My good friend Tatiana Kukanova has been a social media influencer for a couple of years now and this came about as a result of the huge fame which she achieved on Instagram. The niche which Tatiana Kukanova falls into is food and travel and her popularity and her success is growing more and more by the day. I spend a lot of time with Tatiana and I see just how much work goes into creating every piece of content which is uploaded. Most of us just see the pretty final product but there is far, far more than meets the eye.
Preparing the Image
The most painstaking process which Tatiana Kukanova will go through when looking to take a great photo is the preparation of the image itself. Very often this will include a sketched plan which will then help her to understand what kind of props which she is going to need. For example for a recent post she wanted a plate of gorgeous pesto farfalle, but she wanted a travel twist so needed a compass and some Italian bits and pieces. For this particular image she went out for more than 3 hours to get the things together that she needed, and this is before she has even got her camera out of the box.
Prepare and Shoot
Once the image is prepared it is time to arrange everything together and take some test shots. Tatiana, to use the Italian example again, will take some shots from different angles, then re-arrange the image and take some more shots. Once this process is complete Tatiana and her willing helpers will view each arrangement and pick the best. Once the best is found, she will snap a multiple amount of shots from different angles and with different light. The final shots will then be pored over until Tatiana has one which she is convinced by.
The Content
After the photo has been chosen Tatiana often spends a lot of time coming up with the perfect caption and the right amount of appropriate tags. This can sometimes be a quote or an inspirational message, sometimes it can be something very light-hearted, either way she will spend a lot of time getting this right because she knows just how important every piece of content can be for her channel.
Engagement
Once everything is in place, the image uploaded and the written content prepared, Tatiana will look into when the best time is for this piece to be published. There are certain peak times which you can find when you can get maximum engagement for you posts. Let’s say that you live in a small community of 100 people and you want maximum engagement, would 11 in the morning work? Probably not as 1pm is when everyone eats and everyone looks at their phones. The same thing is true for Tatiana albeit on a bigger scale so she will spend a great deal of time finding out the perfect time to post the content which she has worked so hard to produce.
And you thought that it was just about taking a quick snap.
