If you have landed on this page, you are likely contemplating the idea of creating a new Instagram account. You may want to start a professional profile to keep your work and personal life separate, or explore a new niche and keep it separate from your existing account. There could be several reasons why you may want to start a new Instagram.
I recently created a new Instagram account to showcase my photography work. Although I already had one for this purpose, I decided to start afresh after giving it some thought and finding inspiration. In this article, I will explain why I opted to do so.
Trying to reach the right audience
To this date, I have 242 followers in my current account, which is not a lot. I am not a famous photographer, and I have not made major efforts to grow my audience. Most of my followers consist of friends and people I met while traveling. While this may seem great, I realized that they are not my ideal audience when it comes to my work.
Though my friends are supportive, they are not photographers or enthusiasts of the subject. So when I share an image or post a quick reel about a Lightroom tutorial, it does not get the engagement I wish it would, since my content is not relevant to them.
Additionally, my feed is cluttered with accounts that have nothing to do with photography, so it is difficult to engage with other photographers. For this reason, I decided to create a new account to separate my audiences and content. My friends, family, and “entertainment content” will stay in my current account, while on the new account, I will only post and follow photography-related content.
Challenge inspiration from a Pro
I have come across the work of Evan Ranft, a photographer who I deeply admire. I have been following his content for quite some time now, and I must say that it has been a great source of inspiration for me. Recently, he started a new Instagram account with two primary goals in mind – to post an image every day and to show how one can grow an account.
Evan acknowledges that his strong brand in the field helped him grow his new account quickly, and that’s perfectly okay. However, as an ordinary person with no prior recognition, I was curious to know what would happen if I took up the same challenge. It was after reading a comment in one of Evan’s videos that I decided to take the plunge.
Initially, I thought I could use my existing account and start posting daily, but I realized that it wouldn’t yield the same results. To get real and measurable results, I would have to start from scratch by creating a new account. And that’s exactly what I did.
Testing my skills
As someone who spent three years working in the marketing industry before quitting to travel, I can attest to how challenging it can be to maintain a consistent frequency of social media posts. It’s not as simple as just uploading an image and clicking “post.” There is a lot of thought and preparation that goes into each post.
For instance, you have to carefully consider which image to use – should it be a photograph or a graphic? Which format is best suited for the platform you’re using? Additionally, you have to determine whether the content would perform better in video, carousel, or single-image format.
The caption is another important element that must be designed to attract the audience’s attention and engage them. And then there are the hashtags – which ones are most relevant and likely to perform well for this particular topic? Should you use them at all?
As you can see, creating a social media post requires effort and attention to detail. It’s not just about posting for the sake of it, but rather creating content that will resonate with your audience and achieve the desired results. From my perspective, it demands a lot of discipline and I want to test mine.
In the end, I made a personal decision based on my business goals and evaluation of my current strategic tools. I also wanted a clean slate to start my experiment. However, if you have a profile with enough engaged followers, you can simply repurpose it instead.
Nonetheless, I believe that creating another account solely for photography will help me grow my audience significantly in a short amount of time. Of course, this will require effort and hard work, but my intention is to experiment and share the results of this experience with you, both positive and negative.