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Wonderful Machine and social media algorithms have a few things in common: we consistently strive to evolve our practices and outcomes. By evaluating our recent performances on social media platforms, we can identify changes that need to be made going forward. Although Pinterest and LinkedIn’s analytics improved all around, our main Instagram adjusted to the loss of interactive story polls. September proved — in particular, with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube analytics — that there is always room for improvement.
We’re on our way to finding a good balance in the Instagram algorithm, but it’s taking some time. The effects of removing Instagram story polls are becoming apparent, with engagement down to 347. Considering their purpose, it would benefit us to reincorporate these interactive stickers from time to time, while sharing feed content to our story. However, we gained 46 new followers this month, finishing September with a total reach of 5.2K and nearly 16.7K impressions.
Our top post in September featured images from Kaitlin Kinney‘s “Meltdown” series. Katelin, a commercial photographer based in Tucson, Arizona, specializes in beauty/cosmetics photography, conceptual photography, landscape photography, and more. The post earned 1.3K impressions and a reach of a little over 1K.
Following close behind was a post from Silver Spring, Maryland-based editorial and commercial food photographer, Laura Chase de Formigny. Her carousel, which featured images from her project, “Fruit to Jar,” earned 1.2K impressions and a reach of 977.
Our most popular reel in September came from commercial and editorial photographer Suzanne Clements, with 1,120 plays and a reach of over 1K. Suzanne, who is based in Palm Bay, Florida, specializes in brand narrative photography, food/drink photography, lifestyle photography, and more. She created this animation for GreenWise Markets.
Wonderful at Work follows our consultants and producers by featuring our Expert Advice articles, Case Study articles, and Wonderful Machine News articles. Links to each of these categories — including our variety of Case Studies: Photo Editing, Design, Marketing, Pricing and Negotiating, and Shoot Production — can be found in our Instagram bio, on our Linktree. When we share a post featuring one of our articles, we include the direct link with the others, as well as in our stories.
Pinterest did well in September with 178.2K impressions, 5.4K engagements, and a total audience of 112.5K. All three increased by at least 15% compared to August. We also had 280 outbound clicks, most of which were directed to the websites of our member photographers.
In terms of Parent Boards, Photographer Specialities performed the best, with 50.7K impressions, 1.9K engagements, and 1.5K pin clicks.
Our top Idea Pin came from Marietta, Atlanta-based commercial photographer Bryce France, who specializes in portrait photography and sports/fitness photography. Bryce’s images of Jarrett Stieber and his restaurant, Little Bear, earned 143 impressions.
Following close behind with 139 impressions was a carousel of photographs by commercial and editorial photographer Rachel Pick. Rachel specializes in portraiture, lifestyle, and social documentary photography.
Facebook reach soared in August, but it took a -78.3% dive in September, with a total reach of a little over 1K. Our feed consists of photographer Spotlight articles as well as our feed from Instagram. However, since reels have become more common, they have taken slots on our feed, but we have not shared them on Facebook. We are changing this going forward, to improve our reach and visibility.
Our top post in September featured the article, Unpublished: The Autonomy of Ambiguous Gestures in Anthony Francis’ “All We Be.” In the ongoing project, San Antonio-based photographer Anthony Francis challenges the notion of one of his specialties: portraiture. The post earned a reach of 259.
Our implementation of hashtags on LinkedIn are already showing improvement, with a +53% increase of 274 pageviews. We also gained +50% more unique visitors, totaling 135. Visits are straightforward — they show the number of times our page was visited — whereas unique visitors are the number of individual LinkedIn users that have visited our page. We also have 22 new followers and experienced 867 impressions.
Our post featuring the article Crew: What Drone Pilots Do, earned 342 impressions and 240 unique impressions. Similar to visits and unique visitors, impressions refer to the number of times our post was viewed, whereas unique impressions are the number of users. The post also had an engagement rate of +3.5%.
Twitter‘s analytics were stronger last month, but to be fair, we didn’t share as much in September. In total, our posts earned about 1.4K impressions and 846 profile visits.
With 122 impressions, our top tweet featured our article, “Unpublished: Annick Donkers Explores the Extraterrestrial in Un-identified.” Annick Donkers is a Mexico City-based social documentary, portraiture, and travel photographer. Her photobook Un-Identified recounts her experience of witnessing a UFO as a child, while documenting and connecting with other people who have had their own encounters. Un-Identified is open for presale via her website.
Unpublished: @AnnickDonkers Explores the Extraterrestrial in Un-identified 🛸
👽 Un-Identified is now open for presale. Read more below 👇https://t.co/xbiuYD9zN8#portraitphotography #social #Documentary #photography #extraterrestrial pic.twitter.com/QWrMBybiKL
— Wonderful Machine (@wonderflmachine) September 15, 2022
Watch time on YouTube decreased to 9.8 hours, which could be partly due to the fact that a few of our recent videos have been shorter in length. That doesn’t explain our -17% drop to 453 views, though. On a side note, 26.1% of traffic came from the YouTube search bar in September. To better our chances of improving analytics, we plan to add one or two hashtags in our title and a few more within our caption, while using fewer tags in the keyword section of YouTube.
Our top video covered Patrick Heagney‘s Web Edit. The Atlanta-based lifestyle and portrait photographer reached out to Andrew Souders at Wonderful Machine, to refresh his website presentation.
Have questions about how we promote our photographers? Check out our Membership page. Want to know how you can get the most out of your Wonderful Machine membership? Check out our Jumpstart page or just reach out!