Instagram Scroll and Creator Store: How some new features can increase the pressure on creators

Rachel Reichenbach likes to joke that she is the overlord of online frog worship. For a 22-year-old artist, this is not a bad job. Reichenbach is also a full-time college student in California. She started selling her amphibian sketches of keychains, pins, soft toys, clothing and other utensils in 2019. As her Instagram audience grows, her sales It also grows. Unlike most people (especially influential people) we call “creators” on the platform, Reichenbach’s face on social media is not easy to recognize. Instead, the drawing and animation of her iconic spotted cartoon frog takes center stage.The frog is her Brand and business, Instagram is the cornerstone of her marketing success.

Reichenbach’s shop Yuyue It is a one-person business, even if she has accumulated more than 107,000 followers. She is responsible for communicating with suppliers and customers, sending orders and marketing her products. Since Instagram is where she reliably attracts most of the website’s traffic (and sales), most of her promotions rely on the app — and her ability to play games with its seemingly elusive algorithm.

“When most of my income depends on posting and reminding people of my existence, I really can’t take a break,” she told me. “I don’t run any ads, so everything I do is based on organic coverage.” But more and more Instagram seems to put higher demands on its creators and business owners. It is not enough to publish and hope for the best results; she needs a strategy.

Reichenbach showcases products in her dynamics and stories every day, and she has a virtual Instagram storefront to showcase her products. However, her goal is to direct buyers to her website so that she can collect customer data for marketing materials. As far as Instagram is concerned, it wants more. In February of this year, an Instagram representative contacted her and asked her to consider integrating the app’s “checkout” function into her store. This feature is theoretically more convenient for users because they don’t need to leave the app to buy goods-this is a potential benefit for Reichenbach’s business.This is not the first time Instagram has contacted her: she had previously called another representative in December and was encouraged to use the scrolling feature more actively Increase her overall engagement.

Instagram and its parent company Facebook have been integrating more business functions into their platform in the past year. Initially, this focus was on companies struggling in the pandemic.However, major social networks realize that considerable income can be generated through influencers and e-commerce; this attention has shifted to creators and A booming creator economy.

Instagram launched its first “Creator Week” program in early June. This is an opportunity to promote the incremental update of Creator Shops, which is an extension of the existing shopping features that Instagram first announced in April, and its native affiliate tool, which allows influential people to make purchases for them in-app Products earn commissions.

Creators with their own product line, such as Reichenbach, will be able to link their store to their profile, and if they choose to publish more products, they can work directly with pre-selected suppliers and merchandise partners.

Some of the newly released features are directly applicable to her business: for example, the affiliate tool allows her to work directly with lifestyle creators and negotiate commission rates. Instagram also motivates creators to use more live streaming features through a “milestone” system that provides additional spending. Reichenbach is very excited that she can earn about $100 by live-streaming herself to draw an hour of frog sketches.

However, although these tools are well-intentioned, they may not fully benefit-and even apply to-people who make a living through Instagram. “Creators” is not a universal term, and their needs vary depending on the size of the audience and the market segment.The author of Means of Creation, a newsletter about the creator economy, believes that creators Should not be attached to a platform Or content type. Instead, they should try different business models and monetization methods to find the method that best suits their audience and lifestyle.

Reichenbach is not one of many lifestyle and fashion creators on Instagram. She considers herself a hybrid of an artist and a small business owner. She still suspects that the update might increase her business’ reliance on the platform, even if it is promoted under the guise of creator monetization. Although these tools are advertised as a convenient way for creators to earn more income, there is no guarantee that they can earn a living wage through this full-time job.

“As more and more social platforms begin to provide storefronts, influencers may manage five to eight different stores on all these platforms, but do not own any of them,” the influencer’s affiliate tool Like to Know It General Manager Kit Ulrich said. Instagram’s native membership function may become a competitor to tools such as Like to Know It, in which creators earn commissions on pages that list their approved products.

For this reason, some retro clothing sellers have also withstood the push of Instagram to complete sales within the app. Although it is helpful for marketing, the strict interface and rules of the platform are not good for the way some companies operate.Jenna, one Antique seller From Portland, Oregon, she prefers to use Instagram to market her clothes, and she sells them through Depop or her direct messages. Since she only has about 5,000 fans, Jenna has time to communicate directly with customers, which makes the sales process more personalized.

“Direct messaging transactions are less, and there are opportunities for dialogue between sellers and buyers,” she told me via Instagram messages.At the same time, some old Instagram accounts passed Informal bidding procedure, And because of the highest bidder in the auction, the fixed price will not be displayed on the app.

After attending a seminar on Instagram’s checkout function, Reichenbach decided to refuse to use it in her store. In her opinion, this feature is not good for small sellers and prevents them from retaining customer information. “Instagram wants to act as an intermediary in these transactions,” Reichenbach told me, adding that other artists also have this concern. “This requires a commission from the sale. It’s difficult because I can’t always afford it. There are also regulations on how sellers can send orders within a certain number of days and a 14-day return policy. As a small seller, I can’t always Stick to this, I rely on bookings to measure interest.”

Reichenbach prefers her website to become a central domain for customers to purchase her products, rather than Instagram. She enjoys the agency rights of shops supported by Shopify, but although Reichenbach is her own boss, her business depends largely on following the rules of the app. Most creators recognize this trade-off. In the field of digital entrepreneurship, this is an ongoing tug of war.

recently Blog post, Instagram tried to clarify misunderstandings about its algorithm and explain how the application’s technology works. In short, there is no single algorithm, but there are multiple variables that affect the organization of a person’s feed, exploration pages, stories, and scrolls.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, wrote: “Instagram does not have an algorithm that can monitor what people do and don’t do on the app.” “We use a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes. Each has its own purpose. We want to make the most of your time, and we believe that using technology to personalize your experience is the best way to do this.”

However, certain in-app habits or tools can increase the influence of the creator, even if there is no single mechanism to be responsible. When Reichenbach talked with an Instagram representative in December last year, she suggested that she post within a week: four to seven Reels; three feed posts; one to three IGTV clips; and eight to ten stories. This is a “very unrealistic” standard, even if Instagram claims to care about users’ mental health.

However, creators do not always have to abide by the ideals of algorithms, and some are fighting back. According to Ulrich of Like to Know It, influential people and creators realize that they have more power over their business decisions. “Influencers are building their own businesses and brands and planning products,” she said. “But they recognize that you will not build brand equity by spreading brand equity across multiple platforms. You can use other platforms to find new consumers and promote your brand, but operating so many independent stores is not feasible of.”

Stephanie McNeal of BuzzFeed News recently described this sentiment as “Small uprising“Among Instagram influential people, they feel that the app does not take their best interests to heart. Some have Leaving or being interrupted Others put more energy into platforms such as Patreon, OnlyFans or Substack, which allow them to directly monetize their fans. More and more creators want to have ownership of their content and audiences, instead of being constrained by the whim of the platform. For a long time, creators have been frustrated that it is difficult to maintain a stable life when their participation indicators may fluctuate from month to month. This is not an issue specific to Instagram; YouTube video blogger, Twitch streamer, with Young vibrato Complain about being burned. However, the ability to withdraw from the platform Cold Turkey—stop publishing for several weeks or months at a time—is not feasible for full-time creators whose income comes mainly from online activities.

Polly Barks, a zero-waste and sustainability educator, decided to delete her Instagram account in September after amassing 27,000 followers. This was not a decision she made lightly, but in the two years before she left, Bacchus found that her participation was steadily declining, which affected her mental health. She ultimately felt that her level of investment in Instagram did not bring substantial results. “When you have a creator or business account, it’s hard not to get addicted to numbers,” Bucks said. “You can see that your participation indicators are declining, and you are starting to become anxious.”

She currently writes a newsletter and serves as a freelance marketing and sustainability consultant. Leaving Instagram will have minimal impact on Barks’ income, partly because her work is not entirely dependent on the app. “If you rely on social media for most of your income, it will be difficult to quit smoking like me,” Bucks said. “I think these updates are a way to keep people, especially larger creators, on the platform. Whether they will be fairly compensated for the labor and time they spend on Instagram, I’m not sure.”

Most users are not used to thinking of digital content as labor, but the labor of creators is crucial to generating revenue for the platform. Bucks said that this type of job might sound ideal at first because she has successfully transformed her passion into a full-time job: “When you have to calculate your hourly wage, it’s not as it sounds. it is good.”

The creator economy flourishes in a decentralized and personalized work culture, but its participants have not escaped the shackles of the noisy culture. In fact, the work and life fields are more easily integrated, eliminating any sense of digital autonomy when they log in online. Instagram’s latest creator tool provides more users with direct opportunities to make money. This also reflects the app’s parental control over the creator’s behavior-how often they comment, post, share, and stream.

“You always feel that you have to do or post something,” Reichenbach said. “There is a lot of exhaustion, but what can you do? Instagram allows me to have my own business.”