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Growing your Instagram account, strategy and discussion

Elijah

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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?
 
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Private Witt

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I've been off Instagram awhile. Why only 19 follows at a time, is this a new thing or just for certain accounts.
 

Evil_Jester

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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
upload_2018-2-22_18-50-40.png
 

Private Witt

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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?
 
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Xeon

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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

What?! How?!
 

amp0193

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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

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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...:thumbsup:
 

Xeon

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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...:thumbsup:

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

Evil_Jester

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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
 
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Evil_Jester

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The foundation of my page is to make free youtube tutorials and link it to my instagram. Then they will click the software/hardware links to buy the stuff, and I would get affiliate commission. I'll make a progress thread revealing everything because I suck at the part where you...uh..make money
 

Xeon

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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!
 

Evil_Jester

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I see now, so in the end, it all boils down to good content and not magic techniques or tricks. Brilliant!
How's singapore? I've always wanted to go there sometime. Looks like a beautiful place
 
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Xeon

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How's singapore? I've always wanted to go there sometime. Looks like a beautiful place

Don't waste your money unless you're in-transit to some other country. You can see most of the country within 1 - 2 days and yes, it's expensive here lol
 

GravyBoat

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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.
 

jon.M

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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...
 
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Xeon

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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...

I smell blood, downloaded that straight away and am on the trail now. Thanks, didn't even know that existed!
 

jon.M

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I smell blood, downloaded that straight away and am on the trail now. Thanks, didn't even know that existed!
Feel free to share your thoughts when you've tried it. The free version's somewhat limited, but the premium is like $4 a month so it's not that big of an investment.

Here's some info to get you started.
 

ddzc

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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.
 
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amp0193

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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.
 
Last edited:

amp0193

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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.
 

Elijah

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Some time ago I saw a random guy having a lot of fanpages of himself which spammed photos of himself with a link to his mainpage and every picture had like all casual hashtags like #insta #work so every second picture was his. He had 1million followers though.
Isn't botting from fanpages better than with the original one?
 
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PetePreneur

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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...

What are the Telegram groups called if you don't mind me asking and are there any for motivational quote type posts? I run a page, where I post motivational/advice quotes/videos from billionaires and this seems like the closest to my niche.

Cheers!
 

Evil_Jester

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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.
I don’t think ppl see who likes their comment unless that person follows the person who likes their comment
 

GravyBoat

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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.

I have about 15 - 20 hashtags I'm currently using on all my posts, I have about 5 - 10 that stay the same... do you think that's a problem (the ones that stay the same), or should I switch up every single one?? Could I use the same ones every, say, 3 posts?? Again, time consuming but if I can copy paste it's a breeze.

Also, are you guys posting DAILY or every few days, multiple times a day?

I'm trying to put out all original content and not repost anything, however, this only allows me to post about 5 times a week. Do you think this is a good strategy, or is posting daily or twice daily with memes or other related but not original content more worth it?
 
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amp0193

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I have about 15 - 20 hashtags I'm currently using on all my posts, I have about 5 - 10 that stay the same... do you think that's a problem (the ones that stay the same), or should I switch up every single one?? Could I use the same ones every, say, 3 posts?? Again, time consuming but if I can copy paste it's a breeze.

I can't tell you what's good to do, as my research led me to believe that using the same hashtags (I used mostly the same, and I used 28 or 29 every time) can have Instagram start showing you less in feeds.

Also, are you guys posting DAILY

I try to post daily. I have a physical product and only post product pictures pretty much.
 

GravyBoat

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I can't tell you what's good to do, as my research led me to believe that using the same hashtags (I used mostly the same, and I used 28 or 29 every time) can have Instagram start showing you less in feeds.

So you started switching them up each post?

I'm also posting mostly product images, photoshopped into different use situations. Once I start getting more reviews/customer pics I'll definitely toss those in and tag those people.
 

Private Witt

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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...:thumbsup:

This is pretty sweet, congrats. I only had this happen once when a newspaper wrote a digital and print article and it got picked up by a much bigger paper. I went from like 100 uniques to 16k in one day and crapped my pants. It was my first project 8 years ago. 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.
 
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amp0193

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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.
 

Xeon

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Feel free to share your thoughts when you've tried it. The free version's somewhat limited, but the premium is like $4 a month so it's not that big of an investment.

Here's some info to get you started.

Thanks! Since using Everliker last evening. I've gained about 7 - 8 new followers and still counting (usually it's -4 to 1.....yes, -4!). It's a bit too soon, but it seems to work. And this is only using the free version where I set it to like 700 posts a day. IG's limit is 350 likes per hour so I try not to go too far. Next week, I'm gonna set it to like 900 / day on my office PC, where I'll turn on this bot 24/7/365 lol

Next week, I'm gonna try out the pro version whereby there's a setting where you can like the posts of your competitors' followers. I'm already fantasizing about getting 15 - 20 new followers a day DAYUUUUM!!!!

It would be even better if they have a setting where you target only those users who are new to IG, or people with low follower counts. Engagement tends to be higher with these "unpopular" guys cos' they desperately need people to like and comment on their posts. I can understand the feeling. Imagine, you post a selfie of yourself with your 6-pack abs and after 8 hours, there's only 3 Likes and 0 comments (and your followers count is 92 lol)

The problem with IG is that you gain 12 followers and next day, 4 other followers unfollow, so it slows down the growth.

Anyway, I'll post updates on this end of next week.
 

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