How to get Featured on Instagram
So you wanna’ get featured, huh? Well, heres what you gotta’ do kid…
Your first option is to pay for it.
”Really?”
”Yes.”
”…I mean no, don’t. But yes, It’s an option.”
I know there must be plenty of feature pages out there taking money for a feature. Personally I have never encountered them, though I did once try to ask around out of curiosity on how much these pages might be making. Whether they were lying or not, they were careful as it may be against Instagram’s ToS? And if not, they might be well aware it’s against some morals and prefer to avoid the bad rep. Either way, that’s mere speculation.
My advice would be to never spend a dime. After being featured organically myself and seeing the results which you can read about here, it’s really not going to be worth what ever they may be charging.
The honest/rewarding path looks a little like this…
1. Build a Good Set of ‘Feature Page’ Hashtags
Instagram allows you to use 30 hashtags per post and it’s to my best knowledge to use all 30. Some people put those in the post caption itself, others in the comments. The speculation on the algorithm is constantly changing and it is just that, speculation. My recent features came from 30 hashtags being placed in the comments section, just FYI.
How to find a set of hashtags? Well you want all of your hashtags to come from ‘Feature Pages’ because you want someone to feature you, right? Especially those feature pages in your niche. So this will be varying, depending on what you shoot. Search the keywords which relate to your niche, find the feature accounts and copy their hashtags from their bio.
Make sure to follow the accounts of which hashtags you are using too, it’s far less likely they will feature you if you’re not following them to begin with.
Here you can see two used by this Street Photography Helsinki feature page - #streetphotographyhelsinki and #streetphotographyfinland
Do this until you have a set of 30 and use these on all relevant posts.
As an added tip - if you can, find pages with a different range of followers. Your posts may be lost amongst the thousands using a hashtag for a large feature page but you may standout to one with less followers who are more likely to feature you for using their hashtag. Being featured by a smaller account is better than not being featured by a large one.
Think something like 5 hashtags for feature accounts with under 10k followers, 10 hashtags for under 50k followers and 15 hashtags for 50k+ followers - for example.
If you shoot Street Photography, you’re in luck. I’ll do you a solid and give you a set of 28 I already made (you can add the extra two, I’d suggest something local to your area).
Here is some popular Street Photography hashtags for Instagram:
#streetclassics #urbanstreetphotogallery #city_features #friendsinperson #streetsacademy #lensculturestreets #thestreetphotographyhub #streets_storytelling #fromstreetswithlove #artofvisuals #meistershots #streetphotographyincolors #spjstreets #streetsgrammer #n8tones #photocinematica #cinesomnia #capturestreets #myspc #streetdreamsmag #life_is_street #streetphotography #spicollective #myfeatureshoot #challengerstreets #streetleaks #streetscenesmag #streetphotographerscommunity
2. Follow and Engage with the ‘Feature Page’ Creators and Curators
Your posts may be swallowed up in the amount of others using the same hashtags for large accounts but surprisingly I have often found the creators and curators of such large feature accounts have considerably less followers. Follow them. Engage with them and their work. It’ll make it far more likely for them to check you out and if they like what they see, they might feel more compelled personally to put you on.
You can often find the creators/curators personal accounts listed also in the bio, along with the hashtags.
One example here with @reflectingstyles and @dirtyrain_ for @bnw_workers
3. Shoot an ‘Instagramable’ Image
If you’re here and still unsure what an Instagramable image is, you might need to take one step backward and figure that out first. But I will be writing about this in the near future!
And if you know, you already know.
According to my feature history, this would be considered a share-worthy, Instagramable image…
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4. Have a ‘Themed’ Page
This isn’t absolutely essential as it is only one image that will be featured, not your entire account, but regardless it does help in more way than one. In particular, these niche groups want to share people in their niche group, to others in their niche group. It just makes sense for a lifestyle page to support a lifestyle photographer, the BnW pages - a BnW photographer, the film pages - a film photographer etc.
Here is my Black and White themed Street Photography Instagram - for example.
5. Make a Blood Sacrifice to Overlord Zuckerberg
With all this being said, this entire process is still a dice-roll. These tips will merely up your odds of rolling a 6 but it’s still going to take a number of rolls. Seemingly, things you expect to pop sometimes don’t and things you’re half-baked on can go wild.
At the very least, now you have a number of tips to increase your odds of getting that feature. To possibly have millions of eyeballs on your precious work! It happened to me and it can happen for you. Click here to take a read of what happened for me after my first ever feature which reached millions…
- If this article helped you at all or your think it could help others, please do consider giving it a share! It helps me, it helps others and it’s completely free. Cheers and good luck!
And why not check out this video on how to best display your art whilst you’re here!