of the city's HP and said that that isnt searchable.)
Lastly, I will point out that my account is very very loose, as in I don't have to circulate things before posting and they don't critique me for the number of likes/engagement/views so there isn't much stress even if I don't increase those numbers. (Meaning I was able to change the stuff I listed above by my own free will, so it might be hard to do so in your situation maybe.) But in hindsight that also means that I rarely have 'weight/trust/creditbility' on the informaiton i send out. In that sense I try to pull poster images of events or reach out to different departments holding the events to share pictures/info so that it somewhat looks real.
Sorry for the long post and hope it helps. (Feel free to reach out if you want more details!)
