These are the standards I try to maintain for my posts (stories have no real standards IMO).
You may have noticed there have been very few exceptions to this stuff over the years though.
— Photos will never have a watermark on them. If they do but the photo is very desirable for posting, I ask them if they are willing to let me crop it out.
— No trucks with 22” wheels or other completely horrendous mods. If someone submits one of these trucks I just tell them to post it in the IG thread on the forum and it will be added to the never ending wait list.
— Try to post unknown trucks more often than the known trucks. My way of doing this is to spend some time digging deep on IG through posts that we’ve been tagged in, through #Tacoma3G, and through suggested accounts to follow. I will screenshot a large handful of unique and lesser known trucks to my phone and then I always have some cool stuff in queue to post. There are many trucks that are basically IG celebrities (valley_taco, choyota, tacodust, etc.). I do post these trucks but I try to focus more on posting trucks that most people have never seen. TacomaBeast on the other hand pretty much only posts really popular stuff you have probably seen before.
— Similar to the last point, I try to focus on posting a photo that the owner put on IG months ago. That way no one has seen it recently and our content feels more original. Again, sometimes I post a photo immediately after the owner shares it because it is just so good. But I do think something appreciate about the T3G is the “original” content it usually shows them (because people have actually told me they love that they are seeing all these trucks that their other followed pages never show).
— Posting more than one photo of the same truck (so, an album) is fine and I do that sometimes. Like, sometimes the second photo is a really cool shot of their suspension or something.
— Posting videos that are impressive is something I do, but it is rare. Partially because you need to get them to email you the video file so you can post the HD version and partially because videos that are actually cool enough to justify posting are kind of rare.
— I used to post at a frequency of every 2-3 hours, all day long. It actually worked well for reach/new followers. Posting about 2-3 times a day is a good alternative too. Doing it this way makes the algorithm show the posts to people who are not usually following T3G, thus gaining more followers. However, each individual post gets way less engagement. Lately, I have been posting either once per day or less than once per day. Doing it that way brings in less followers but each individual post is seen/liked by more people at once. I mostly slowed down due to burnout/being too busy to keep up my old pace. If we increase the amount of posts per day again, that would be cool.
— You obviously know the copy/paste caption and hashtags I use. I try to write a create caption or question (to encourage engagement) on the first line, or I use that line to advertise things like RotM. But sometimes I have no caption there and the first line is just tagging the owner of the truck (due to laziness or difficulty of thinking of a caption). However you want to do it is fine. If you want the entire copy/paste template to be different than it is, that is fine too, but:
— No emojis in captions!! I don’t think this looks professional at all. Emojis in stories is fine; stories are never professional anyway (I hate stories, can you tell?). No grammatical errors in captions!! The ones I notice the most across IG are improper formatting of brand names (like writing Tacoma3g instead of Tacoma3G), missing or improper use of punctuation, and run-on sentences.
— I hardly ever change the hashtags I use and I’m sure this is a bad thing. Feel free to use other hashtags. I believe I made all of the hashtags use uppercase letters for each first letter of a word.
— Adding a location, when possible, is a huge boost for reach.
— I hardly ever tag anyone in the post besides the owner of the truck. Feel free to tag whoever else you want.
— I post my own truck at random, trying to avoid it seeming like I post it too much. Feel free to do the same for your truck.
— I don’t advertise when companies ask me to BUT that is obviously something we are moving to in the near future and I understand that.
— While I used to do it, I stay away from posting photos with people in them, or even multiple trucks in them. I especially stay away from the thots that are using their thotness to gain likes (thanks for this tip Nicole!). Thots make me cringe now.
You may have noticed there have been very few exceptions to this stuff over the years though.
— Photos will never have a watermark on them. If they do but the photo is very desirable for posting, I ask them if they are willing to let me crop it out.
— No trucks with 22” wheels or other completely horrendous mods. If someone submits one of these trucks I just tell them to post it in the IG thread on the forum and it will be added to the never ending wait list.
— Try to post unknown trucks more often than the known trucks. My way of doing this is to spend some time digging deep on IG through posts that we’ve been tagged in, through #Tacoma3G, and through suggested accounts to follow. I will screenshot a large handful of unique and lesser known trucks to my phone and then I always have some cool stuff in queue to post. There are many trucks that are basically IG celebrities (valley_taco, choyota, tacodust, etc.). I do post these trucks but I try to focus more on posting trucks that most people have never seen. TacomaBeast on the other hand pretty much only posts really popular stuff you have probably seen before.
— Similar to the last point, I try to focus on posting a photo that the owner put on IG months ago. That way no one has seen it recently and our content feels more original. Again, sometimes I post a photo immediately after the owner shares it because it is just so good. But I do think something appreciate about the T3G is the “original” content it usually shows them (because people have actually told me they love that they are seeing all these trucks that their other followed pages never show).
— Posting more than one photo of the same truck (so, an album) is fine and I do that sometimes. Like, sometimes the second photo is a really cool shot of their suspension or something.
— Posting videos that are impressive is something I do, but it is rare. Partially because you need to get them to email you the video file so you can post the HD version and partially because videos that are actually cool enough to justify posting are kind of rare.
— I used to post at a frequency of every 2-3 hours, all day long. It actually worked well for reach/new followers. Posting about 2-3 times a day is a good alternative too. Doing it this way makes the algorithm show the posts to people who are not usually following T3G, thus gaining more followers. However, each individual post gets way less engagement. Lately, I have been posting either once per day or less than once per day. Doing it that way brings in less followers but each individual post is seen/liked by more people at once. I mostly slowed down due to burnout/being too busy to keep up my old pace. If we increase the amount of posts per day again, that would be cool.
— You obviously know the copy/paste caption and hashtags I use. I try to write a create caption or question (to encourage engagement) on the first line, or I use that line to advertise things like RotM. But sometimes I have no caption there and the first line is just tagging the owner of the truck (due to laziness or difficulty of thinking of a caption). However you want to do it is fine. If you want the entire copy/paste template to be different than it is, that is fine too, but:
— No emojis in captions!! I don’t think this looks professional at all. Emojis in stories is fine; stories are never professional anyway (I hate stories, can you tell?). No grammatical errors in captions!! The ones I notice the most across IG are improper formatting of brand names (like writing Tacoma3g instead of Tacoma3G), missing or improper use of punctuation, and run-on sentences.
— I hardly ever change the hashtags I use and I’m sure this is a bad thing. Feel free to use other hashtags. I believe I made all of the hashtags use uppercase letters for each first letter of a word.
— Adding a location, when possible, is a huge boost for reach.
— I hardly ever tag anyone in the post besides the owner of the truck. Feel free to tag whoever else you want.
— I post my own truck at random, trying to avoid it seeming like I post it too much. Feel free to do the same for your truck.
— I don’t advertise when companies ask me to BUT that is obviously something we are moving to in the near future and I understand that.
— While I used to do it, I stay away from posting photos with people in them, or even multiple trucks in them. I especially stay away from the thots that are using their thotness to gain likes (thanks for this tip Nicole!). Thots make me cringe now.