… and the dog?

The story of the dog. And what he’s doing as the cover photo on pen-and-tell.

This is Pablo. Pablo is a Segugio from an animal rescue centre. The photo was taken at ‘Dinzler’, a coffee roastery in Irschenberg. That’s where the local jet set meet up for a get-together, a cuppa or even lunch. That day, Pablo taught me everything there is to know about social media.

You see, Pablo had an Instagram profile: Pablo the Segugio. With a few dozen followers. I took a series of photos featuring the dog and a coffee cup, and Pablo’s owner uploaded one of them to his profile. The coffee wasn’t even finished yet, and Pablo already had hundreds of likes and over a hundred more followers. Why? Because the photo was tagged with #dinzler. A photo of a sad-looking dog with a coffee cup. But the trendy crowd obviously thought a dog at Dinzler was so cool….

Pablo is now in doggy heaven.

Here’s another picture in all its glory.

And why the dog, anyway? Because a few PATLive sessions ago, I started using photos of women holding mugs as profile pictures. And there was one with a man in it. And because Pablo has just shown me what really matters on social media. Content and photos don’t matter a bit. Use the right ‘hashtag’. So find out which ‘hashtags’ are currently ‘trending’, then pick out the right photos to go with them, and the followers will come flooding in. (And the sponsors and manufacturers will be clamouring to send you all sorts of stuff, which you can then hold up to the camera.)

Surprise: I don’t have an Instagram profile.