Instagram vs Reality : How Far Should We Stretch The Truth?

Another week and another drama has rocked the blogging boat, with Scarlett London finding herself right in the middle of it. Earlier this week she came under fire from Twitter trolls and keyboard warriors alike, criticising the 'reality' of her Instagram post promoting Listerine mouthwash. Like many of Scarlett's posts the photo was pretty, pink and aspirational; but most importantly it was staged. 

While this may have come to a shock to many people on Twitter, the rest of us are aware that adverts (which is what this was) are often staged. But it's not just adverts that are staged; magazine shoots, films, television programmes, photographs and many more are also set up to create a certain aesthetic or appearance. For example lots of food and drink in movies is not edible or it may be substituted for something similar, e.g. when an actor is drinking 'Vodka' in a film it's actually water and ice cream is mashed potato. Similarly when we were shooting for a catalogue or an advert at work, we wouldn't always shoot on location. So while it would look like a beautiful room in a house, it would actually be a studio styled to look like a room in a house, even including fake windows with a photoshopped view.

The truth is lots of industries don't present us with reality, because reality isn't always that pretty. Instead we are given a perfectly packaged, Truman Show style world that sets our hearts racing and our imagination running. And I don't mind that. 

Media is there to tell a story and that is exactly what Scarlett was trying to do through her Instagram post. It also something many bloggers, including myself, do to try and engage their audience. I'm not ashamed to say that the image I posted on the morning of my 21st birthday was taken during the afternoon on the previous day. I got into my pjs, blew up some balloons are arranged them on my bed to look as though I had just woken up and was about to open all of my presents. I then edited the photo and posted it on my actual birthday, when I knew I wouldn't have time to take photos because I would be spending the day with my family.

I'm also not ashamed to admit that makeup, magazines and rose petals don't just happen to fall onto my desk but are carefully constructed into pretty flatlays that are visually appealing. 

Is that deceptive? I don't think so.

I don't photoshop my images to make myself look skinnier or to get rid of the scaffolding around the Sagrada Familia. Nor do I claim that detox tea made me slim when actually it's down to eating well and exercising plenty. 

Also, let's not forget that at the same time as posting these curated photos, many bloggers will also use their platform to talk and spread awareness of real life issues.  Mental health, chronic illness, relationship advice and much more, are topics I regularly see being discussed by some of my favourite bloggers to help, inspire and educate their audiences, as they find the balance between the real and the fake. 

So while we bloggers, need to be careful not to take things too far when staging a perfect life and to remind our audience that life isn't always perfect. Consumers also need to use some common sense and take their own wellbeing (as well as others) into consideration when online.

If you are that triggered by a mouthwash advert that you feel the need to start a witch hunt then maybe you shouldn't be online. In addition to this, if you want everything you see to be real and truthful then avoid any form of media, entertainment or people including (but not limited to) magicians, politicians, newspapers, the cinema, television and social media. So, come on and give bloggers a break for a change.

Eleanor xx

Flat Lay Tips to Perfect Your Instagram Account

*This post is sponsored by Panasonic

With the Instagram algorithm constantly changing, the struggle to grow your following is tougher than ever (read more about my love/hate relationship with Instagram here). As Facebook (and consequently Instagram) try to give their users more of what they love, their focus has shifted to the quality of content users offer to their following. Add into this the obvious fact that the stronger your content is the more likely people will follow and like your pictures, you have a strategy for success. But improving your Instagram images isn’t as easy as it sounds, so let’s take this one step at a time – starting with flat lays. To put it simply, flat lays are images taken of a collection of objects from above. Not only have they become one of the most popular types of Instagram image but they are also some of the most popular images on my account. So keep reading for my favourite flat lay tips…

The best tools for the job

Ever heard the saying ‘a bad workman blames his tools’ well when it comes to photography sometimes bad tools are to blame. You could be the best photographer in the world but if your image is grainy or pixelated it can ruined. Look for a digital camera with a high megapixel and the ability to change exposure and shutter speed. The Panasonic Mirrorless 12-60mm Lens Camera is a great option if you have the budget, as it has 30k optical zoom, 4K photo and video all in a compact design making it perfect for a variety of uses not just taking flat lays. 

Background focus

While the background is not the main focus of your flat lay, it is the foundation of your photo. I always opt for a light, white surface as this is non offensive and won't distract from the focus of the image. Don’t worry if you don’t have a white floor or table for your flat lays, simply lay a towel or white bed sheets on a flat surface and you have your background. This also allows you to move your white material around your house to find the best lighting. 

Lighten up

As with all photography, lighting is the most crucial part of creating the perfect flat lay. I use natural lighting in all of my photography as I find it gives the best results without the need for lots of editing. But for natural lighting to work you need to consider a couple of things:

• Time of the day - as the light changes throughout the day it will have different impacts on your image. At midday the sun is at its brightest and this may lead to your image being overexposed. Sunset (or the magic hour) can create beautiful soft lighting in images but can often have an orange tint resulting in the need to alter white balance. During the evening (or on a dark cloudy day) there is no light meaning you won’t be able to see your image. 
• Positioning – it could be lovely and light outside but if you’re in a dark room you won’t benefit from it. Position yourself close to a window to maximise your lighting.
• Shadows – Depending on your positioning and the time of the day you can sometimes get quite harsh shadows in your images, especially if the light is coming from behind your objects. To avoid this try repositioning yourself or use a white piece of card to reflect the light onto the shadows. 

Less isn’t always more

Some of my favourite flat lays have to be the ones crammed full of products and objects but they still somehow manage to look beautiful rather than a mess. To make this work, vary the size of the objects you are arranging and fill bare gaps with ribbons, petals or confetti. Also layer textures and objects such as magazines and patterned fabrics to break up your white background. 

Colour co-ordinate 

A huge part of Instagram is how your profile looks with all of your images sitting together. Most people try to make this look more co-ordinating by having a ‘theme’. The easiest way I do this is through adding little accents of colour into my images to ensure they all co-ordinate. For example in the above images I have added hints of red through the strawberries on the pancakes and the rose petals. By keeping the rest of the image black and white and then adding this pop of colour means that they sit together nicely on my Instagram page. I have also done the same with the below images by adding a pop of pink. I will consistently use one colour in at least 6 of my images before gradually transitioning to a new colour if I want to change the look of my feed.  

Practice makes perfect

Flat lays may look easy but sometimes it can be hard to get them to look ‘right’. Take your time, moving different objects and adding bits or taking away items that don’t quite look right. With a bit of trial and error you will finally find the perfect arrangement to take your photo. 

What are your tips for the perfect Instagram flat lay?

Eleanor xx

Why Instagram Is Getting Me Down

Ah Instagram. It's like the ex that no matter how many times they hurt you, you keep finding yourself running back into their arms. Once madly in love and a little bit obsessed, your relationship has changed (thanks to that pesky algorithm) and has become incredibly hard work. 

Social media was never designed to be hard work. It was designed as an online platform to meet new people, make friends and share the things you love with like minded people not for competition and advertising. It is so frustrating when you post a photo to your followers (real people who have basically said 'Yes I want to see their photos!') and Instagram will only show that post to half of your following. It's equally frustrating when I see paid for ads from accounts I already follow because why should they have to pay to appear in my feed?

But it's not just the algorithm that's getting me down, it's the way I constantly compare myself to others. By that I don't mean your typical 'omg she is so much prettier/skinnier/etc than me' I mean that I compare my account to others. I'll see someone doing an AD for a brand and click on their profile to see how many followers they have. If they have less or about the same as myself, I'll start wondering why they were picked over me. Or I'll see accounts I love growing their following and hitting big milestones, and while I'm happy for them, I'll feel down because my account isn't growing as quickly. It's toxic and I hate that this is the person I've become.

I work hard using every spare minute I have at the weekend to take photos for my Instagram, I try to post everyday and also engage with other people, yet nothing seems to work. As soon as my followers go up they fall straight back down, my engagement is still a lot lower than it was before the algorithm change and in all honesty I don't have enough money to pay to advertise my posts. I could cheat and buy more followers but we all know my opinion on that.

The other day one of the girls from work mentioned that she'd heard of this new social app called Vero that is apparently like Instagram but without ads and algorithm, we were all intrigued but wary that it may never take off. Then just the next day I was watching Vix Meldrew's Instagram stories and she mentioned this app again saying that is had already crashed because so many people were downloading it. After looking at reviews of the app on the App Store I realised that I wasn't ready to move on to someone new. These apps are all the same. They lure you in with their promises but as soon as they gain a bit of confidence they ruin your relationship through advertising and money making schemes. So despite how much I hate Instagram it's better the devil you know. Maybe one day they will realise the errors of their ways and we can relive 'the good old days'. But for now I'll keep trying to make things work, until eventually something better comes along.

Eleanor xx

Have Courage And Be Kind

Now if you follow even just one blogger on Twitter I'm sure you will have heard about all of the drama within the community recently. With some announcing that they were going to 'out' those, or those who they suspected, had been using bots and buying followers to grow their accounts, Twitter turned into a virtual version of Mean Girls with Social Blade as their virtual burn book. Now I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of all of this drama (for my personal opinion on fake Instagram followings you can read this post that I wrote a few weeks back) but people got hurt. I saw new sides to girls that I thought were all sweetness and light. Friends were exposed as frenemies.

With challenges like this facing us, I still like to believe that there is still some heart left within the community and that the support and kindness that I first felt when I started blogging, never in fact left. But more importantly I want to do everything I can to make sure it stays.

It's a pretty well known fact that we brits are awful when it comes to taking and receiving compliments. We've nailed queuing, apologising and small talk about the weather but there is something about compliments that just gets us all in a fluster. It is this awkwardness around receiving compliments that I think also holds us back from giving them, not to mention we want to avoid coming across too keen. 

But the funny thing is, if I ever receive a compliment, I don't often think that the person giving the compliment is weird or a bit keen. In fact when someone goes out of their way to compliment me, especially in relation to my blog, it means so much more to me than I could ever describe. 

What I'm Wearing | New Look Hat, Boohoo Dress, Coach Bag, Office Boots

Sometimes finding the motivation to blog can be hard and occasionally I find myself questioning why I do it. But every time I find myself questioning why I continue blogging, someone comes along and gives me that boost that I need. For example only a few weeks ago I was invited to a job interview and despite declining to attend, the recruiter for the company still messaged me saying that they thought my blog was excellent and they wished me all the best. Or even less than a week ago when a fellow blogger regrammed one of my Instagram posts saying that I inspired her and many others also commented similarly lovely things. 

These things and other acts of kindness I have received over the years may seem like small gestures but they mean the world to me. They make me feel proud, inspired and honestly a bit emotional in so many different ways. They remind me of the powerful impact that a simple act of kindness can have upon a person. So if I can make someone feel like that by giving them a compliment or by providing support, kindness and friendship, then I will strive to do so in anyway that I can. It may feel awkward at first but hopefully the more kindness we spread the more it will become a natural part of our generations culture.

Eleanor xx

The Frustration of Fakeness

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that back in April of last year I faced the decision of whether to start a new instagram account, specifically dedicated to my blog. After a twitter poll and a list of positives and negatives, I started my new account but this meant starting from scratch. I had zero followers and wanted to grow quickly to catch up with similar bloggers whose accounts were 3 or 4 years old but at no point did it cross my mind to buy fake followers.

Now nearly 10 months down the line and with 1370 loyal followers to my name, I am starting to realise that many others have chosen not to genuinely grow their account like myself, and I'm not the only one who has started to notice it. Most days I will see fellow bloggers complaining on Twitter about the frustration with high profile instagramers with large numbers of fake followers and low engagement. This is not out of jealously of their 'large' following but out of despair that PR's are sending working their way. 

Blogger Laurzrah shared on twitter her findings after she investigated how easy it really is to buy fake followers. According to her tweets, it costs about £10 for 1000 followers, to which another user responded with a screen shot of a website stating how safe and easy it was to buy followers with no repercussions. With figures like these it is no wonder many are tempted to buy the amount of followers that it's taken me nearly a year to build up, in just a matter of minutes. But just because it is tempting does not mean that it is right.

Now it is quite easy to spot an account with a large proportion of fake followers. Often I will see people with 10 times the number of 'followers' that I have but receiving similar amounts of engagement, with photos averaging around 350 likes. Yet because they have a lot of 'followers', they have brands left, right and centre wanting to work with them. Now this post is not about wanting more brands to work with me, as I understand that my account is very much in its infancy stages but instead my confusion as to why brands will work with bloggers often knowing that the majority of their following is fake?

Perhaps it's down to the fact that social media is still a relatively new concept in terms of marketing. A lot of people working higher up in marketing at brands may be of a slightly older generation and are hence may be still getting to grips with social media while to us millennials it comes naturally. Perhaps many do not realise that likes and comments are just as important as followers and instead ask their PR's to find bloggers who meet certain criteria in terms of followers but not engagement. With PR's being under huge amounts of pressure they may not have the time to check accounts for fake followers or perhaps simply do not care. 

But at the end of the day, businesses are the one's who are losing out on their investment. They're paying and sending products to bloggers with a 20k following, hoping to get that following to engage with their brand. But when only 2000 of those 20,000 people are real, then only a third of those people are engaging with the account and even less than that will go on to engage with the brand, brands are not getting a very good return on investment.

Not to mention it seriously damages bloggers motivation. What's the point of me working hard to build a genuine following when Sally over there is buying followers and getting praise for doing nothing?

What I Am Wearing | Missguided Jumper, Boohoo Shirt, Topshop Jacket (Similar), Topshop Jeans, Coach Nolita Bag, Adidas Superstars

All I hope is that Instagram does another big clear out of all of these fake accounts and these people are put back to square one. I also hope that PR's start to realise that fake followers do nothing for their business and start to work with bloggers based on levels of engagement. Until then I shall keep struggling on and being honest, knowing that I have never cheated my way to success.

Eleanor xx

Should You Have Separate Social Media Accounts For Your Blog?

Blogging is not just about blogging anymore. With lots of people competing to become the next Zoella, social media is becoming more and more crucial to not only growing your following but also forming friendships and starting conversations. Brands also don't want bloggers with just high readership but also mass followings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or anywhere that you can promote them and yourself. But the question is, when trying to turn your blog into a brand and appear professional, should you have separate social media accounts for your blog?

For a long time I pondered over whether to change the name of my Twitter and Instagram accounts to that of my blog, so people could easily find me and they'd be along the same theme as my blog. Changing my Twitter account would be easy, I already used it to participate in blogger chats but changing my instagram would require me to not only change my name but my theme from black and white personal photos but to bright white fashion, beauty and lifestyle photos. 

But I liked my personal photos, the pictures of me and my sister before a night out or those of me at various concerts or the throwback Thursday's from when I'd perform in dance shows. These were snippets of my life that I wanted to share with my family and friends (who make up the majority of my followers), and I couldn't sacrifice that. 

So after a quick Twitter poll my mind was made up. I'd keep my old Instagram and start a new Instagram account for my blog which would have a different theme, more similar to that of my favourite fashion and beauty accounts and matching the theme of my blog photos. I decided that I'd post photos from my latest blog posts so that I could use original Instagram to promote my latest posts but also other photos from my daily life. My old Instagram would also be kept up to date with lifestyle photos rather than posting about beauty and fashion that didn't interest a lot of my followers on my personal account.

While I have to say it's been tough building up a following on my new account I'm so pleased that I did it. I post more regularly on that account about the things that interest me without annoying people who only want to hear about my life, and don't confuse people who want to see blog photos with photos of me and my friends. It sounds weird but I also love how my Instagram widget looks on the side bar of my blog now as the photos are consistent with those on my blog. As for Twitter, for now I'm keeping it the same as I think people don't really care as much about what you say there. 

I don't really think there is a right or wrong answer as to whether you should have separate social media accounts for your blog, while it does look professional it is a lot more work managing double the number of accounts. If you do decide to make a separate accounts you also have to remember not to use your blog accounts for spamming links to your blog posts, remember to still maintain a personal touch by communicating with your audience and posting extra content.

What are your opinions on social media and your blog? Also feel free to leave your social media links below for me to check out!

Eleanor xx