insutatop

Our reporter P.K. Sanjun can drive them off in droves!

Ah, Instagram. For most people on the photo-sharing SNS, there is a happiness in attracting new followers, while the losing them is cause for a bit of disappointment. But sometimes it’s hard to determine what causes fluctuations in your stats. What attracts and repels other users? It’s often hard to say.

Our reporter P.K. Sanjun has made a study of the phenomenon since joining RocketNews24 and Instagram about a year and half ago. He’s still not entirely sure what kind of posts will reliably attract new eyes, but he’s sure learned what kind of posts are guaranteed to send existing fans fleeing.

Based on his experience, here are four types of Instagram posts you may want to avoid.

Posts of ojisans

There are a lot of middle-aged men in our office, so it’s inevitable that a lot of P.K.’s posts are ojisans or older men. But post too many of these photos and it seems your followers will grow weary of you. If you happen to also be an ojisan or surrounded by ojisans, take care. Sorry, fellows, it’s a harsh world.

Posts of naked ojisans

“I wore Hatori-san’s jacket to the meeting, but it took him 35 minutes to notice!”

As mentioned before, there are a lot of middle-aged men in our office. And the office culture seems to involve a lot of running around naked. Most people understand we do this is the service of journalism, but even among those understanding souls, no small amount would really rather not see a naked ojisan. Gentlemen, it’s really a risky business to be putting your exposed body on Instagram. Which is not to say I won’t be doing it again…

Hentai Kamen cosplay photos

This really lost me followers. I mean really. Particularly among overseas users, this post was very unpopular. Within an hour, 10 people had unfollowed me! However, I gradually garnered some new followers after this too, so perhaps there are more people with an interest in Hentai Kamen cosplay than detractors?

Photos of nose hair

Our editor Go Hatori is pretty popular with the ladies. Usually just posting a photo of him is enough to get a bunch of likes, and yet when I posted a photo of a gray hair protruding from Go’s nose, I lost 20-30 followers within the hour! Seriously, people jumped ship so fast I thought it was some kind of bug in the system. So exercise caution with gross photos like that.

▼ Or this one. Really, this one covers three out of four don’ts!

▼For good measure, the fourth don’t.

Thanks for the tips, P.K. Let’s hope this article gets you a bunch of new followers, so you can find new ways to scare them off!

Photos: Instagram/p.k.sanjun

[ Read in Japanese ]