#hashtag

Sorry I've been away so long. I've been busy on some little projects that I'll tell you about really soon, I promise.

I've also been conducting a mini (and very unscientific) experiment on Instagram. 

I love Instagram. I love its square, filtered glimpses of people's lives. 

I love the bright colours, the faded hues, the black and white.

I love the flowers, the shoes, the shelves.

I love the many children of Instagram and their stripy tights.

What I don't love is the tagging. I'm generally terrible at promoting myself, and find it really hard to bring myself to tag things because it feels like I'm cheating. Which is ridiculous, I know. It's just that it makes me ever so happy when people find my work and love it all by themselves. 

My friend Justine says that's a bit like her attitude to dating . . . 

She also says that this way failure lies.

When I talked to her about it, she pointed out that hash-tagging isn't self-promotion, it's enhanced web searching. So this weekend, I bravely decided to tag some of my pictures. I put on words like #autumn #yellow #hearts and even ventured across the pond with #color and #fall. It was very exciting, waiting and watching how many more likes each picture got when it was tagged. And it did work. But I got loads of spam too, telling me things like I had to be a "baller" (??) and buy more followers, and wot a cool photo (bad spelling never persuaded me), and that I could buy more friends at their website. Really? Who knew friends were for sale. 

I felt a bit sullied. 

I'm not even sure I want lots of people following me or my photos, but I also know I probably ought to want that.

See, this is why I will never be a hugely successful business woman. But on the other hand, I will be able to post pictures of happy dancing stripy tights without them getting spammed. Priorities.

I'd be really interested to know what everyone else thinks. I'd also love it if you could please tag all my photos for me from now on, so I don't have to struggle with the ridiculous sense that I really shouldn't be imposing myself on people. In fact, if someone could do all my promotion that would be perfect.

▶▶ PS. There may or may not be some tags at the bottom of this post, depending on how daring I am feeling.

▶▶▶ PPS. I am bbutterscotch on Instagram. Oooh, that almost counts as self-promotion. Pat on the back.