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Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms out there. According to a report from July 2022, Instagram has 1.44 billion users worldwide, making it one of the most sought-after sites by creators to build a brand; and it’s not easy – trust us, we know. However, when you are a creator on the platform and everything seems to be the same, it becomes even worse.
Note: The opinions expressed in this article are based on our opinions about social media and personal experiences with them. They are not sponsored by any third party or social media company.
Get Liked on Instagram
For starters, being a creator is a big struggle. Not only does Instagram work in unknown ways, when it comes to reaching and engaging with your posts and Videos, it’s more difficult to convert viewers into followers.
If you try to figure out how to increase your reach, you will go down the rabbit hole of trying to understand Instagram’s algorithmic feed, complete with a lot of information you need to posting, best times for posting photos and Videos, and optimizing captions. and good hashtags, among other things.
One has to put a lot of effort into their Instagram presence to make it stand out. That’s what we do. As of early March 2022, our Instagram page (beebomco) has over 385k followers. What’s more, we’ve been running in the 300k range for almost a year now.
From there, we reached 1 million followers on our page in just four months. It’s a great sign, and where we can be called “Instagram creators” right.
However, while enjoying a great opportunity to share content, with an audience that is very happy and engaged, there are reasons why Instagram works for creators.
Monetization
First is the monetization on the Instagram platform. Instagram’s monetization tools and options don’t come close to those offered by YouTube. On Instagram, your monetization options include:
- Mark
- Subscription
- Connection
- Funds
On the other hand, YouTube offers creators money through ads on long-form videos, and the company is also bringing ad-products to YouTube Shorts in 2023 ( source ), Google’s direct competitor to Instagram Reels.
The funny part is an ad in the Funny tab on Instagram, but creators aren’t allowed to take a cut of the money. That said, Instagram has a “Reels Play Bonus Program” (read more) that pays creators based on the views their Reels get, but it’s invitation-only, and you have to manually select the Funny you want to count for a bonus payment.
These Videos are subject to certain rules, including copyright laws, and you can choose which Videos will be included in the bonus, just as you would if you submitted the original content. copy, which is good because you can simply choose not to install it for a fee. Strange, isn’t it?
Well, we’re not the only ones, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri reportedly told employees similar things in a memo that leaked last week.
Copyrighted Materials
Another thing that can happen as a creator is having your content stolen and reposted by other accounts. Although many would consider this to be “normal”, it is, in fact, copyright infringement.
This is another area where Instagram is not as good for creators as a platform like YouTube.
Most of our readers may not be aware of how YouTube and Instagram deal with copyright infringement on their platforms, so let me give you a brief explanation of why Instagram is so far away. behind YouTube when it comes to ensuring that the Creator’s work is not misused.
YouTube’s Management of Copyright Issues
YouTube is pretty strict when it comes to copyright strikes and infringement. People who have uploaded a lot of videos to the platform will know about the company’s efforts to prevent the use of copyrighted content, whether it is music, videos or videos of another producer.
If someone copies our videos on YouTube, the platform will immediately notify us about it, and it will automatically take down the content. That’s great.
Instagram’s Handling (or Not) of Copyright Issues
Instagram, however, is a different story.
Over the past few months, our Videos have been watched by over 30 million people every month. Clearly, there is a large audience. However, this means that there is a lot of incentive for others to copy our content to gain another perspective.
Many of our videos and posts have been downloaded and reposted by other Instagram accounts, some of them by very popular accounts as well. In these situations, Instagram leaves the responsibility to detect the abuse and report it on the creator.
Of course, we have to spend hours searching for content that has been copied from our account. When we find such information, we must visit a dedicated web page to report such violations. Next, we need to copy the links to all these posts and Videos, and send a link to our original content in the report, so that Instagram can check and remove the content that violates the rules. copyright.
Of course, there is a lot more work for us, but this will be good, to some extent, if the system works well.
The Problem
As I mentioned, many of our Videos have been downloaded and reposted by other accounts. Therefore, we have issued several copyright reports over the years. One thing that is obvious is that when the system works, it works well, but if it doesn’t, there is no way out.
Instagram takes an automated approach to copyright reports, so if a violation is found, the content will be removed and receive an automatic response. However, if they find, for whatever reason, that the information is not being copied, we will only receive an automatic response that tells us that Instagram did not remove the information because it could not verify that the posts / Videos are not, in fact, copied from us.
Manual verification
Until a few months ago, when we received an email like this, we could respond to it and ask for a manual check. In this case, the Instagram employee will look at the post / Video with our original content, and of course, it is the same post or video. They will take appropriate action and remove the infringing content from Instagram.
However, this process seems to have stopped recently. As recently as last week, we sent a copyright report to an account, asking for manual verification and getting an automated response back to us; we always try.
This is very sad and sometimes angry. And it will also help me to make a good decision on the next issue.
No Place of Origin
See, in cases where the developer needs help, the platforms should have a place for the developer. YouTube does this. When a creator crosses a certain threshold of subscribers on YouTube, the platform assigns an account manager to tell them if something goes wrong.
Yes, this power comes when you have a big name on YouTube, but it’s only available. I’m not sure what the requirements are, but we have a separate manager from YouTube and currently our YouTube channel has 2.36 million subscribers.
If we have a problem with something on YouTube, we can contact our account manager by phone, email or arrange a video call to discuss the matter. There are many sponsorship options available to major creators on YouTube.
Instagram, on the other hand, is nothing like that. At least, not yet for us, and with over 1.3 million followers on Instagram, a large audience watching our stories on the platform, yes, we have been featured in #9 on the Forbes list of India’s Top. 100 Digital Stars.
So, it’s safe to assume that there is nothing like YouTube account managers, because it’s difficult to reach out to help in cases where automated systems don’t work very well.
We recently had an issue with Instagram Reels and we tried to reach out to Instagram to ask about it. However, we could not. There is simply no way to help creators, let alone regular users of the Instagram app.
Instagram doesn’t care about creators
It can also be a big trap for bigger problems. Creator accounts are at risk of being hacked. There is a lot of incentive for bad actors to try and gain unauthorized access to an Instagram account that reaches millions of users.
So, if a developer’s account is hacked, who should they contact?
YouTube’s dedicated account manager is a good place to go for help in this case. However, Instagram doesn’t have a profile, which means that if there’s a compromised account or another similar issue, Creators have nowhere to go but Instagram’s help form.
This, in turn, helps me solve the following problem.
Support email issues
Instagram doesn’t have a support email, not one that I could find. There is a Help Center, where you can find FAQs and contact forms for issues like lost phone numbers, hacked accounts, etc., but that’s about it.
Imagine, from a platform that is said to be able to compete with the likes of TikTok and YouTube (and now, maybe, Twitter).
I’m not dismissing platforms like YouTube from the mistakes that are out there. However, as developers go, Instagram seems to be missing content as well.
Instagram needs improvement for Creators
Copyright infringement is a major issue with almost every platform out there. However, competitors like YouTube are trying to tackle the problem. Also, a support system for users, and most importantly, one that still works, is still missing from Instagram. So there is dedicated support or PoC for developers. Forget making money, as a producer, you have to jump through hoops to get your problems heard and addressed.
Banning TikTok in India is the biggest opportunity for Instagram to attract all the creators of short video content to its platform, and Reels is doing it very well. However, the company has to solve many problems, and in fact, it is a problem with the support of the manufacturer.
If you are a creator on Instagram and you have faced similar issues, please share your experience below. Even if you haven’t faced such problems, let us know how Instagram works for you as a creator.
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