Why photos of cows won’t sell your products

This weekend I came across a social media account where the account manager takes photos of cows and puts people’s names on them. So I did a little bit of a deep-dive into the account as an excuse to be able to write about it and share it with you all. Here are a few things I observed:

1. Cute and clever content can get you a LOT of followers. In just 5 days, she already has 96K followers! People are DM-ing her with donations so that she’ll create a photo with their name on it. Here’s the problem cute and clever can get you a LOT of followers but are they the right followers?
   
   It seems that she started this account with just a creative idea, but she recently put a link to her boyfriend’s clothing company in her bio and asked people to go support him. Sweet idea, but the people aren’t here for the clothing. They’re here for the cows.
   
   TAKEAWAY: Focus on finding the right followers. Fast follower growth isn’t necessarily the best thing for you business (unless they’re the right followers.)
   
   
2. She ran into a little bit of a problem when people started calling her out for not giving the cow photographers credit. Honestly, this is something that most of us don’t think about when we’re creating content. We grab photos from the internet and borrow quotes that other people created. This is becoming a bigger and bigger problem on social media (and it should be).
   
   We need to give credit where credit is due – especially if we did not pay for those images. My @what_cow_you_are Instagram friend now credits images as best as she can and invites people to email her if they see one of their images without credit.
   
   TAKEAWAY: Don’t use random images off the internet and give credit to the artists or photographers!
   
   
3. Social media was created for social interactions, but when we get into marketing our businesses on social media, it can begin to lose the social aspect. It becomes a chore and one more thing to check off our to-do list. I know I’ve been in this spot. Social media was no longer fun.
   
   This account reminds me of how fun social media can be. For goodness sake, this girl is getting donations via Venmo to put a name on a picture of a cow! Instagram is loving this. So much so that she’s created an account for pandas and one for deer. While this is not a growth strategy I’d recommend for business, I do think we need to infuse our social media accounts with passion, joy, and entertainment.
   
   TAKEAWAY: Have fun while you’re creating social media content.

Before I leave you, you’d better believe that I searched Instagram for our names. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Ryann’s, but I did find mine, Kelsey’s, and Savannah’s. All I’ll say is that I love some pictures of happy cows.

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