As a small business owner and a creative, I wear many hats. I’m not even a hat guy. What I’m trying to say is that I have lots of projects on the go at the same time and I’m going to tell you about one of the coolest ones and how it has everything to do with you and your Insta success.

This project started with the seed of an idea planted by my lovely friend Kate. Kate and I met over mimosas in Valencia in 2008 and bonded as fellow creatives, she a fashion designer and myself a photographer. We met in the middle with our love for needlepoint and after an afternoon of cross stitching, we decided we needed to share this with the people and maybe even make a few dollars along the way.

We decided to run risqué cross stitch classes called BITCHCRAFT at an awesome innercity venue and we’d run it ENTIRELY ON INSTAGRAM. With the initial help of Eventbrite for order processing and We Teach Me (to get the extra tentacles out to our demographic) we held a trial class full of friends and I took stacks of photos. Full of stitched profanities, it’s disruptive and provocative, it stands out and gets attention and, most importantly, isn’t afraid of what people think. If you’ve ever done a group job interview, the loudest, most outgoing person always gets the job. This exact concept is what I apply to all social media content shoots.

As you’ll see on our Insta @bitchcraftmelb there are loads of clear, bright photos of all aspects of the class – from the location, the people, the snacks, the wine, the works in progress, the laughs and interactions, the community vibe, subtle branding and the complete experience to promote trust and confidence in what we offer. We’re exciting individuals so we needed our Insta to match. Our account is a consistent stream of fun and happy photos as subsequent classes make for more ideal content to add to our image bank.

We haven’t spent a cent on advertising. 

Working with small groups of new people each time, community and engagement is a really important part of our feed, so sharing students’ completed works and showing our genuine excitement for their progress, pride and enjoyment was absolutely paramount. We post stories before, during and after classes to excite the people or provoke questions about classes as well as ideas and special requests. We are all about our people, so we have to know what they want to we can show them we can deliver it to them. Our students show off their work to friends and word travels. We’ve grown our account to almost 400 followers since September 2019, with an average of 130 profile visits each week, all with nothing but quality content and well-researched hashtags. We receive loads of messages each week and people tag their friends because they want to be a part of it.  The human element is so incredibly important in engaging, we’re social creatures so if we see people enjoying themselves, we get that same desire to be involved.

In short, people want an experience. If they can feel that straight away from looking at your content, next minute they’re checking out your profile or sitting in the checkout of your online store. When your content is good, people trust you and want to know all about you and most importantly, spend money with you. If you wouldn’t be impressed by what you post, why should anyone else be?

If your content isn’t getting noticed, LOOK AT MEDIA can turn it around.