Over the last few months we have been doing Instagram testing ! Working with grid apps and seeing what it can do for us as a business, if it has any benefits or weaknesses to an Instagram account

Well it’s strange because it had some up side and some very strong down sides too!

For those of you who ask what are grids it’s using an app that breaks up a standard image into a number of smaller images 6 or 9 parts seem to be best but there are a number of others to use. You then post each image in sequence to Instagram to create a bigger picture. So it looks something like the image below on the page!

Model in image is Rhiannon

To be honest this looks fantastic on the page because you see a bigger image and it adds depth a character to your page,

As for stats well it works on getting more impressions to your page 9 times the amount of impressions in fact. Within the first week of testing we went from just 2000 impressions to 18.000 and the following week we hit our best of 30.000 this wasn’t our only benefit we started seeing a rise in followers too bonus I hear you say now this is one you would need to keep and eye on if you do like for likes or follow for follow !

We downloaded an app to see who is following and unfollowing you on Instagram

This is a benefit for anyone marketing on Instagram but when testing its needed 100%

This is where we found out that though people followed by the next day they would be gone so we couldn’t really count the following side of the grid marketing only really views and impressions

In short out post like went up too but also found that because there was multiple images to build up one full image the same person was liking all 9 so even though some full images got 300 likes divided down the average image was only 33

The impressions told a different story but again depended on a couple of factors repeated views of one or more image some images got 400 impressions some only got 100 but still meant that the grid was doing its job and getting images seen by more people even if there was multiple views from same person!

Now the view was a different thing again though the images got 400 impressions the same image would only get 50% of views around 200 still this was good for the page as was the impressions as both had gone up significantly for our page

All in all this was a great thing for our page and showed that grids work pretty well to get your page seen and a small following this was in the beginning

Now comes the but and this is a BIG BUT

Over the weeks we tested we found the out following dropped even those who followed us for months before started unfollowing we contacted a few and the reply was that they got annoyed with seeing parts of an image and not the full image and that because they was following it would block the news feeds with so many images they couldn’t see anyone else’s posts so they had to unfollow!

So in conclusion

The odd post including a grid maybe once a week to show a special image maybe a good thing. And yes it’s great for impressions

But in doing so you could loose you your following we gained nearly 500 follower in the time we run our test and dropped over 600 so we are over 100 down from

Where we started !

I’ve now resorted to the odd post and have started to archive the grid images because now I have to post a minimum of 3 images at a time because it puts out the grid images previously posts and make the page look very unprofessional and muddled!

I would suggest a simple clean page and post a number of images at set times of days would gain you a better following and impressions rate than doing grids

This is just what I have found and may not be the same for all but would say try it if you would like to but do so at own risk

Check out our page to see our work and grids before they all get archived

Adrian Day Photography