Today, I watched the Grid with Scott Kelby. He’s always informative and entertaining. He and Erik Kuna do a great job with that show and everything else at Kelby One.
One of the topics on the show was VERO. I’ve recently been very active there and wrote a post about it – you can read that here – https://picturemethods.com/2022/09/07/is-instagram-over-welcome-to-vero/.
Mr. Kelby doesn’t think Vero will succeed and he’s probably right. His position is based on the simple fact that it has far less traffic, traction, and just plain old bodies there to stand up to Instagram.
Many social media platforms have tried to take down Insta. Many offered better ideas, policies and approaches but all have failed to knock Instagram from the number one spot.
The reason Instagram succeeds is simple. It’s comfortable, ubiquitous and easy. Everyone has Instagram. Why not throw a photo up there and see what happens? Instagram remains powerful because people have built up lots of followers and likes and don’t want to abandon them.
People like Scott Kelby have millions of followers across all social media. I myself have 200,000 Twitter followers. It seems like I shouldn’t walk away from that.
BUT HERE’S THE THING!
Scott Kelby AND Scott Bourne have to PAY – out of our own pockets – to reach OUR OWN AUDIENCE.
Here’s an example of how this works. I have tweeted many times about an upcoming Bosque del Apache workshop I am co-leading with Canon Explorer of Light, Bob Davis.
Yet, just today, someone reached out to me (who follows me on Twitter and has for a long time) and asked me when I was going to release information on the Bosque workshop.
I have been tweeting about it for six months and he’s never seen it. Why? Twitter only allows a very small subset of my audience to organically see my tweets. I have to pay money (EVERY TIME) if I want more audience. It’s VERY expensive. It would cost me thousands of dollars a week to get even half of my followers to see what I post.
The same goes for Facebook and Instagram.
So if my followers aren’t seeing my posts, what’s the point of having a large audience? For ego? For show? It has gotten to the point where we’re all trying to chase the algorithm. It’s like Skynet becoming self aware. It’s a monster and we cannot possibly defeat it without spending a fortune.
The reason I think that VERO does have a chance is simple. On VERO everyone who follows me sees every post. There are no reels. There are no ads. THERE IS NO ALGORITHM. So yes, I will have a much smaller audience. But 100% of them will have the chance to engage with every one of my photos.
Who knows? Maybe a few hundred followers on VERO is the same as a few hundred thousand on Twitter.
CONCLUSION
Nobody has to give up Instagram, FB or Twitter in order to help VERO succeed. We just need to add them into the mix. When you post on Twitter. Post on VERO. Same goes for Facebook and Instagram.
Eventually, the critical mass may not LOOK as impressive – i.e., you will have far fewer followers, but the ones you DO have will see EVERYTHING you post and in the end – that might just be enough to make it worth it and to help VERO survive.
It’s worth a conversation.
If you follow me on VERO – I will follow you back.
2 Responses
Hi Scott. Just read you latest email. It’s too bad people don’t do what I do on Twitter. I get notifications for your Tweets. Simple. I do that for anyone I want to hear from. The notification section is my personalized Twitter feed.
Maybe you should remind folks to “hit that bell” so they don’t miss anything. YouTubers do it all the time.
Good idea. I will try but I am not the guy who likes to say “HIT THAT BELL” LOL!