since my last thread was closed because i said i didn't need help with creative direction i figured i would start one to keep track of growth (that was my goal with the last thread as well)

i am here because this is the BFI page... i am interested in chronicling the the growth of the brand here and talking about strategies for growing the brand

to date:

started on November 16th

November 24th (thanks giving) 405 followers average 100 likes per post

Hit 1000 followers on 11/26/16 after paid placement on some tattoo model pages totaling about 35$

Have added ~100 followers per day since then and this rate is increasing

currently sitting at 3242 followers getting ~6k impressions per post and engaging at over 10% for posts that pin to all of their hashtags. engagement from base supporters is around 75% in the first 30 minutes of a post

goals:

5k followers by year end
10k by the end of January

increase likes per hour over first 3 hours of a new post from 100 now to average 300 by the end of January

Link to original thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...model-1626580/

Link to IG page:

https://www.instagram.com/your.girlfriend.experience/

In before lock...

Cliffs for people who missed last thread
- OP has an ok idea but truly awful execution
- OP refuses to listen any sort of advice or opinions
- OP focuses on catfishing losers on IG to gain followers

Why would it get locked? Asking sincerely, i want a productive thread to talk about my strategies for growing the brand... if that isn't a valid thread for BFI, let me know

I came back to make a post about the value of following first to gain followers... it doesn't work if you spam your follows but doing it to a very focused group turns highly engaged followers and that is extremely important for out performing other pages to get selected into "top posts" on all of the hashtags. My ability to play way above weight is specifically because of how much my account is out performing expectation from engagement so my #1 priority is to grow with as engaged a fan base as possible.

When i have a warm lead... someone who has at least liked one of my posts then i return about 40% of my follows as new followers.

When i like posts on targeted hashtags i return somewhere around 15% but have got as high as 30% when i stay more targeted

That is an insane return on my investment of time to create highly engaged followers... When i have had time to spend 12-15 hours on it i have added 400 followers in a day through straight engagement... why wouldn't I do that to reach my 7500 followers? if i do sponsored posts it doesn't create as engaged a follower and engagement is the only goal of any of this brand

here is an example of my engagement vs a similar sized account... it shows the advantage that i have and how i'm going to grow

https://www.instagram.com/deftfotos/ Here is the page of a friend of mine... he has spent years building this page and has very high quality content but has no idea how to distribute it. He has never bought followers or tried to blow his page up, those are just genuine follows from people who liked his content however they found it (probably through following models that he has shot)... so, they are people interested in this kind of content

his most recent post was 2 days ago and has 418 impreessions 341 reach and 135 engagement. he had about the same number of followers, 4069 then as he does now and has worked to understand hashtagging because he knows that when he does get pinned on some hashtag feeds he has pics go "viral" and blow up relative to normal performance.

on a post that i made 2 days ago when i had about 2900 followers here are my numbers: 3841 impressions 2963 reach 866 engagements

that lets me pin that picture on to #maxim or wherever i want... and i know that there will be deltas of engagement based on the subject of the picture but i can target that picture's tags to target easier hashtags to pin on so that i'm still getting maximum exposure. i'm still building out my hashtag database but i'm posting 10 pics later this week as a birthday set and i will get those pics pinned to the top of over 200 hashtags. my accounts total impressions from my posts that day could easily reach 50k ...

i think that the most important thing seems to be likes per hour and engagement % that determine whether you get pinned to the top and then staying there requires a steady stream of likes coming in through that hashtag so if the people looking at that hashtag aren't engaging it, it doesn't really matter how well it's performing, it will fall off

but that just gives you free market research on which hashtags to target... i can stay on #rhcp for 3 days somehow and my guess is that it's because chili pepper fans like the pics more than say garth brooks fans do (but i get a lot of country music fans following when i target those hashtags, i just have to use less sexy shots to make sure my pic will get likes on that hashtag, that will keep it there and let more people click through to the the page)... but i'm able to tell whatever story i want to whatever type of follower that i am targeting so the people who find the page through those ways and click through until they follow are also highly engaged, but i have my gf go through every new followers' page and find a few posts she likes and like them, then comment on the one that looks most personal to that person... and then follow them back. i have her like every post in our feed and comment on the ones that look more personal so that they are getting positive reinforcement

the result is that i can put it on more channels than i see anyone else doing... the only pages that i see doing similar are big hubs that post

i'm getting about 100 followers per day off of an average of 5000 reach... pretty soon i will be able to pin onto hashtags that have exponentially higher impressions and that will blow up mine, if i can add 100 followers per day at 5000 reach i'll be adding a solid 500 at 50000 and those hashtags are not very far out of my reach right now. i basically have a reserved space for any picture i want at the top of #maxim and before long i'll have one at #playboy too ... for growing a brand like this those are insanely valuable.

i'm considering going to 4 posts per day if i can get enough hashtags ... it will lower the quality of my content but i would just delete 90% of my posts after they fall off of their pins and keep the page higher-end looking than the average post needs to be. i think that the more candid content performs better for attracting followers anyway (sexy gets likes, candid gets followers)

in before the lock

How do you plan to make money on this?

Why do you think this is worth anything?

It will be a platform for my commercial photography and her as a model

Btw I was curious about how one pins on certain tags. What process you'd undertake to figure out the ones you can do it on. Only thing that comes to mind is

1) Find tags that are underused
2) Figure that my content serves this market well

Is there more to it than that?

I think if this thread actually turns technical there's half a chance it stays open

you don't think there's a reason to have a thread about an account getting 20x impressions of similar accounts? i don't understand the hate lol

is it just not believed that there is any value to be had by building a brand like this on IG? do you deny that people make good money off of accounts like this? this is pretty much how modeling and photography works now... you don't think there's valuable knowledge here?

isn't there an interesting conversation to have outside of the concept of the page?

Thing is so far you've taken nudes, blurred them weirdly, and then followed thousands of people. You've also replied to anyone's comments who have commented back. There's nothing technical or interesting happening yet. Certainly nothing that people in here want to learn from yet.

I think the monetization will be the interesting part when it arrives. And like I said, the whole pinning thing is interesting to me since I've never tried it. Are my two steps essentially the heart of it?

that's the conversation i would rather be having

i look at the lowest number of likes that a pic that is pinned has on a hashtag and how many hours it took it to get them... i get about 100 likes per hour for my stronger posts made at optimal times so i'm using that as a comparison but i know there has to be a component of engagement % that lets me (and other smaller accounts) beat out the larger ones that are getting more likes per hour. this is letting me play *way* above my weight and always will assuming that i can keep adding followers with above average engagement (which happens as a result of how i'm getting my followers and who i'm trying to target my content to at different stages of growth)

i'm sure that i could get similar impressions from sponsored posts but the level of engagement from the followers i get through that would be lower and when i scale this up when i'm at about 7500 followers then my impressions are going to go through the roof anyways and should always be delivering me more engaged followers than the average account

what i'm doing on hashtags isn't something that anyone else is doing... they might be doing parts of it but i've looked at thousands of posts and see the strategies people use and none of them are doing it as optimally as i am that i have found (half of the reason for that is that my account generally out performing every thing else makes it way easier for me to grow this way)

and my engagement alone isn't matched by almost any account that i've come across... the only ones that can compete are generally smaller and are fitness related... because in modeling you're told to not follow almost anyone back to make your brand value higher, what that actually does is keep you from being able to engage with your fans and makes your account under perform what it should

on monetization my plan initially is to let the opportunities find us... that's generally how it works. a standard account with 15k followers is getting tons of free merch or whatever but i'm not sure i'll have to wait that long to get noticed

she was contacted yesterday about being a brand ambassador for a crappy online streaming channel... which, if it only gets us press passes to any festival we want to go to that's probably 20k in value that goes towards being able to create the content that keeps the brand growing

also, moving into my old apartment in houston in a couple of months and it will significantly raise the brand as well

it won't take long

The success of your brand is linked to the apartment you live in?

disliked the closing of the old thread, it was a great example and reminder on how you need to make yourself as easy to criticize as possible and that you have to fight back the impulse to defend yourself rather than mine others criticism for all that is useful in it

yes, it makes for pretty iconic images

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

You're iconic link doesn't work

lol standard

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0...f0&oe=58E13EFD

i shot all of these there

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-g28thBm/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-MG7QcHX/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-b5R3VS4/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-b8FpWq8/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-cvLqrK4/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-drDSfVW/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-cvLqrK4/A

https://dylanduvall.smugmug.com/Mode...es/i-pHC7GfQ/A

That's a game changer. An iconic room like that could probably make or break a model's career. Why didn't you mention that you were moving into an iconic apartment in your 1st thread?

You're probably doing it wrong though. Why bother w/ the instagram bs when you could just rent that room out for photo shoots? There have to be a bunch of unknown models willing to spend big $ to be photographed in an iconic room that will make their career right?

i guess it's fun to troll me? the room is iconic in the houston modeling scene and the quality of content that i can create there will raise her brand value a ton... you know the difference between a girl in a trailer house on her webcam and the one at a beach resort? this becomes the setting of her candids and will mean she's living in a photography studio... i don't know what's hard to understand about how that raises the level of how visually appealing the brand is

and i don't charge people to shoot there, although i could have... i do hope to rent it out during superbowl week though lol

You're not looking to have a conversation, you act like legitimate questions are trolling you and skirt around answering them. We're not going to host this thread for you any longer, don't post anymore about this.