When I started this experiment, I didn’t know what to expect. Admittedly, my expectations were very low. At most, I thought I had an outside shot at gaining 50 followers. In Alex Armitage’s Instagram experiment, he started with 5871 followers, or roughly 50 times the number I had. At the end of 30 days and 30 posts Alex had gained 107 followers.

Initial Expectations

I’d always assumed social media follower growth was exponential. Once you reach a critical mass adding followers gets easier. I’m not sure how many followers it takes to reach critical mass on Instagram, but I know it’s a lot more than 100.

I’m not sure if 5871 followers are enough either but it’s a lot better than what I had. Intuitively I would have guessed Alex would have gained a lot more than 107 followers during his experiment. Since that was the only real data I had to go by, I thought I would have little chance to add even 50 followers, let alone 100.

Surprising to me was the fact that I gained roughly the same number of followers as Alex, even though I started with so many fewer. After all, our experiments were roughly the same. It made me wonder how Alex had so many followers in the first place.

I consider myself some random guy on the internet with virtually no platform. Being a contributor at Fstoppers, Alex obviously had a presence on the internet. I’m sure that helped build his following.

The other thing that helped is time. Alex posted his article in June 2018, or almost four and a half years ago. I just checked his account and he now has over 12,500 followers. Alex’s work is very good, and there’s no doubt that helped build his following. Even though he hasn’t posted on Instagram in over a year, his follower count has doubled since his article was published. They say time heals all wounds. I would say time builds your follower count as well.

Over the course of 40 days, I’ve made over 40 posts. The majority of images were taken as RAW files on a Nikon DSLR camera, although for some I used a Samsung Galaxy phone. I took all of the images during the course of normal play. In other words, I never went out to a golf course specifically to take pictures. I never used a tripod or had much choice in the light or time of day.

All the pictures were taken while my son was playing, so I was limited in where I could stand. For example, I couldn’t walk out on the course during play just to get a better angle for a shot. Unless it was a practice round, I was mostly limited to cart paths, tee boxes, or hanging out near the green. I would have loved to bring along a tripod and a variety of lenses. Unfortunately, I was never able to do that.

Editing the Pictures

I edited the pictures in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. They were cropped, almost always to 16×9 format, and had the contrast, exposure, and color adjusted. If the images had extraneous objects in frame, such as a golf cart or spectators, I would clone those items out. I tried to edit the photographs so they would all have a similar look. I spent anywhere from ten minutes to several hours editing each image. Photographs that I really liked I would spend extra time editing, with the goal being to print ten 16” x 9” images to frame and hang in my office. That’s the reason I took these pictures in the first place. The Instagram experiment just ended up being a side project.

I uploaded all Instagram posts by hand, either on my computer via the web or directly on my phone using the Instagram app. I didn’t use any software to schedule and make the posts automatically. After a quick search, it didn’t seem that there was any free and worthwhile tool to handle this task as I needed.

Usually, I would select the image and write the caption immediately before I would make the post to Instagram. Sometimes I would select the pictures and write the captions early so they would be ready to post quickly. I did this for a week’s worth of images when I travelled to Cape Cod to watch my son and the Tufts University Golf Team play in the New England Championship. I knew when travelling I wouldn’t have time to curate pictures and write captions, so I did it before I left. That way all I had to do was copy and paste the caption and upload the image directly from my phone and onto Instagram.

Being on the wrong side of fifty, I can’t say I’m much of a social media guy. As a former engineer, being tech savvy is not the issue. I just never saw the point. Sure, I have Twitter and Facebook accounts, but I use those just to read the news and follow current events. I rarely if ever post.

Social Media Blues

I do have an Instagram account as well. I’ve had it for some time and while I have posted there, I’ve never done so regularly. I know Instagram is a great tool for getting your work out there, but to me it always felt like something meant for teenagers. I’ve never really had much interest in chasing followers. Like anyone though, I want my work to be seen. When it comes down to it however, the reason I do the work is for myself. Being seen is just a bonus. The extra work I knew it would take to actively post on social media didn’t seem worth it.

Then my brother, the owner of Triple Play Design and a graphic designer for over 30 years started posting regularly on Instagram. With both of his kids through college and out of the house, he found more time to pursue his personal artistic endeavors. I watched as he posted his baseball-centric artwork to Instagram and slowly grew his following. He engaged with followers and other artists and began selling his work. Soon, all because of Instagram he was attending baseball related events, working with the Buck Leonard Association, and exploring new business opportunities.

Starting with virtually no followers, he relentlessly created baseball focused art and shared it on Instagram. Soon enough he had more than 2600 followers. That may not sound like a lot to some, but to me the slow, steady growth was highly impressive. Even more impressive was the dedication and creativity needed to produce such a volume of inspiring work.

A few months ago, I found an article by Alex Armitage of Fstoppers.com entitled I Posted a Photo Every Day for One Month on Instagram and This is What Happened. Reading that article, along with the success of my brother inspired me to try an Instagram experiment of my own.