Interview: Taiwanese Instagram Influencer @foodiefoodiego
September 6, 2017
On a hot Monday afternoon, I met up with a popular Instagrammer in Taipei, @foodiefoodiego. She taught me about how she takes her food shots and manages her Instagram account.
About her:
■ Name: 甜食少女(´>∂｀)抹茶控 （和訳：甘食少女(´>∂｀)抹茶にハマる）
■ Account：@foodiefoodiego
■ Followers：11k
She initially started the account because she’s a big sweets lover and wanted to share her love for them with others. She’s currently a high school student. At first, her parents were opposed to her Instagramming because of her age but they’ve now grown to support her.
She was able to get to 11,000 followers without paying for any advertising.
Morning: After waking up, she replies to comments and DM’s.
Daytime: She replies to comments and DM’s during her lunch break.
Night: She replies to comments and DM’s before going to bed.
Basically, she uses Instagram at times that don’t interfere with her studying.
She feels that interacting with her fans is the most important.
There’s also a need in figuring out how people will discover the photos and the account, so there’s a lot of importance on hashtagging and location tagging.
Because a lot of the photos are from popular shops, it’s likely that many followers come from searching the content taken at those particular locations. Having an image come up in their search is beneficial.
With hashtags, in addition to using Chinese ones, she also uses English and Japanese hashtags so that people from different countries can more easily finder her account and become fans. She’s even received comments from French users recently.
She also talked about how she takes her photos.
Photos are taken and edited in different styles that depend on the person. Because there are many foodie Instagrammers, finding your own style in order to differentiate your account from others is important.
One of the main things to remember is to make sure there’s enough light in order to enhance the shot. Simple arrangements look pretty, and it draws attention to the points you want to emphasize. She tries out several different arrangements and angles before actually taking the shot. Once she has the right one, she posts it on her account, which averages about a post per day.
Currently with Generation-Z (those born after 1995), Instagram is more popular than Facebook, and there’s a preference for visual communication over words.
Because nowadays everyone has the opportunity to become an influencer, Instagram is a good opportunity to start your own personal branding.
