Featured on the Mercedes Benz USA Instagram

Having your work shared by other Instagram accounts has always given me a bit of happiness in seeing others enjoy my work enough that they would like to show it to their following. While some accounts may be doing it just because they need content, there is still something to be said about the quality of content that they look for before re-sharing anything.

Now when that Instagram account happens to be one of the largest, respected automotive manufacturer in the world? Well that’s quite simply just an honour!

In the middle of May I had received a message from Mercedes Benz USA asking if they could use one of the photos I had posted weeks ago in their feed, with credits. Without any delay, I quickly accepted and tucked in a few other photos in case they wanted to post those as well. Trust me, in these situations it is best to strike while the iron is hot.

I was ecstatic after this news. I immediately shared the exchange of messages with my friends and family, but held off on posting anything about it in case it never actually got posted. Well, a couple weeks later, I received a tag notification from them with my username in the caption and it was front and centre (well off to the left) on the Mercedes Benz USA Instagram page - an account with over 5.3 million followers.

So what happened? Did I get hundreds of follows? Did Mercedes Benz thank me again and offer me a rental company car?

Well honestly, not much happened.

I experienced a spike in profile visits for a day, but then it died down. I gained a few followers, but really not much - and it could have been partly from other recent posts I had made. This is actually pretty typical, as the followers of these types of accounts are used to the photos being UGC (user generated content) so your photo is shared among many other creators as well as their in house marketing team.

But here’s what I walked away with:

The confidence that a brand such as Mercedes Benz saw my content and thought - this would be a great photo to represent our products and our brand voice. The second thing I walked away with is that even though I had a small following of 1.6K, I can still create content that can get noticed by large companies.

So thanks again Mercedes!