Growing your Instagram account, strategy and discussion

[amp0193]

Hey guys, I guess there are some people here who try to grow on Instagram.

I went for the follow/unfollow way and got only like 700 followers in 4 weeks because I am restricted to only being able to follow 19 people at the time, then I have to wait some time and I even could not follow at all for a few days.
Does anyone know what works best lately since shout outs are not that good anymore?
Plus I was wondering if you guys want to make a DM group in order to help each other out or maybe there is already an existing one? How do you even find such groups?

This is all a bunch of baloney.

If your product is worth selling, just post consistent quality content. Sprinkle in a few hashtags. Give some products to big influencer accounts, have them take pics with em and share. Get some more followers. Rinse and repeat.

Follow/unfollow is so spammy. Instagram already dislikes you and is putting limits on you. You think that this kind of stuff is sustainable? Why piss off the platform you're trying to grow on?

 

[Evil_Jester]

What's your account about? Creating content and getting large brands to repost is the only true way.
I made a new account and got lucky last week. I gained more followers in 1 day than I did in the past 5 months with an old account. Make sure you are in a big enough market and have good branding

 

[jon.M]

Been using Insta for about 2 weeks now.

Use a Chrome plugin called Everliker. An automation tool to like posts in certain hashtags or areas. You can also like someone's followers. Cheap stuff (with a free version) and works decent.

@Xeon tipped me about using Telegram liking & comment pods. Tried it a few times and it leads to about 100 additional likes and 10 more comments on a post. I'll be looking for more niche specific groups in the future, since likes and comments from entirely unrelated accounts probably won't make a real difference in quality followers.

Time consuming though, but could be a nice tool in your toolbox.

My go-to strategy is to simply go to a related account that's popular, and set my Everliker bot to like their followers. This leads to, in my experience, more REAL, consuming followers.

I've never used follow/unfollow or automated comments.

Only real & genuine comments on other people's posts, and replying when people comment on my posts.

I like to think of Instagram as two different groups:
Consumers & Producers

Consumers are the ones I want to interact with...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Evil_Jester]

Nice man, did you get multiple repost or was that just from one big boy?

I had a loose connection with a 2.7 million account. They posted a few of my stuff once i sent them a new account link. Then a big boy with 16 million reposted--now I got a good shoutout-for-content deal with them. Progress thread coming soon after I finish making some damn tutorials...

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Yeah, I think the whole thing is going to be like Facebook soon, where nothing will get shown unless you advertise. I don't think it's as bad as Facebook YET, but it's certainly getting there.

Yup, you can count on it. This is why it is so important to keep this stuff as a marketing/outreach channel only and not your entire bread and butter. Commandment of Control!.

 

[jon.M]

Here's a fun way to get reposted by "thought leaders" who are active on other platforms such as Youtube, LinkedIn etc. but also have a notable Instagram account:

1. Go to their Youtube channel, latest LinkedIn posts or whatever.

2. Consume their latest content until you come upon something they say that's memorable, interesting and could be turned into a good quote. (1-3 sentences)

3. Take that quote, go to Canva or the app of your choice, and turn it into an instagram pic. Put some love into it, add a picture of them and make it look really nice.

4. Post on your Insta and tag the person.

5. They'll love it, as it's flattering to be quoted by other people. And it makes them appear more authorative.

6. Expect at least a like and a comment. Hope for a repost (= exposure to their followers, which COULD be great if they're your target audience)

Works best for "smaller" guys. Don't do this for Gary Vee or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Go for someone who's actually likely to see your post.

 

[Joaquim]

When I think there is nothing more to learn about Instagram there are always new strategies arising, as in this great thread. Thanks everyone above!

Here are my 2 cents:

- Patience!
Big accounts (with good and real engagement) took a long road we do not see at this moment. I looked this up, the majority already exist at least 3 years.
And there are a lot of big accounts with mostly fake bought followers, keep this in mind. This won't help your business so do not touch that.

- Follow/Unfollow For people starting on Instagram I do recommend to use this strategy until you have 1000followers. You can't ignore Social Proof. So this will speed things up.

- Everliker
Like hashtags that are within your niche.
Like followers of influencers that have the same targeted audience as you.
Like followers of competitors.

Question: I never reach the number of likes a day I ask Everliker to make for me, do you guys experience this also?

- Engagement groups (L&C).
Look for the top 3/4 groups who give you the best results.
(But this strategy won't work forever). Also keep in mind the follow/like ratio. If you have 1000 followers and 500 likes there is something untrustworthy about that.

- Reach out to friends of new followers.
With every new follower coming in you should like 3/5 photos of every friend/follower that liked their most recent post! Yes this will be time-consuming.
Social proof, because they see that their friends is already following you.

- Qualitative Unique Content.
Sadly I'm no good student of this rule.
I also do reposts because I can not make enough great content to post consistently. And always tag the person from whom you repost, this is just Instagram Etiquette!
If you're a good photographer etc.. you have a big advantage!

- Post consistently.
2 posts a day is desirable, i.e. 3pm and 7pm. yEveryone of us will have unique popular timeframes, check your stats).
This will take discipline which is a good attribute!
Little shortcut: I use Hootsuite.

- Commenting on posts of influencers within your niche the moment they have published it is also not a bad strategy in my opinion. You can only hope their followers will see your comment, start recognising your name and click on it.
(Preferably a comment with value.)

- When you reached the explore page, it helps when you have 'weird' coloured text on your photos or coloured objects. People will more likely click on it. You have to stand out on the explore page!

- Videos
This is up for debate. On Instagram some get more followers when they post great videos and other won't notice anything special. You have to try this for yourself if this works or not with your page.

- Feed
I find this as important as everything above, but this can be because of my niche. But you should try to have a good looking feed. You can find a lot of videos on youtube on this strategy.

- Bio
Make a very brief and clear intro on who you are.
As you have already read in this thread. Symbols in your bio is a big win!

- Stories
Can do big things for you, but I'm not good at this so can't say much here.
Youtube is your friend! The polls and swipe up features are my only friends here (so easy and engaging).

- Competitors
Look at what your competitors are doing regularly and adjust your strategy.
Sam Walton would do this all day.

- Keep the accounts that you are following as low as possible. This is in conflict with the follow/unfollow strategy. You do not want to unfollow your best (future) client.

- Tag popular brands in your photos, they say people who follow those brands will get to see your posts easier this way.


This list is in no particular order of importance.

I was not planning to make this as extensive as it is, but I still probably forgot something.
Hope this helps even a tiny bit!

 

[amp0193]

No money spent. I'm doing parody videos (putting athletes faces on movie characters heads) for the soccer niche--the largest sports market in the world. If its funny/relevent/engaging, big accounts like to post that kind of stuff if it doesn't offend anyone

This is awesome!

I've got a working theory that humor gets attention, and that it is a great way to get noticed and to break the ice with influential people. There's something about humor that turns a cold contact, into a warm one, without being spammy. It breaks down barriers.

When I find an influencer/celebrity who will probably love my product, I'll make a photoshopped pic with them using my product, and send it to them in a DM. I'm no photoshop pro, so it just ends up looking really silly. I might get a response like "haha that's hilarious", and then the door is wide open for me to talk shop.

Anyways, this is something I'm going to be doing a lot more of this year, and we'll see how it goes.

 

[cwalto12]

I have grown my online business exponentially on Instagram recently. Have never gotten more followers than when I started using Everliker. I do about 1000 likes a day - nothing has gone wrong YET. Went from 1 or no comments to about 4-5 on average per post and easily doubled my everyday followers.

I am by no means an expert BUT here are some things I have learned and how I approach it:

1) Everliker PRO is worth it. I do not work for them but I am completely fascinated by it and the results are there.

2) Emojis are key. ALWAYS put an emoji with every caption and every bullet point or whatever you have in your bio should have an emoji.

3) Put hashtags in your bio that people can use to tag you with so that you can use THEIR content instead of scouring the internet for your own everyday (you can always schedule them too using an app). Always give them credit for the picture and tag them because it opens you up to their followers and also could lead to creator becoming a happy customer. Example: if you are on online business selling kitchen knives, put in your bio something like, "Tag us using #mykitchenknives for the chance to be featured!"

4) If your business offers a brand rep program (it should) then put that in your bio as well and put a money emoji next to it. I have gotten multiple inquiries on it without doing anything except having it in my bio. This has opened our page up to thousands and thousands of potential followers and customers.

5) When putting hashtags on your pictures, do NOT put them in the caption. It looks unprofessional, IMO. Post your picture and then post the hashtags in the comments below. I have 3 sets of 20-25 hashtags for my niche saved in my notes that I alternate through because Instagram will demote you if they think you are just spamming the same hashtags everyday.

6) Ask your followers questions in the post. "Couldn't you see yourself saving 15 minutes a day with our product? Your time is precious!" Tell them to tag someone that NEEDS this product. Even if it doesn't work at first, engagement will go up eventually. I told people to tag people and asked questions to followers for about 30 straight days and nobody responded, but they did eventually and now they ALWAYS respond.

Hope this helps anyone trying to grow their Instagram! You all have been beyond helpful to me in this thread.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[amp0193]

What?! How?!

You literally quoted his text that said how.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Xeon]

One more thing to add. For those of us who have under 10k followers like myself, it's important to get the follower count to 10k or more asap.

Reason being, once you hit 10k, you'll have access to that Swipe Up feature in your Instagram Story which can take users to your website or product page from IG.

Attractive image in IG Story > seen by visitors > CTA Swipe Up > Your own website

And since IG Stories provide lots of additional bonus views to your posts, you can see where that all lead to.

Then, combine that with the Story Highlights circles mentioned above, and the IG profile page literally becomes like a mini website with multiple links to your site / product pages.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[GravyBoat]

You literally quoted his text that said how.

LOL!!!!

What I've been doing is going to competitor pages, going to their followers, and liking some of their posts. I don't follow any of them because I don't want to be spammy. Lots of people end up following my page too.

Other than that, most of my followers are coming from my shoutout posts, I pay a large account to post my product, gets a ton of likes, some of those people follow.

Hashtags are really good too so far.

I want to grow as organically as possible because at the end of the day, an account with 10k REAL, GOOD followers that are interested in your brand and products is worth way more than an account with 50k shitty follow for follow followers.

 

[Hvazquez07]

Hashtags + Quality content + Paid shoutouts + Paid advertising.

Mostly through PAID advertising is how you grow. It's a pay to play space since Facebook bought it.

 

[Xeon]

Also, is this the "Everliker" you guys are referring to?? I didn't know that you had to have 10k followers in order to use the Swipe Up feature on stories... Does anyone have any objections to using Everliker to get to 10k then shutting it off?? Normally I'm against bots but sh*t...

Not sure how much followers you've now, but I doubt Everliker can get you to 10K that fast. If you're not that far off from 10K, you might as well buy some followers to fill up that gap.

Seems I’ve fallen over at the first hurdle though - I’ve got 4G signal on my phone and everything seems to work fine, but IG is complaining there’s no connection. Does it do this a lot?

It's very normal. Some kind of quirk that IG has often.
Sometimes when you open the app, the feed doesn't refresh and/or when you click the Likes button to see the latest folks who Liked and Commented, it's still showing the old stuff from 30 mins - 1 hour ago. But it always fixes itself afterwards. More of an annoyance but it's all good.
Sometimes the app loses connection halfway.

Anyway, I might start a fresh new account and a progress thread in TFLF where I drop in my favourite quotes and see what happens on IG.

I could be wrong, but from my experience, IG doesn't take too kindly to posts with too much text and/or made up of text. Similar to that FB thing where they recommend only 20% of the post should be text, but IG seems a lot stricter than FB (after all IG is a very visual platform).

I did a few promoted ads on IG previously, and the ads with text in it had really ridiculously low reach to the point that IG sent an automated message saying ads with text will be affected in terms of reach.
Same seems to apply for IG non-ad posts.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE ON MY INSTAGRAM JOURNEY:

1) I bought 10 comments from RedSocial, where I instructed the commenters to tag a friend.
Very bad experience with these F*ckers. Took my money and never delivered anything till now. I suspect it might even be a scam. And they took 3 working days to reply to one simple email. Stay away from these folks.

2) I just tried the IG commenting pod on telegram (the Wolf Global one). I really like this one, because you only need to comment on the last 5 links, then you post your own IG link, and you get about 4 - 5 comments in return! Plus, you can repeat this multiple times per day to farm even more comments lol
The only thing to note is that you need to have at least 5 other links from other folks in the pod before you can post your link again (so that people don't spam).

Let's say you post your link in that pod and you get 4 comments in return. You then do this 5 times per day (3 - 5 mins each round).
That's about 20 comments per post. If you reply to those each of those 20 comments, that's 40 comments in your post! That looks more social and decent than 0 comments lol

I was thinking, if I have cash to burn, I can even hire a VA to do that 10 times a day.
That'll be like ~100 comments per post! Social proof galore.

Also, most of these folks on the pod have 10k+ followers, and many are cute chicks doing fashion and all that narcissistic selfies shit. If you're in the same niche, you can even partner with them / collab.

3) I also joined a niche-specific pod. This type of niche pods are a lot smaller, but they still give you comments. So, combined with 2) above, I currently average 25 - 40 comments per post, compared to less than 3 previously.

4) Gonna bump up Everliker to do 1400 likes per day. Currently 1200. Once Everliker is set to 1400, I believe I can nail 20 - 30 followers daily.

#socialproofbaby #10Kgoals #instadreams #instagame #instaiseverything

 

[yana nova]

Let me give my two cents on growing Instagram as far as my experience allows me.

In general:
Think of a product first, create it and then start your Instagram, then start using bots like the free or paid version of Everlike or the free or paid version of Telegram L/C - you will find the links in reddit (I used Telegram once, but found it very time consuming. For this time I'd prefer to work and put some money on one day featuring the product for money on bigger accounts).
Your Instagram has to be different from all or at least most of the accounts out there to get a real engagement from honestly interested in your feed people. You have to give them something, to teach them, to make them think and come to your account for more.

I started with this:
motivational quotes and food pics- they work best to get attention. My products are in the fitness industry and I have three Instagram accounts. I build the one of them before my product was ready and at the beginning I was using media, that wasn't about my niche product. When my product was ready to be featured I had to change my feed, thus my followers. This is why I am telling you above to first build your product. Once your feed changes, some, many or most if not all of your followers won't be interested in it anymore, which will lead to Instagram thinking you are a bot (a lot of followers and not a lot of engagement), which leads to your posts not being shown in the feed of your followers.

Learn the platform:
Learn how the platform works and use all the features it offers. I read somewhere, that the more features you use from what Instagram is offering you, the better "the algorithm works for you", aka use hashtags, emojis (silly, but part of the platform), my stories, polls, highlights, live videos, reposting and mentioning bigger accounts and your followers, use filters in your stories.

Who are you? Think of a good, creative, memorable account name and build your bio, let people clearly know who you are, what you offer. The first row of your bio is going to be shown below your username, so make the best out of it, when people search you.

Put in there your email address and other contact form details. If you are going to sell, make sure people are comfortable with giving your their money.

Timing is of course very important- I read that if you don't post at a time, when your followers are awake and free to react, then your post won't get a high traction and won't be featured on the feed page of most of your followers, because Instagram "thinks" you may be a bot and the more followers you have and less reaction on your posts, the worse the algorithm is to your account.

Post every day- multiple times in a day if possible, but max 3 posts. You want your followers to not forget you. Besides every single time you can use all the hashtags possible = attraction!

Use all the hashtags possible and change them once in a while, but not always and not never. When you are small, use hashtags, which have less than 200k posts, so that you get a chance of being featured in "top posts" of this hashtag. The higher you are positioned in a hashtag, the better visibility. Start using a few hashtags with more posts- 500k or even over 1m, when your account grows. Don't always change your #s- create a small feed of you there to get noticed.

Create your own brand's hashtag and use it every single time. There is a new feature that provides you the opportunity to follow hashtags.

Use hashtags in your stories!

Create a group of friends in WhatsApp or wherever and ask them to like your newly posted media within 60min. This will increase the boost of your post, thus the visibility to your followers' feed page. This is mega important! Note it!!

When you (like many of the great accounts) start using a bot like Everliker, start with following/liking smaller accounts, this is great for numbers as they're more likely to follow back (as already mentioned). Choose an account with 10k followers and start following its followers. When you grow to 10k followers choose another account that has 40k followers and start following its followers and so on.

Soon you can start using bigger accounts for shout outs (paid) and smaller accounts for shout outs (as a favour of you posting a pic of theirs on your feed) as you could also tell the smaller account owners to post a pic from your feed on their Instagram and mention 10 or more followers of theirs to check out your feed, comment a if they like your feed/product or leave a and write down their ideas to you, if they think you could work on bettering your feed/product).

Make your feed entertaining:
Use emojis, leave empty rows, write longer captions, make them funny and memorable.
Example is this pic below.
Would you memorise it by reading the captions
"Just the cactuses in my room- a memory from my ex girlfriend."
or...
"A live pic of me and my girlfriends chilling, periods synced and not shaving for a week."
or a caption like
"Aren't they beautiful"?
Make your content memorisable.

Who said you should use the standard way of uploading media in your stories?
Check out @jessedriftwood and his edited into a movie stories. Some people sell only from their stories, only from a content that lasts 24 hrs- something like Snapchat. For this your product and its presentation has to be very convincing. When you reach the 10k followers a new feature will enable you to direct people to your selling page- straight from your stories! How cool is that please!! And then you can highlight that story with the link and let it be visible for a few more days.

Until then you shall work on bettering the quality of your feed and learning from the bigger accounts by just pretending to be their follower and tracking your own reactions to their feed. Be patient and know it takes more than a night, 3 months or 30 weeks to create a real following.

I know some of you may think my info isn't new at all, but if I see an account, which is promoting its feed and if the feed doesn't provide any valuable info to me, then I will pass on it as it would look like a spam.
I hope I helped some of you!

 

[Xeon]

Came across this 10/10/10 hashtag strategy from 2018 Instagram Marketing Magic—All the New, Cutting-Edge Sh*t They Don’t Want You to Know! | Jumper Media
TLDR:

-------------------------------------------------------
Introducing the 10/10/10 Hashtag Strategy…
Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags, so use all 30. Choose:

• 10 Smaller Hashtags (10,000 to 50,000 total posts)
• 10 Mid-size Hashtags (50,000 to 200,000 total posts)
• 10 Large Hashtags (200,000 – 2,000,000 total posts)

Going “viral” is still statistically difficult. But if you use this method with the right content, and get a little lucky, you will be able to “scale up.” You’ll get a handful of likes from being on the top posts of the smaller hashtags, a few more from the mid-size ones, etc. etc. until you have so much engagement that the algorithm decides to try you out on the Explore Page.

When using this strategy, you’ll still need to do good hashtag research. The right hashtags can make or break your virality.

These are the three best ways to research hashtags in 2018:

• Hashtag research tools – we like Display Purposes*
• Find influencers in your niche that have hit the explore page and take inspiration from their hashtags.
• Find one hashtag you like, search for it on Insta, then check out the “related hashtags” underneath.

One of the reasons we recommend Display Purposes is because it excludes banned hashtags from its search results.
-------------------------------------------------------

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Evil_Jester]

Lol, thanks. I’ve still not posted to my personal account.
So far I’m finding IG my least favourite platform ever...

I stopped my 17k account recently because of a poor target market. I think instagram is good for using other influencers when you want to market a product. It's kind of a waste to grow your own account if you want to make money from it. That's why you always see people making money managing other accounts. Also it takes too much time to manage your account everyday, which is vital for growth

 

[amp0193]

LOL!!!!

What I've been doing is going to competitor pages, going to their followers, and liking some of their posts.

That kinda works, but it's really time intensive. I did some of it getting started though, but quit when I saw what the return on my time was.

I'm never using a bot again either, because of getting shadow-banned by Insta in the past for using one (on conservative settings).

Hashtags are really good too so far.

How many hashtags are you using per post? Mixing them up every time?

I think Instagram didn't like how many hashtags I was using, because my engagement went way down, despite a big increase in followers. After a couple of months of not really using any, engagement seems to be back up.

 

[Evil_Jester]

What I'm curious to know is, did you spend any money for all these, and if so, could you provide a ballpark figure?

No money spent. I'm doing parody videos (putting athletes faces on movie characters heads) for the soccer niche--the largest sports market in the world. If its funny/relevent/engaging, big accounts like to post that kind of stuff if it doesn't offend anyone

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[amp0193]

I was a total noob and of course it was only great traffic for a few days and did not retain many viewers long-term.

That's media. The traffic is great, but it's a flash in the pan.

You always have to hunting for the next source.

The real benefit is the links and the credibility/authority that it adds to your brand. Now you are xx Brand "as featured in" Y publication.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I've been having fun posting on IG lately and it's pretty interesting the games that are played over there.

The bot comments are hilarious because they never match what was actually posted.

Then you have the person who follows you and the very next day they unfollow you.

When someone follows you who has a skewed count (12,000 followers / follows 200) you know they're just working the algo so you can follow them, and then you're unfollowed quickly.

Here's a fun way to get reposted by "thought leaders" who are active on other platforms such as Youtube, LinkedIn etc. but also have a notable Instagram account:

1. Go to their Youtube channel, latest LinkedIn posts or whatever.

2. Consume their latest content until you come upon something they say that's memorable, interesting and could be turned into a good quote. (1-3 sentences)

3. Take that quote, go to Canva or the app of your choice, and turn it into an instagram pic. Put some love into it, add a picture of them and make it look really nice.

4. Post on your Insta and tag the person.

5. They'll love it, as it's flattering to be quoted by other people. And it makes them appear more authorative.

6. Expect at least a like and a comment. Hope for a repost (= exposure to their followers, which COULD be great if they're your target audience)

Great idea, thanks.

 

[amp0193]

Won't this just get you flagged by Instagram as a spam account and you'll get less reach on your posts? I don't see how this is any different to follow unfollow really. It's still probably classed as spam by Instagram because you're still notifying users and annoying them.

I don't see how this is not the end result. If not now, then in a future algo change.

 

[cwalto12]

Anybody know how to put those little circle story things in your profile BTW? I feel that this could be good as a permanent call to action? I've seen people with like 3/4 of these under their bio. Anybody know?

Cheers!

Hit the bottom right button to view your profile page and it's called "story highlights". I believe you have to post an Instagram story first(click your icon on the home page next to all of the other stories) for that section to show up, and then when it expires you can save it forever under your bio.

 

[Xeon]

TLDR: Event pics + Product Pics + Influcencer Pics + Repost + Holiday Greetings + Giveaways = no lack of IG content again

DISCLAIMER #1: I have not tried all these out myself BUT I'll be executing EVERYTHING written in this post after mid-Apr (once I've finalized things with the photographer)

DISCLAIMER #2: The purpose of this post is NOT to go viral and get 193,445 Likes & 50,000 followers overnight.
Only gurus know how to do that. This post is about sharing my own thoughts and goals:

i) get a steady stream of original content for my IG feed
ii) build social proof in the process
iii) get a REAL FOLLOWING who will engage with me

I'm sick and tired of having a graveyard IG account when my competitors are all slaying on IG (because they've content and I don't).

Here goes:

--------------------------------------------------------

I was rotting on the couch on Sat and surfing IG the whole afternoon aimlessly, daydreaming of what I can do to get original content for my IG.
What Fox said in the other IG thread made me realized that it's hard to get a loyal fan base and real followers on IG by just reposting others' content (as evident in my case).

After hours of "letting it go", I finally thought of a schedule which can be repeated every week, month and even years to come, with a steady flow of consistent original content. These might give some ideas to others who're also in the same boat as me. It will cost some money for the photography, and it might not be suitable for everyone.
It's best for "cool" consumer products, such as, but not limited to, fashion or fitness AND where there's related events with LOTS of people attending.

Below is what my upcoming plan for IG content looks like:

There's some IG content schedule templates online but I feel they're too overkill and complex.
Anyway, my plan is:

Mon: Event Pics
Tue: Rest (you can post Event Pics if you want)
Wed: Your own product pics
Thu: Pics of influencers with your product
Fri: Repost relevant content in your niche
Sat and Sun: No posting as engagement on IG is really low (for my case)

EVENT PICS

One thing I realize, is that Instagram folks love fun and crazy stuff. Beautiful colorful visuals.

The idea is to hire a photographer to shoot lots of photos (about > 50+) at an event that is related to your niche, whereby the event has tons of people attending. This way, you'll get pics of many people within the same photo, and also snapshots of closer-ups. It's all for social proof.

• If you sell beer for the young party crowd, get photographer to take pics of those huge public foam party events. They don't have to be drinking your beer (you can if you want), you just need to associate your IG account with FUN parties.
• If you sell running shoes, get photographer to go to those marathon events where there's an OCEAN of people. Take pics from a distance away so you capture the crowd as a whole (6 - 15+ people in one shot). You can also get friends/family to wear the shoes you're selling and take pics of that, with lots of people in the background.
• If you sell boring picnic mats, get photographer to go to those fields where tons of families have picnics. Those other families will be in the background, while your own picnic mat and friends/models will be in the midground / foreground. At one glance, the photo looks very SOCIAL yay! Associate your IG account with fun picnics.
• If you sell surfboards. get photographer to go down to the nearest, most sunny beach, and take pics of surfer dudes doing stunts. Occasionally, beaches have very social party/music events. Shoot all those. Shoot a couple of beach babes having fun as well. Associate your IG account with the beach, sea and sun.
• If you sell a boring pneumatic drill / hammer, tie in the product with popular culture/parody, dress yourself/or model up in a silly Thor costume with your sagging dad bod, and use your hammer to destroy all kinds of things, or abuse your pneumatic drill in wacky manners. Drilling paint and have it splash all over you. Capture the beauty in slow motion with a fitting soundtrack. Similar to the WillItBlend youtube channel.

These are just some random ideas but the thinking is the same.
On these photos, put your logo on the bottom-right corner. A small one.

The concept is that, when folks browse your IG account and see all these pics of tons of people engaging with each other and you're the one who took these pics / inside these pics yourself, it creates social proof that you're "part" of these highly social events.

Then you drip-post a couple of these event pics on Mon/Tue in your IG, so you don't use up the photo so fast.

My thinking is, would you engage with an IG account that has just product pics, or one with a wide variety of fun pics that are related to your niche/product, but not pure hardsell?

I say hire a photographer because their work will look WAY, WAY better than yours or mine, unless you're a photographer yourself. I can't take pics to save my life (I HATE USING THE DSLR CAMERA, F*ck that shit).
With a bit of photo-editing and filter, the photos can easily surpass the quality level of many of those small-time fashion models/influencers.

It's possible to hire one on Thumbtack or Indeed.
I found one who will shoot me the event pics for less than US$150 for > 50 pics.
50 pics can last several months until the next hot event comes. IMO, you just need about 3 - 4 events shots per year.

HOLIDAYS/FESTIVALS

In addition to the Event Pics, Product Pics, Influencer Pics and Reposts, you can also post your own greeting on every holiday/festival in your IG feed.

Easter Day is coming. You can use a free tool like Canva.com to wish your followers well on those days.
The greeting design needs to be consistent. One way I saw one of my indirect-competitor do this, is to hire a graphic designer to come up with a really simple mascot (no need for fancy illustration) for your brand.

E.g: Let's say you're selling bed sheets. You can hire the graphic designer/illustrator to come up with a funny, naggy-mom sort of mascot. She would have a base design in her normal clothes.
Then, on Easter Day, she would wear rabbits' ears. Post this in your IG feed.
On April's Fool's Day, she can wear a jester's hat.
On Independence Day, she can have the US flag design on some parts of her dress.

Her pose and everything will be the same, just add the relevant holiday/festive elements to some parts of her. This way you don't have to get the illustrator to redraw the pose, and you keep everything consistent.
It saves tons of money.

For my indirect-competitor who did this, it didn't pick off initially, but then gained traction and brand strength over time. For many countries, there's more than a dozen festivals/holidays, so that helps to fill in churning out even more content.

For even more content, host a giveaway every month/two months.

To get even more social proof, eventually I'll do what the Master, Fox himself, mentioned, which is to get shoutouts, brand reps and influencers!

Hopefully, in the near future, I can say good-bye to those days of having a pathetic IG account lol

 

[Private Witt]

What's your account about? Creating content and getting large brands to repost is the only true way.
I made a new account and got lucky last week. I gained more followers in 1 day than I did in the past 5 months with an old account. Make sure you are in a big enough market and have good branding
View attachment 18213

Nice man, did you get multiple repost or was that just from one big boy?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Xeon]

No money spent. I'm doing parody videos (putting athletes faces on movie characters heads) for the soccer niche--the largest sports market in the world. If its funny/relevent/engaging, big accounts like to post that kind of stuff if it doesn't offend anyone

I see now, so in the end, it all boils down to good content and not magic techniques or tricks. Brilliant!

 

[ddzc]

This is all a bunch of baloney.

If your product is worth selling, just post consistent quality content. Sprinkle in a few hashtags. Give some products to big influencer accounts, have them take pics with em and share. Get some more followers. Rinse and repeat.

Follow/unfollow is so spammy. Instagram already dislikes you and is putting limits on you. You think that this kind of stuff is sustainable? Why piss off the platform you're trying to grow on?

Agree. Build good quality content, buy some ads on Instagram which aren't expensive, and reach out to influencers. That's all. OP, stop the follow, comment, unfollow tactic, every day a bunch of people do this technique on my instagram and it's f'n annoying. I block them right away.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Xeon]

Further updates.

If it continues like this through 2018, I should be able to hit 10K before end of Dec!

Also, regarding Fuelgram's powerlikes (@Blake C ), I tried it for the 2nd time today, buying another Power Like.

I can say it doesn't work, UNLESS your content matches the type that those power accounts that like you (> 50K - 100K followers) happen to belong to the same niche.

E.g: I've an IG account about frogs and those power accounts are about fitness and chicks......it doesn't get me to the Explore page, and it has no effect whatsoever in getting any additional likes.

Will stop using them.

 

[JordanS]

In my opinion the best way to gain Instagram right now is buying L/C rounds from larger accounts. This helps you hit explore and makes your posts go viral.

Heres one of my newer accounts, its about 2.5 months old

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PetePreneur]

I used the Standard and was happy that it works, so I switched to the Pro.
I started with 700 first, then increase by 50 - 100 daily. If you set it too high, Everliker will warn you.

I set it to Like by hashtags (700 Likes), Like my own feed (25 Likes) and Like Users' followers (400 Likes). I'll slowly bump it up to like 1400 Likes per day.
Everliker sleeps very often to emulate human behavior (sleep 3 mins, wake up to like X amt, then sleep 7 mins, then wake up to like X amt, sleeps 3 hours.....)

You can also use Display Purposes | Photo Hashtags for the Modern Trollop to discover what hashtags to use. Switch to graph mode, it's very helpful.

Won't this just get you flagged by Instagram as a spam account and you'll get less reach on your posts? I don't see how this is any different to follow unfollow really. It's still probably classed as spam by Instagram because you're still notifying users and annoying them.

Let us know how you get on though. Have you seen a drop in engagement since you've started doing it?