hamilton.likes.to.draw...

I do a lot of Social Media strategy and statistical analysis. Here's a set of tips about the major social networks hashtags.

First of all, let's get this out of the way. Hashtags WORK. On everything. To a greater or lesser degree.

Twitter. Hashtags are super important to your social media strategy, and make the difference between languishing in anonymity and rising up in the ranks. Twitter tends to be a place that thrives on tech talk, politics, and celebrity. So those tags tend to be the ones that get the most play. #javascript will immediately get a hundred eyes on your tweet. Plan your character count to include at least one relevant hashtag.

Instagram. Hashtags are equally important, but the audience is fairly different. On instagram, tags involving food, selfies, and art will get the major response that you're looking for. When hashtagging #java on twitter versus instagram, you will get a much different response.

Facebook. Hashtags are nearly completely irrelevant here. In fact studies have shown that using hashtags on personal posts discourages people from looking at your content. Which is a shame, because Facebook is set up to handle hashtags, it's just that no one cares.

Google+. Sigh. Why won't they just release an api so that third party apps can post to them? Google Plus is unique in that they will auto tag your posts if they find relevant tag information within your post. You don't even have to try. Of course, you can also help it along with some actual tags of your own.

Tumblr. Hashtags get generated as a side content for tumblr posts, and so don't have to be a part of your content strategy, but can be tacked on as meta information. This is a nice addition to the process. Tumblr thrives on immediate image content, and so photography and graphic tags tend to get the most play.

Is this a comprehensive list? Not even a little. These are just some notes I've made along the way while trying to stay relevant in a world that moves quickly every day. Hopefully you find something useful in here.

It amazes me how many people sign up for social media and never engage in any participation. I guess I can understand when someone rarely checks their social accounts, but I really can't understand the MASSES that sign up, and engage a little, but only barely.

Let's take a big example. The Rock is on instagram. He has 6.6 million followers at the time of this post. On his last post, after 3 hours, he was only able to muster 100,000 likes and 1,000 comments.

Now hold on, untwist your bunches. Yes, those numbers are gross. All of them are. But think of them relatively. Out of his millions of followers, he only managed a 1.5% interaction rate. The most electrifying man in sports entertainment today, could only pull together a measly 1000 comments out of all of his millions and miiilllllions of followers.

There are a number of interesting dilemmas and predicaments this brings up, but one of the more interesting ones is just how many people sign up for social media AND THEN NEVER USE IT. It's crazy. A worse idea is, what hope do the rest of us have? Well, probably none, but this is a great scenario to study statistically, and we should always be studying the statistics of interaction.

Impressions and interactions tend to come with a 1000 to 1 ratio across the board. do you want to have 10 people comment or like your thing? you need to get it in front of 10,000 people. Do you want a hundred people to BUY your product? I've actually found that you'll need to get your product in front of closer to 1,000,000 eyes before that happens. There are things that alter these numbers, such as the amount of interaction you reciprocate, and how murderously intent on your product your audience is, but in general, these numbers stay true across most internet positions.

Welcome to 2015.

This year I have given myself an artistic goal that is well within reach. I will post one sketch every day on Instagram, and I will be doing a painted portrait every weekend. The first painting has been completed of my friend Nikola Pope.

I'm still not certain if there will be a theme through the portrait project, but one thing is certain, I need more subjects. This is your chance to do me a solid, and yourself a favor. Who hasn't wanted a painting of themselves? Everyone wants that. I'm giving you your chance. A live portrait, on a weekend of your choice, as long as you're somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The details are these. You will pick a weekend that you can devote 2 to 3 hours of your time to the portrait (yes, you will sit for it.) Pick a place where you can be comfortable doing something for that amount of time. Playing video games, drawing, writing, working on a laptop, etc... Then I draw you. Then we have lunch or dinner or coffee, we catch up on life, and then we part ways never to speak again. I can't pay model rates, but I can give you a high resolution image resembling your face.

If you are interested in participating in this project, please email me at hamdiggy@gmail.com

Now is your chance to walk away from statistics and analysis.

After 3 days of intense drawing and instagramming, I have gained 100 followers. Hard fought followers. Active Instagrammers for the most part, not bots. This is important, because before I had a few followers but mostly my friends, and most of my friends are not active on instagram. This is a major shift away.

The feedback loop is going to start soon, I can feel it. My likes and comments are both up 900%. That is a tremendous leap forward in interactions. To be fair, my most engaged follower is my mother who went back and tried her hardest to like all my old content, but fell off after about 100 :D

After this initial push, I am going to try to pull back and post fewer, but make more of the quick sketch portraits. The real problem is that, like any art that you love, they are starting to become less quick, because I'm beginning to care about them a bit more.

Regardless, I already have about 10 drawings stored up and ready to go, while I have nearly 100 pictures stored for drawing later. Getting a Note 3 that is on my carrier has changed my whole game. I can take screenshots and save them for later, draw up and store drawings on dropbox, and post up any drawing anytime, all on one device now.

I'm also having a blast doing all these portraits. I can't wait for the full portrait project to start. Posting these on the off days and the full portraits on the weekends will be great.

So if you're not following me on Instagram, you like... totally should.

I actually really like drawing on my Samsung Note 3, and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro lets me spit my drawings into both Dropbox and Instagram really fast. I'm not sure if I can or even should keep up the pace on these, but they're actually really super fun to do.

I've created a sketch folder for this series, and I'll add to it as is appropriate later.

These are the larger, unfiltered versions of the Instagram pics, so clearly, coming to my website has led you to superior product. Thus your series of good decisions has finally paid off.