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Senior advertising and branding major here!
You’ve put many hours and hard labor into your pieces and you are right to be proud of it. The fact that this is your passion is something that gives your audience to latch onto. When someone sees another person extremely passionate and knowledgeable on a subject that energy is felt and it feels like it’s coming from an authentic place, no matter what the subject is! It could be about freaking stamps or dinosaurs. So don’t be afraid to hype yourself up. People are drawn to confidence!!
And you’d be surprised with the trends you could be participating in! All it takes is spicing it up and making it about your work. Starting in March of this year I have been able to grow an Instagram account from 0 to over 17k followers which is focused around my fitness humor hobby. I have another throwaway account I use to spot trends outside of my niche and give it my own fitness humor twist.
In your case for example you could show your pieces in stages and prompt your audience to follow and like to see the final piece(really popular). Or fun engaging ones like “This stone equals your birth month..” or before and after transformations. Like you pulling it from the earth, then a transition to the final product. Or “A day in the life of a silversmith” or quick tutorials.
And you’re doing a good job with following similar creators and liking similar content. Seeing what they do gives lots of insight and lets the INSTAGRAM algorithm know who to show your work to. ALSO, consistency is key! The algorithm rewards consistent posting. I know in your case it would be difficult to show final pieces you’re proud of showing every day so make some fun ones in between and get creative. Show “IN PROGRESS” videos as well. That creates anticipation in the viewer and people love seeing the process, the “how”.
Use fun captions highlighting how it felt to make the piece and ask questions to engage like “What should I name this piece?”, “Which stones should I try to find next?”, “Where do I go to find the best stones?”.
Start adding your own signature to your content. Like a specific hashtag (e.g. #madebyetc)
I hope this helps in anyway!
