These are the five things I hate on Instagram as a creator
Nov 27, 2020
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Whether we like it or not, Instagram is still one of the best places for creators to showcase their work. Whether it’s photography, video, or any other kind of creative work, you’ll find many creatives on this platform. I’m one of them, sharing my articles and recipes, and I used to manage a YouTuber’s profile. And as both a creative and a regular user of Instagram, I’ve noticed some things that I find extremely annoying across all the profiles I manage. I want to address them in this article, and I can only hope that at least some of them will change with time.
1. Inconsistency in features over different accounts
Okay, so, I manage three accounts and all of them are were different types at one point. I have a personal profile and I manage two others: Kind of Cook and The Scribbled Paper. Kind of Cook was a Creator account from the start, and The Scribbled Paper started as a Business account, and now it’s a Creator account, too.
One of the things that I find very annoying is that I don’t have the same features on all my profiles. For example, likes are hidden on my personal account, whereas I can see everyone’s like count when I use any of the other two. I was offered to merge Facebook and Instagram messages on the personal account, while I don’t have the same option on my Creator accounts. Even those options that exist on all accounts look different across them (such as choosing a font in Stories). Here are some examples:
The funny thing is, my personal account has the options that I would prefer on the other two. The messages were recently merged across two platforms, the Stories layout is neater, and like counts are hidden. I’d prefer all this on Creator or Business profiles.
2. Messy algorithm
Nobody likes the Instagram algorithm ever since it stopped being chronological. Right? Right.
Not only that it isn’t chronological, I’ve noticed that it’s also been pretty “messy” lately. It shows me the same thing two or more times, while I miss some other posts completely. I know that Instagram shows you the accounts that appear most and least in your feed, but why on Earth are there some people I follow and Instagram doesn’t show them on my feed at all?
Another thing about the algorithm is that we constantly have to try and “beat” it and use all sorts of tricks to make our work more visible. It’s a little exhausting, really. But I think that deserves a totally separate post.
3. Too many ads
I know that ads and sponsored posts bring tons of cash to Facebook, but I honestly can’t believe how many of them there are on Instagram. They’re everywhere, especially in Stories. When I start goring through Stories, it’s basically like this: Story-ad-Story-Story-ad… To make things even worse, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad on Instagram that’s actually relevant for me. They’re usually for some really stupid phone games or Keto diet (what the hell?). I often choose an option to hide ads and say that it’s not relevant, both on Instagram and Facebook… But you don’t really care, Facebook, do you?
4. It takes forever to start a promotion (most of the times)
Since I made Instagram profiles for my two blogs, I guess that sometimes my paid posts end up in some innocent people’s Stories or feed. Anyway, the thing that’s pretty annoying with creating an ad on Instagram is that it takes forever for the promotion to start. Facebook is pretty quick to approve a sponsored post, while on Instagram it sometimes takes two or even three days.
5. No “swipe up” links
I know, I know, this is reserved only for the chosen ones who have above 10,000 followers and a verified account. But I have only one question: why? Why can’t I have this option so I can add links to my blog posts, short stories, and recipes to Instagram Stories? After all, the only reason why I made Instagram for Kind of Cook and The Scribbled Paper was to share the stuff that I publish on these blogs. Sigh…
Okay, I’ll and my rant here. I’ve been an Instagram user for a long time with my personal profile, and I made the two Creator accounts more recently. These are the five things I’ve found to be pretty annoying on Instagram, and I’d like to hear from you: do you hate these things as well, or you don’t mind them at all? Are there any things you’d add to the list?
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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13 responses to “These are the five things I hate on Instagram as a creator”
Instagram has totally choked creators, since Facebook took over. After eleven months of regular posts, followers still remain ridiculously small, it’s obvious reach is very tightly locked down, unless you pay to boost your content. I don’t play that game, because I’m making zero from my content at this point and damn if anyone else is making anything from my own works. Not happening.
My other rant is: advertisement riding free on bandwidth I paid for is not some corporate right for advertising firms. YOU PAY ME. No free rides! Remove your garbage from my bandwidth, or I will remove it for you with an appliance.
W Douglas LeBlanc I have to agree with you. Great points.
W Douglas LeBlanc I also agree, it’s almost impossible to gain new followers, and even likes are decreased. I have much better content now than 4 years ago, but I get fewer likes than before. Never been into paid boosting. Also, overall content on Instagram is awful, it has become a teenagers playground.
Photography nowadays doesn’t have any good platform where quality > quantity.
Not only that but the art thieves that re post content for some reason are the ones that get all the followers and likes. Even if they do credit the original artists reposing will always steal viewership away from the original artist by making it take more effort to find them. Any time I see an art work on insta i really dig I look for the original creators account so I can like it on their page and maybe give a follow instead of the reposters page. That shit really annoys the piss out of me. IMO all reposting accounts should be banned even if they do credit the original artist.
I’ve stopped using mine. You do more for Instagram than it does for you.
I want to publish some of the Instagram tricks I discovered in the past years, I will send you an email
Ridiculous bot-automated censorship (of already manually censored) artistic content.
Marius Budu censorship is definitely my biggest gripe. They took a post of mine down because I had the word crap in the image.
Ryan Price Try being an art photographer working with nudity ;) Every day is a fun game of Russian Roulette when I post anything…
Stamp size pics is reason enough for me to even forget I have an account there.
where u upload ur content if not instagram? i have flickr… but it is less used while is passing the time. I am not good at instagram, algoritm is weird, you have to put too much attention on it, i prefer to put attention in the photography, read books, etc, i can’t (or don’t want)lose my time dealing with algorithm and publicity, app like this are not good for art, like tik tok, i hate it. :p
IG is focused on influencers, which means getting as many followers as possible, regardless of the value of content. I get tired of seeing photographs of famous landscape destinations with someone (usually a woman) striking a hero pose in the foreground, as if that’s the most important element of the image.
Don’t use Instagram to get viewed unless the majority of your audience is on Instagram. Instagrams algorithms are stacked against you unless you pay money. A lot of money. Even if your audience is on Instagram you are still going to need to find ways out side of Instagram to get you seen on Instagram.