I got an Instagram account about a year and a half ago because a friend insisted I needed to. I barely used it at all, though, until just recently. Most pictures I want to share with my friends, I post on Facebook. I didn’t understand why in the world I would want to post pictures for anyone to see, because I didn’t see strangers being interested in what I post. Even this blog, which I post without any restrictions, I’m pretty sure is only read by people I know.
A couple months ago I downloaded an app called “Handpick.” It’s a collection of pictures of different dishes, with a list of ingredients for each one and a link to the source. These pictures are collected mainly from blogs and Instagram. It can be used to look up one or more ingredients, and then see all the dishes on the app that have those ingredients. I like looking there for ideas when I’m not sure what I want to cook.
I got to thinking, if they’re pulling some of these pictures from Instagram, maybe I should start posting photos of dishes that I’ve made myself. The more people who do that, the more there is available to make this app really useful. Also, if one of my pictures did get chosen… what an ego boost!
So now I used Instagram as it was, apparently, intended – to post pictures of food. I only post homemade dishes that I’m eating. Usually that means it’s something I made, but occasionally I get a good meal from a friend or someone in my family. This blog used to be the only place to share my dishes, but now you can see them all if you follow @cactuslynx on Instagram.
My profile looks a bit like this:
I’m starting to get the hang of hashtags, so most of the “likes” my pictures get are actually from people I don’t know! It’s super interesting, and the marketing researcher in me wants to find out if certain hashtags correlate to more likes. Excel sheet, coming up!
