TSS#59 – Indiecator – Now on Instagram!

Social media is weird… or rather: I haven’t really figured it out. I’m constantly shitposting on that Instagram-account that my first ever girlfriend forced me to create and after 502 posts of uh… mountains… vineyards… vacation… museums… “Do Not Touch” signs that I’ve touched… and me, I guess,… well… apparently 166 people are following me over there. 166 people decided that my shitposts are not as shitty as I think they are and because of that I thought: “Why not do the same for my blog?”

Well… and there’s a problem. I had to figure out how to post pictures on Instagram using my PC. I didn’t necessarily feel like downloading the pictures onto my phone and posting them on my phone, too, as I really suck at typing on my phone… and I didn’t feel like switching to Safari or – even worse – Chrome… so in the end, I tried out downloading the Desktop-Instagram-App from the Windows Store, only to find out that it does the same as the browser-view: Everything but upload pictures.

And in the end, I installed an add-on that switches your browser window to mobile view… and that does the trick. I’m able to upload pictures quite easily and have now started to ship out some of my reviews onto Instagram, too… but in short… and with hashtags. My only problem right now is that I hardly know anything about networking and stuff on Instagram… on my private account, people probably are following me because they “know” me in the real world… but nobody knows me online, so how can I make a following?

Well, first up, I’ve started following a few (indie) game studios that I found on Instagram, including The Molasses Flood (who are right now working on “Drake Hollow” and who did a splendid job on “The Flame In The Flood”), Cadabra Games (who did a good job with “Adore” and the latest few updates!), PaintBucket Games (who made “Through the Darkest of Times”) and Simon Boxer (from Twice Different – the studio behind “Satan’s Workshop” and “Ring of Pain”) as well as the official Gamescom account and the MHW-account and 11-bit studios.

By following others, you essentially show up in other people’s feeds, too. You’ll get to see their posts, can comment or like them and other people automatically see you, which is great. It’s just like when you check out that blog that someone is running who commented on your blog posts… or when you check out a streamer that has hosted or raided you… or when you tweet “Oh, that’s an interesting game! Can’t wait to review it” and the devs message you about review keys, which I personally find quite neat as it shows how confident they are in their game!

Naturally, I also followed #indiegamedeveloper #indiedev and #indiegames to be up-to-date with interesting releases. Following hashtags is a great way to discover new stuff – it’s just like when you’re going into the “discovery”-tab on Steam and find some weird shit.

And next up, I’ll be promoting the fact that this page already exists in this post here (54 people who might be interested in an Instagram page), on twitter (92 people that might be interested in an Instagram page), Facebook (13 people that might like the Instagram page (just kidding, nobody uses Facebook anyways)), and on Twitch where we’re at 148 followers who might be interested in an Instagram page.
So, essentially, I’ll just post or tweet about it once or twice and then I’ll forget about it over there – as usual. I mean, I even forgot that I had a Facebook page for the blog.

A problem that I’ve encountered is that I have no clue about hashtags and what to do with those. I’ve put stuff into the first few posts like #blaugust #blaugust2019 (these were posts from back then!) and #review #indiegame #roguelite #roguelike #zerotohero and whatever to mention a few… and so far four people are actually following me on there which is interesting as these four people will probably see my posts about Indie Games like Pool Panic or Omensight that nobody has ever heard of and they may consider checking those devs out. :) Who knows?

But overall, Instagram is a weird place. I don’t really use it unless I’ve got a picture of my fan or my plant that I want to show on my personal/shitposting account… and with this new Instagram page, I’ve got a whole bunch of work to do as I’d like to put all the review posts on there… generally, I could consider putting other posts on there, too, but I’m not too sure if I really want to go through the effort of putting out more than a hundred posts from ten months within the next few weeks or so.

I could see myself putting out highlights and stuff from Twitch on there but primarily I’d like to keep it about the blog and about reviews. I feel like that’d be interesting.

I don’t really know if I want to grow too much on these platforms and stuff but I feel like a lot of the indie gems I’m reviewing might profit from actually being read by more people… and in the end it will probably help out some of those more promising devs that nobody has ever heard of.

So, if you use Instagram and want to be up to date with my reviews (I’m half-joking by the way) or if you want to see my old posts resurface again, hit me up over there, I guess…

And uh, twitter is here and twitch is here and Facebook is here (but I never check the Facebook page and it just automatically posts anyways) and here’s my discord server and Tumblr is here (completely forgot about that as well! :O) and uh, stay safe and healthy and at home and have a nice warm cup of tea or something! :)

Cheers!