I say experience and not review because I simply want to share what happened to me, my thought process, and let you decide for yourself...but for googling purposes I titled with"review".
O.K., so now that we have that out of the way...I'm just starting out in this very saturated area of fashion blogging, and with so many peeps doing the same thing its easy to get lost in the mix. Right?? We would all probably like to have more genuine followers no matter what our current count is. The question is how to accomplish this. I have spent many hours researching just that! There seems to be a general theme:
- hashtags
- comment and like others
- follow and unfollow - I'm just not into this method at the current moment for a variety of reasons, but never say never I guess.
- loop giveaways
- hosting a singular giveaway
- participating and/or hosting a style challenge
- blog link ups
- follow Friday
- have your worked featured on a larger account - for instance on Target's Instagram. If you are so lucky!
- Am I missing any??
- Oh, ya...produce good content. That can't hurt.
All of the above led me to fashionistaview. Well, they contacted me via email, Mary did to be exact. Mary said something like she LOVES my account and it has lots of potential...pretty sure they send the same email to everyone! At first I was excited, someone said I have potential!!...did I mention I am just starting out!?!...but, then that quickly turned to skepticism. Ya, know the whole "too good to be true" mom voice in my head. SO, I checked out fashionistaview's Instagram account. It looked to me to be somewhat legitimate. I contacted a couple ladies I saw who had pictures posted to their account. They both had a much larger following than me at around 10-11K...WOW, in my goals of goals to have that following! This gave me hope because they were out there doing their thing, and also utilizing this as a tool. Each lady was very sweet and told me, they're not sure how "real" it is, but what could it hurt. I also saw that Stuart Weitzman looked to be using fashionistaview to gain followers!!!
Some time passed, and I sent Mary an email asking her a couple questions. No response. I sent it a few more times. No Response. I then received another email from Mary stating they were running a promotion or discount on all of the packages. After talking with my husband and thinking about the above mentioned information I decided "what the heck", and proceeded with the six hour package. I purchased my package and uploaded my picture around 8 pm that night and the following morning at 8 am my picture was shared on fashionistaview's Instagram. I gained a handful followers over the next six hours and a few likes. At almost 2 pm on the dot(six hours later), my Instagram following went from 151 to around 1,400. Also, at almost the exact same time I magically received 100 likes spread over a few photos.
I was a little dumbfounded by my instant increase in following. In my mind, I thought my increase would happen more organically over the course of the six hour exposure time. Fashionistaview's following at the the time was around 100K. It didn't seem unreasonable to me that a small percentage would truly want to follow me...sort of like a match making service. After reviewing my new found following I saw many, MANY accounts that to me appeared fake.
Like these which is just a small sampling...
The next five posts received around 60 instant likes.
Then the likes stopped and I went back to my normal, average amount of likes. I steadily lost followers of around 10-15 a day.
Lost followers with accounts that often looked like these(again, just a small sampling)...
Then I participated in a loop giveaway, and I was super excited to do so. Many accounts have grow greatly in part to loop giveaways. My follower count grew to 2,199 at the close of the giveaway or plus 911! Exciting, right!!?! By March 30th, ten days after announcing the loop winner 237 followers lost.
Closing thoughts:
I apologize for not collecting this data in a more scientific way, but I think you can get the general idea. With the loop giveaway the accounts were/are real, live people in comparison to what my experience with fashionistaview was. I paid $26 to participate in the loop giveaway and with fashionistaview. I mention the loop giveaway because I participated so close to fashionistaview and thought it was important to include when looking at my gain/loss. Today, April 14th I am minus another 91 followers or around 10 a day. To be fair to both methods I have few follows/unfollows each day that aren't related.
Have you gained any real followers? This is difficult to answer, but my quick, off the cuff answer would be NO. BUMMER. And if I did, I can most likely count them on one hand! So my quest in this blogging and Instagram world continues.
If you have any questions about what I've shared I would love to hear from you!
Also, if you have advice for a newbie like me I would appreciate that as well!!
Thanks for stopping by. Audra
March 6th to March 7th
I was a little dumbfounded by my instant increase in following. In my mind, I thought my increase would happen more organically over the course of the six hour exposure time. Fashionistaview's following at the the time was around 100K. It didn't seem unreasonable to me that a small percentage would truly want to follow me...sort of like a match making service. After reviewing my new found following I saw many, MANY accounts that to me appeared fake.
Like these which is just a small sampling...
The next five posts received around 60 instant likes.
Then the likes stopped and I went back to my normal, average amount of likes. I steadily lost followers of around 10-15 a day.
Lost followers with accounts that often looked like these(again, just a small sampling)...
From March 7th to March 17th - minus 122 followers
Then I participated in a loop giveaway, and I was super excited to do so. Many accounts have grow greatly in part to loop giveaways. My follower count grew to 2,199 at the close of the giveaway or plus 911! Exciting, right!!?! By March 30th, ten days after announcing the loop winner 237 followers lost.
Closing thoughts:
I apologize for not collecting this data in a more scientific way, but I think you can get the general idea. With the loop giveaway the accounts were/are real, live people in comparison to what my experience with fashionistaview was. I paid $26 to participate in the loop giveaway and with fashionistaview. I mention the loop giveaway because I participated so close to fashionistaview and thought it was important to include when looking at my gain/loss. Today, April 14th I am minus another 91 followers or around 10 a day. To be fair to both methods I have few follows/unfollows each day that aren't related.
Have you gained any real followers? This is difficult to answer, but my quick, off the cuff answer would be NO. BUMMER. And if I did, I can most likely count them on one hand! So my quest in this blogging and Instagram world continues.
If you have any questions about what I've shared I would love to hear from you!
Also, if you have advice for a newbie like me I would appreciate that as well!!
Thanks for stopping by. Audra
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