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On 21/06/2018 at 4:17 PM, Bryan Bosch said:

I've been thinking the same thing lately. I ride, I come back, and the quick thought runs through my head, "I didn't take any pics for social.", quickly followed by, "Who GAF!" We all know that people only share a slice of any experience, and only the best of the best.  I have a Sena Prism cam on my desk that hasn't been on my helmet the last half a dozen rides and honestly, while I love the camera, I'm just not feeling compelled to have to capture everything. Nothing wrong with memories in my head and sharing with friends & family through good ol' conversation. Not anti pics or video by any means. Just feeling like it's just too much of a priority. We're so worried about capturing the moment, we're not living in and fully enjoying it. But, what do I know... Just a random thought for the Internet today. ;)

Agree with you 100%. I get many a day where I just don't have the energy to take photos. But more so, since we started travelling in 2010 I got to a point now where posting on social media is a pain in the arse. The more and longer you go the less important sharing stuff becomes. I still do but selectively, I take photos and videos for me first, if one of them is okay for social media then so be it.
That said I wont make the same mistake again, I did not take that many photos when we started and in hindsight afterwards were pissed at myself because I wanted to show people some of the places and I did not have photos. I could not print us nice wall prints, I could not send photos to magazines for the articles I wrote. In all basically I recon it is better to have many than none :D

 

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So I knew about bots that people use to auto-like other posts and I’ve also heard of buying followers but now apparently you can buy likes for about $0.60/1000 likes!

 

A friend of mine is doing it and I think it looks bad. Like REALLY BAD. Like wearing a toupee bad.

 

It’s SO obvious. He has about 1000 followers but gets like 4-5k likes on most of his posts. Ah but they must be really engaging right? Nope. He will have something like 2 comments.

 

And his other posts of similar quality have just 80 likes. (Face palm)

 

Please don’t do what he’s doing. It looks really bad and will get you no sponsorships.

 

 

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The baffling question is why pay for likes? Any company needing exposure and buying likes surely by now know they are pissing money way. You benefit zero by getting zero of your target market liking your stuff. 
Why normal people would buy likes is beyond stupid. Like you say it is so obvious and cringe-worthy than wearing a toupee. 

It is so easy to see the people doing that. There are a new guy and girl riding Asia and they knocked up thousands of like on each post and they started a few months ago. It is highly unlikely they would grow a Insta account that quick. 

 

But so be it, if people are so blinded by fame or whatever the hell they think they need it, then let them blow their money :D 

Edited by michnus
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I think I follow most of you guys there but I'm on as:

@adv_tribe_is_back

... since a Russian hacker highjacked the old #adv_tribe one and I could get zero response from Instagram for several months - so I built a new one and am working on getting my old pics posted again.

My buddy Craig Johnson at Wild Ass is on Instagram as both:

@therealwildass 

@wildasscraig

 

 

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On 5/2/2019 at 2:56 PM, michnus said:

Watch how Insta "Influencers" lose all their shit now! But as we have said so many times, you can't build a business on someone else's platform. Google+ is dead, and now this will also stop some Insta businesses dead in their tracks.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/instagram-without-likes-photos-2019

 

I think that's a bad idea because feedback, information, accountability are what make IG better in the long run.  I know what types of posts work better than others by seeing how many likes it got.  Without knowing likes then one would think the content quality would decline.

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Not really Instagram but the topic of sponsorship has been talked about more here than elsewhere.

Here's a good lesson on what NOT to do.  This TwoDuro group is listing a "hall of shame" of companies who failed to appreciate their "brilliance."

You can translate the content in your browser or just scroll down and see the names of the companies they explain for various reasons how bad they are and how you must stay away from them.  

Wow.  Just wow.

h/t @michnus

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You think you have seen it all then something like this comes around. It is pretty sad actually, there are just no words, where to start explaining to them how utterly stupid the logic is that they applying. And then people ask why brands are shying away from helping and sponsorship. 

Translated: 

HALL OF SHAME

Companies that do not want to support us or do not respond to emails

Ok, ok, you do not have to take that seriously here. Of course, no person or company is required to respond to our requests for information or sponsorship. Of course, just because you own a company, you do not necessarily have to support any world traveler. We understand, is also completely ok. However, the sponsorship for the respective companies is not ineffective. Pictures of the most beautiful places in the world, product reviews and distribution in social media are just a few examples of the benefits. I do not know about you, but we buy a lot of products that we found on the side of other motorcyclists / travelers. 

On these pages you can see who at least responded to our letters and who did not.

Let's start with:

Acer

We need a laptop and think that could be interesting for us, but also companies. So do not write to Acer, with whom I had previous business contact and ask for a cooperation. I suggested to them that they could support us with a Swift-3 model (eg a projectionist). We would have tested the part on the trip and then gave it back. I received a rather arrogant answer, which sounded like an over-motivated intern: For that, Acer really would not have the budget to lend a device ... Ts.tsts. A small shopping discount was apparently not in it. Too bad.
I always find it ok when companies are simply not interested in supporting travelers or vlt. too many requests received - but if that is so unsympathisch communicated, I do not like the companies anymore. Once again a local company (Hamburg) who has responded stupidly to a request. No matter. 
So we came to our refurbished notebook . In the end we find much better anyway!

EJK - Electronic Jet Kit

The company EJK manufactures controllers for, among others, the CRF. This allows the injection to be controlled electronically. In short, it is possible with this device to increase the performance of the moped. We did not want to install the part, but I thought we would have to do something about the enormous loss of power at altitude. I contacted EJK by e-mail and did not ask for a sponsorship , but whether the part in the height of the Andes (up to 5.000m) could help us.I have not received an answer to date. I do not understand that. The place in the HALL OF SHAME is deserved. I believe that customer inquiries need to be answered, especially with such a special device. Shame on you - EJK!

Martin Rütter dog school

I wanted to ask the well-known TV dog professional how we motorcyclists protect us best from dog attacks. I did this by eMail. What can be done if a single dog attacks or attacks a dog gang on the bike? It happened to me already and it was unpleasant. Especially in South America there are many strays that vlt. nice to people, but do not like mopeds.

Of course I would have made this information available to you.Sure, you do not have time for everything .... but I do not even answer I think stupid. Too bad, Martin Rütter ...

Supplement on 18.04.2018 I received after 3 months following - not very helpful - Mail:

 

Dear Mr. Rossbach,

Thank you for your e-mail, which has reached me as an employee of Martin Rütter. Due to technical problems, unfortunately it is only now possible for me to answer you.

Please bear in mind that serious help regarding the dog band attacks in South America via email is not possible. I would like to recommend that you contact one of our national DOGS dog schools. There you have the opportunity to get to know the body language of dogs and thus to better assess the behavior of dogs (https://www.martinruetter.com/angebot/angebotsuebersicht/#3). All coaches in our network have completed intensive studies with Martin Rütter DOGS and will be happy to assist you competently. An overview of all locations can be found on our homepage at www.martinruetter.com/ locations.
 

I hope I could help you a little with my answer and I wish you and your wife all the best.

Best regards
 

Rebecca Korn-Mina Training GmbH

Vaude

So that's a shame: Vaude (a German company) produces various parts for outdoor use. Actually, we almost never ask for "gifts", but offer us for product testing. In this case a tent and sleeping bags. Vaude works "green" and sustainable and we like that! So I asked Vaude, if you could imagine us the requested parts for 1-2 years to provide. Unfortunately, Vaude saw no approach to cooperation. That's ok too. Since we find the company and products really good and can imagine going off with them, I asked for a small discount. Then I got no answer ... A pity.

As a rule, companies really do have some of the co-op they make with (world) travelers. We and you report on products, test them and make recommendations. In the case of Honda CRF250L, for example, we and other bloggers, with our reports and questions answered, have already made some sales. The equipment looks the same in the end. On the other hand, of course, really no one has the duty to support us. We will probably unload our new tent ? 
What Vaude does we still find great - if you are interested look at their homepage.

forma

From Forma, whose Germany sales in Austria sits, we would like to have had a few boots for testing. By letter

we have contacted, but never received an answer. Too bad, at least a short refusal would have been better than nothing.

Klim - USA

We also contacted Klim by letter sent directly to the United States. Our sensational idea: Klim provides us with equipment and we test it for two years. Finally, we wanted to hand over the clothes personally (for analysis) in the headquarters in the US. I think that's an unusual and extremely cool idea - Klim sees it differently and does not even respond to our idea. The clothes are really great - a small answer to our humorous letter would have been nice.

Therm-a-rest - USA

They could have put us all sorts of camping equipment available (eg on loan), but they do not want, as we were informed via Facebook info. Only a few special people are supported here. A pity, we would like to be special too.

Rollei

So we're really annoyed about that. Rollei is located near HH. Our motto: It does not always have to be Go Pro does not seem to interest Rollei anymore. We asked for 2 cameras (retail about 50-150 euros) on loan and test basis. Our email request was answered incorrectly (we did not want a donation or anything ....) The written request was not answered. With no line. Then I buy from the Chinese next door! Yah!

Klymitt - USA

Klymitt is not very well known as a camping equipment supplier in Germany. We had found some interesting products that we would have liked to test for Klymitt. You guessed it: No line on our cover letter. Yes, yes, yes you get all 1,000 inquiries, I know!

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So we hit 100k followers at Instagram!  Woo hoo!  

I wanted to take a minute also to talk about how we got there in the first place which is pretty much just consistently posting photos of adventure motorcycles and the stories of their riders.  That's pretty much it!

Someone recently questioned me on our Instagram followers and I have to say I got a bit pissed off but I think he was mostly ignorant of these things but still... I do NOT appreciate having my integrity questioned so I thought it might be a good idea to revisit a few things about exactly who is following us on Instagram...

I recently found we were not really first in adventure motorcycles on Instagram.  There's another feed (I won't mention) who has about 106k followers.  I immediately thought to myself "yeah but I'm sure it's all bs and that he bought his followers" so I did an audit from one of those free Instagram audit sites and it said that we had likely more fake followers than this other guy!!!!  I was like what?!!!  This other account only re-posts and does not do stories or IGTV or even have a website behind it like we do.

Well, so "fake" followers is and isn't a thing here on Instagram.  There are obviously a lot of fake accounts which are there primarily to spam via messages in comments or be the source of paid likes on posts.  But most of the legit Instagram influencer or analytic sites have gotten away from the label "fake" and are now simply using "quality" scores.  This is mostly because it's kind of impossible to identify what is truly a fake account from maybe one that is just not as engaged.  If it was so easy to spot a fake then Instagram would have deleted them a long time ago, and they do from time to time.

I did one of these "audits" more than a year ago and it said I had something like 5% fake followers and the Instagram average is 8% so I felt good about that.  I'm also audited by some reputable influencer platforms like Fohr and Influence.co.  I tend to rely on their metrics more than these "free" audit sites.  Many of those free sites have gone out of business and they all have different ways of determining what is fake vs un-engaged so they're not really that reliable.

Fake followers tend to follow larger accounts like us with more followers, more comments and a higher posting frequency.  I can't control this and don't have a way of determining who is fake and who isn't.  @beemer bunny actually took the time to weed through her entire list of followers once and blocked those she didn't know or who seemed fake but I really don't have the time to do that.

But the bottom line is I have NEVER purchased ANY followers.  First of all that's not who I am.  Second, purchasing followers simply doesn't help you.  If I were going to spend money (like i have any) I'd purchase likes (which I've seen many do).  There were some tools a year or so ago that could get you additional followers by basically programming it to post canned comments like "nice pic!" on any post that contained a target hashtag such as "#xladv" or "#advrider" or whatever but they can get your account deleted in Instagram catches it and they have since caught on to those tricks.

Here's an image showing our follower growth over the last year.  If I had been purchasing followers then you'd likely see sudden jumps when that kicked in or dropoffs when I stopped.  But you'll see the growth has been quite steady (organic). 

Screen Shot 2019-10-14 at 12.46.41 PM.png

We get anywhere from about 800-1600 new followers per month and that really has tapered off from the early days when 3,000/month wasn't unusual.  Instagram has really changed their algorithm and made it MUCH harder to gain likes and new followers unless a post is really really engaging such as with a lot of likes and comments.  It's much harder to get a 1,000 like post now with 100k followers than it was when we had 30k followers because of the algorithm.

My strategy for the past two years has been mostly to post photos of preferably XLADV members first and then photos that tell a story or are interesting.  I know exactly what type of photos get the most likes but they are typically those professionally shot photos of a brand new bike all clean with perfect light and usually after market lights.  I don't do those (often) because they bore the hell out of me; there's no story.  If it doesn't foster a sense of community then I'm not interested and consequently why I really don't care there's another adv account with more followers than us.

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I was talking about post types and how I generally try to stay away from those professionally shot photos with the clean bike, perfect angles and light. They’re boring and don’t tell a story or build community.

But then sometimes I do! Lol.

Look at this post! This is an all time record for likes, reach, impressions, etc...


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I did kind of a long talk on Instagram yesterday.  This is kind of a brain dump and was just trying to organize my thoughts for a future video.  This one is more comprehensive and focusses more on my experience but I want to do another that is more geared towards the rider and things they should be doing.

 

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Have you been noticing these blue checks next to people's feed name on Instagram?  You see the same thing on Twitter and Facebook (I think).  It's supposed to mean you're verified and the authentic account most people think you are.  This is more an issue for accounts that get impersonated a lot like a celebrity, athlete, company, etc...

I couldn't care any less about it really except that I went ahead just for fun to see if I could get a blue check for XLADV.  Except....  they won't give me one!  And this of course means I want one even more now!  

So I started to look into it a bit to see if I can figure out why they're not giving me one.  I've seen a handful of them for some riders I follow like Lea Rieck, Rosie Gabrielle, OnHerBike (Kinga) etc... as well as many athletes like Ricky Brabec, Andres Van Beveren, etc....  Many companies too.

As far as I can tell the only reason I suspect they're not giving me one is because I haven't been impersonated (yet) or confused with other Instagram accounts.  I read into it online and there are a number of reasons they won't give you one but none of them seem to apply to me: you aren't active on Instagram, you promote shady stuff, you post content that gets reported a lot, etc...  Someone said "you need like a million followers" but that's not true.  Some have blue check marks with only about 1,000 followers.

I have seen some popular adv riders like Shawn Thomas and Jocelin Snow be impersonated at least on Facebook so apparently it's a thing.

They say you can re-apply in 30 days but I will probably just drop it.  It's not really important.  A blue check really serves no purpose.

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https://www.instagram.com/ssiproductions/
 
#xladv   I wasn't aware that that is how the #XLADV Worked.
I will start adding the #XLADV in my posts on Instagram. I have added it couple times in the past. But I didn't want to overdo it.
(I'm Canadian. wanted to be polite)

I’m not sure I’d say that’s how xladv “works” but I do appreciate it.

Back when I and others thought hashtags did anything, I felt having #xladv may allow people to find us better as well as foster a sense of community. It’s also become another sort of generic hashtag to refer to big adventure bikes much like #bigtrail or #maxitrail or even #advrider.

But after looking at stats Instagram shows when you click “view insights” (if you have a business account), views from hashtags are incredibly small.

I think it may be more who you hope finds your post and not how many. I’m sure Klim searches for riders using #klimlife and I certainly follow my own hashtag looking for engaging photos and stories.

To be perfectly honest though most of the time I’m simply looking for just the engaging story/photo without paying much attention to a hashtag. Sometimes I find a photo to repost and seeing they used #xladv already makes me smile. Or sometimes when someone desperately wants me to repost a photo and I notice they don’t even use #xladv I have to laugh.

When I repost I always add my hashtag and delete some I find annoying lol. I also remove any mentions using the “@“ symbol because it’s honestly a bit annoying to see a list of a bunch of notifications that so and so tagged you or so and so commented in a post you’re tagged in. Flattering but not always helpful.

Hashtags are kind of like salt and pepper; something that can add flavor but not always necessary.

Comments are the best really! When we can engage each other in conversation then we are truly a community. That always makes me smile.
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Couple other things...

I shared a few people’s stories because they had great photography and they tagged me but these “new post” tactics got old really fast so I don’t share those anymore. I think it comes off as excessively self-promoting.

I also don’t share stories with any interactive features like a hot meter or vote because when shared these features won’t work and leaves my viewer frustrated. This AfricaTwin account does that all the time. I said I love that they tag me but their hot meters won’t work when shared.

I’ve also been deleting recent posts that don’t hit 1% engagement or better because Instagram’s damn algorithm has been hammering me. I’ll share an engaging post and get a ton of comments; like 30-40 but get barely .5% engagement and then see a feed with a fourth of my size get three times as much as I did. Why is that? Their more recent average engagement is higher than mine so the algorithm lets more people see theirs. I hate gaming it but it is what it is.

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