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How I built a following of 3.8 Million on Instagram. Blueprint

Jinn Sola

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How exactly are you growing your accounts so fast? Are you targeting specific hashtags? If so, how are you finding which hashtags to use? How many do you use per post?
Yes, you should definitely define at least 15 hashtags that fit the niche/account exactly and include them at the bottom of your posts. I like to separate them with with line breaks and a dot (.) in each line. You can not do this in the Instagram app directly, you will have to either copy the text with line breaks from the notes app into the description field, or use a third-party post management tool like Buffer. (As said many times, I am also not affiliated with buffer)
 
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Jinn Sola

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How does one do this? What's involved in promoting?
Insane engagement. Comment & Like images of potential followers/customers, get into on-going conversations, spread compliments, follow them, comment on something on their posts they will remember, DM them, anything that comes to your mind. It's insanely important to get yourself out there and people see "your name". Now, some people will follow you right away and engage with your posts as well, some will engage with your account after doing it a second time, and some won't respond at all. Think of it like being the ultimate extrovert of IG.
 

Jinn Sola

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Creating content with some kind of brutalism? What does that mean?
With brutalism I mean: Don't be afraid to offend people. It is even good to offend people. If you do that some will hate you for sure, they will still comment and tell their friends about you. For the ones that love you will have an even stronger relationship with your account/brand.
 

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Yes, you should definitely define at least 15 hashtags that fit the niche/account exactly and include them at the bottom of your posts.

How many per post?

Do you rotate them?
 
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amp0193

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I have had the best results using 20 tags per post.

Craft yourself 3 sets of unique hashtags of 20 each and then rotate those sets


Really interesting.

I've been using 3-5 a post in fear of getting an IG shadowban.



Have you ever been shadowbanned? What did you learn from that? What automations/processes did you used to do, that you no longer do?
 

Jinn Sola

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Really interesting.

I've been using 3-5 a post in fear of getting an IG shadowban.



Have you ever been shadowbanned? What did you learn from that? What automations/processes did you used to do, that you no longer do?
Until now I have only had troubles with shadow ban after going too aggressive with my automated settings. Now I could somehow break out of my addiction for maximum growth and play it safe with those settings.

Regarding shadow ban you may also want to play it safe on your brand account and experiment on your niche accounts.

Back in time I used to automate promotional DM's, DM's to start simple conversations, and DM autoresponders. I stopped that for the sake of safety and I do not recommend automating DMs anymore.

The most basic automated process are used for "the insane engagement" strategy (comment & like) and for follow/unfollow
 
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Until now I have only had troubles with shadow ban after going too aggressive with my automated settings. Now I could somehow break out of my addiction for maximum growth and play it safe with those settings.

Can you give some perspective on that. How many follows/like/comments were you doing that IG deemed "too aggressive"?

What's an example of how much activity a day you're doing, and space out by how much? Regular time intervals? Random time intervals?

How are you automating comments? Isn't that like super shitty and spammy? You can always pick out the bot comments from people's posts.

Regarding shadow ban you may also want to play it safe on your brand account and experiment on your niche accounts.

Ah ok, this is great advice, thanks.

With the brand account, it's very much all the eggs in one basket. Can't risk F*cking it up. I'll stay the course.

I do really like the idea of some niche accounts though, thanks for sharing that idea here. Going to have to think some more on that, as I wouldn't even know where to start with content.

Do you have a system for reposting other people's content? Or are you re-purposing content first for your accounts? Or creating brand new content?

Back in time I used to automate promotional DM's, DM's to start simple conversations, and DM autoresponders. I stopped that for the sake of safety and I do not recommend automating DMs anymore.

Yeah, auto-DMs sounds super shady.



Have you done any big giveaway or partnerships with other big accounts?

It's the best strategy I've seen to grow an account with no automation (branded account). Do a big giveaway/promo once a month, using some celeb or influencer page... get a few thousand followers... repeat.

I've done a few. Got my first big one in December. Going to shoot for one big one a month for 2019.
 

Jinn Sola

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Can you give some perspective on that. How many follows/like/comments were you doing that IG deemed "too aggressive"?
These settings actually depend on the account itself. The best way is to start low, increase, analyze and adapt. Since that is quite amount of work in the beginning, I have this task outsourced to Fiverr.
I have been condemned a lot already in this thread for mentioning that I use IGCompanion but it is that this service automatically ignores further commands when it notices that Instagram responds unusual to the actions.

What's an example of how much activity a day you're doing, and space out by how much? Regular time intervals? Random time intervals?
I try to keep it as natural as possible. Meaning, every 45-75 minutes I go and do "insane engagement" and in between some follows / unfollows

How are you automating comments? Isn't that like super sh*tty and spammy? You can always pick out the bot comments from people's posts.
It can be. What works best for me is use generic comments or questions, disable all the notifications of instagram except for DMs and comment responses, and then when I get a notification that someone has responded to the bot's comment, I answer once more manually.

Have you done any big giveaway or partnerships with other big accounts?

It's the best strategy I've seen to grow an account with no automation (branded account). Do a big giveaway/promo once a month, using some celeb or influencer page... get a few thousand followers... repeat.

I've done a few. Got my first big one in December. Going to shoot for one big one a month for 2019.
I am not a fan of giveaways for niche accounts, it just costs too much time and effort if you manage more than 3 niche accounts. However, for brand accounts giveaways are a good way to increase engagement/followers. Good luck with those! People love giveaways.

Partnering with similar accounts is something you definitely need to do once you have more than about 5k - 10k. This works simply by DMing similar accounts in the niche and asking them for a shoutout exchange. I have this outsourced as well.
 

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What is your goal and how are you dealing with your accounts at the moment?

I have accounts in the beauty niche and want to sell self-made jewelry. Right now I am trying to set up an automation flow as you said. I worked with Buffer before but need to pick it up again. I like the concept!
 
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Jinn Sola

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I have accounts in the beauty niche and want to sell self-made jewelry. Right now I am trying to set up an automation flow as you said. I worked with Buffer before but need to pick it up again. I like the concept!

Self-made jewellery is definitely something you can have great success with! I would start with a brand account, 2 niche accounts and a simple web landing page that announces your products in form of "coming soon".

This will give you the advantage of already having a growing fanbase while you are working on setting everything up.
 

ALC

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how is that possible that with 80 account all used by a 3rd party bot you don’t get banned ?
 

Jinn Sola

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how is that possible that with 80 account all used by a 3rd party bot you don’t get banned ?

I don't exactly know what people do to get banned, but as long as you keep everything natural, they will not be able to detect that you are using a third-party tool except for the post scheduling management tool like buffer or hootsuite. However with that you need to use a business account on instagram that will enable you to auto post scheduled media, otherwise you will just be reminded to post via push-notification what again makes it not detectable for Instagram that you are using a bot. For niche accounts I also suggest to use different IP-Addresses per 5 accounts
 
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Akeem

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Prior to my first reply on this thread, I'm now even more curious in regards to the success of OP.

You're running 80 Instagram accounts by outsourcing the 'hard work' in order to automate them, that's great, however, that means you must pay each and every Fiverr member you 'hire'. Does your Instagram post per account make enough money to pay them AND pay you?
 

Jinn Sola

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Prior to my first reply on this thread, I'm now even more curious in regards to the success of OP.

You're running 80 Instagram accounts by outsourcing the 'hard work' in order to automate them, that's great, however, that means you must pay each and every Fiverr member you 'hire'. Does your Instagram post per account make enough money to pay them AND pay you?

The main components and EXPENSES of growing an account are those 2:
- Content creation (11 Fiverr workers, costs me about € 2600 per month)
- Engagement with followers and potential followers (igcompanion, costs me about € 110 per month)
- Server costs (about 600€ per month)
- Advertising costs (60% of average income measured from the last 3 months)

Product management and order process is something I do myself. On days there are too many orders to process I have great support of family and friends. But I am looking to build a local team now as well.

Main income comes from:
- Shoutouts and promotions of other brands (in the beginning ok, but suggest to always only market your own businesses, commandment of Control)
- E-commerce systems (70% of income)
- Mobile apps/services (new in my arsenal, raising)

In the past I have struggled a lot on how much should I actually outsource and how much I should do myself. And the answer seems pretty obvious to me: Outsource all of the repetitive tasks that other people can do at least as good as you or even better, so that you can grow your businesses in other aspects.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions
 

Ascension

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To some point I understand your doubts (I see the odds are against me with Austria/Germany) but the main reason why I created this thread gets lost more and more.

The thing is, it's not just the website.
My initial thought was that you were going to use your "expertise" (3.8 million followers!) to offer coaching to people on this forum.
Now, the reason for the quotation marks is that if you asked a random guy to read the first seven articles on Instagram marketing and give you advice he'd come up with exactly what you have written so far.
At least to me, none of your posts so far say "I actually have the insights, growing a multi-million person audience would provide".

Now, I might be totally wrong about you and if that is the case I apologise. Just wanted to offer my perspective on why you are not getting the reaction you might have expected.
 
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Jinn Sola

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The thing is, it's not just the website.
My initial thought was that you were going to use your "expertise" (3.8 million followers!) to offer coaching to people on this forum.
Now, the reason for the quotation marks is that if you asked a random guy to read the first seven articles on Instagram marketing and give you advice he'd come up with exactly what you have written so far.
At least to me, none of your posts so far say "I actually have the insights, growing a multi-million person audience would provide".

Now, I might be totally wrong about you and if that is the case I apologise. Just wanted to offer my perspective on why you are not getting the reaction you might have expected.

With Instagram being a social network, there are no special hacks. I personally think that the strategies I used differ from the strategies that most people go and following these have been the best decision in my life so far.
Having doubts is all alright, and good. You should not trust people on the internet.

However, I am here to present you with how I did it and inspire those, who would like to be more successful when starting from nothing, seeing the work they have done so far also from other perspectives, because I have been once one of those and I know they will go far.
 

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If your going to sell your bot to us just say so, Why should we use your automation bot over others?
 

Akeem

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What's your biggest account's following and why not just share the username so we can see for ourselves :)
 
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If anyone wants real info on Instagram just refer back to
This NOTABLE THREAD about Instagram

This thread brought out all the information on Instagram and it wasn't from the OP. I know we all want an easier way to build our social platforms but the truth is building real loyal followers takes work and you have to be real with people.

Insane engagement. Comment & Like images of potential followers/customers, get into on-going conversations, spread compliments, follow them, comment on something on their posts they will remember, DM them, anything that comes to your mind. It's insanely important to get yourself out there and people see "your name". Now, some people will follow you right away and engage with your posts as well, some will engage with your account after doing it a second time, and some won't respond at all. Think of it like being the ultimate extrovert of IG.

What he said about promotion is very true and it takes time and dedication. These people have to see you as a real friend who's on the rise to big things.
 

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The main components and EXPENSES of growing an account are those 2:
- Content creation (11 Fiverr workers, costs me about € 2600 per month)
- Engagement with followers and potential followers (igcompanion, costs me about € 110 per month)
- Server costs (about 600€ per month)
- Advertising costs (60% of average income measured from the last 3 months)

Product management and order process is something I do myself. On days there are too many orders to process I have great support of family and friends. But I am looking to build a local team now as well.

Main income comes from:
- Shoutouts and promotions of other brands (in the beginning ok, but suggest to always only market your own businesses, commandment of Control)
- E-commerce systems (70% of income)
- Mobile apps/services (new in my arsenal, raising)

In the past I have struggled a lot on how much should I actually outsource and how much I should do myself. And the answer seems pretty obvious to me: Outsource all of the repetitive tasks that other people can do at least as good as you or even better, so that you can grow your businesses in other aspects.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions

2600 for fiverr a month for content for 80 highly active accounts?

So 32.50 per account per month.

I’d love to know how you have someone running a growing, engaged, profitable IG page for you at just over 1 euro a day.
 

Jinn Sola

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What's your biggest account's following and why not just share the username so we can see for ourselves :)

My biggest accounts following is slightly below 680k. I will not provide you with any of my usernames since I publicly said I use bots.

But I can provide you with my in/out report from this week that shows usage of IGCompanion (which is still not my service) and payout from ecommerce systems
 
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sophiee

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2600 for fiverr a month for content for 80 highly active accounts?

So 32.50 per account per month.

I’d love to know how you have someone running a growing, engaged, profitable IG page for you at just over 1 euro a day.
He clearly said that he only uses fiverr for the creation of content. I could already take a lot of value out of this articles and i have already found cheap content creators on fiverr. @Jinn Sola thank you so much that you take the time to share all of the info, and just ignore those people accusing you
 

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Actually, I'm curious to know exactly what IGCompanion does. I checked out the website, but there isn't much details on what it does and how it does it.
Basically, it's just a follow-unfollow+autoliking bot right? Based on this, I don't see how different it is from all the other bots out there.

I've used tons of bots in the past, experimented with tools like Everliker......and all I got was a shadowban.
Instagram's AI is really smart now, these bots will get accounts marked as spam accounts real quick. It's not like pre-2017 days.
 

Jinn Sola

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Actually, I'm curious to know exactly what IGCompanion does. I checked out the website, but there isn't much details on what it does and how it does it.
Basically, it's just a follow-unfollow+autoliking bot right? Based on this, I don't see how different it is from all the other bots out there.

I've used tons of bots in the past, experimented with tools like Everliker......and all I got was a shadowban.
Instagram's AI is really smart now, these bots will get accounts marked as spam accounts real quick. It's not like pre-2017 days.

In the past I have also used a lot of different bots. IGCompanion is properly not the one with the most functionalities but I feel the most secure with it since it does not use a reversed engineered api to access my accounts. Other than that I will not continue talking about igcompanion anymore because there seem to be people that think this thread is about selling anything. And it definitely is not about that.
 
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He clearly said that he only uses fiverr for the creation of content. I could already take a lot of value out of this articles and i have already found cheap content creators on fiverr. @Jinn Sola thank you so much that you take the time to share all of the info, and just ignore those people accusing you

From this opening post:

This growth happens constantly! For me, I spend approximately 1.5 hours per day to manage my 80+ accounts and the rest of the time to manage my online-businesses (online services, e-commerce, ...) with having the Instagram follower base as loyal customers.

So the insane engagement and personal comments come from the 1 minute a day he has per account?

So it’s:
- €1 per account per day for content
- 1 minute per day for insane engagement

Cool.

(Also every post you have on this forum has been on this thread - or is that accusing you too)
 

Hijena1

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I am happy to see your success! I moved to Germany 2 years ago.
How long did it take you to grow your business?
What was the hardest obstacle to cross?
 

Jinn Sola

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From this opening post:



So the insane engagement and personal comments come from the 1 minute a day he has per account?

So it’s:
- €1 per account per day for content
- 1 minute per day for insane engagement

Cool.

(Also every post you have on this forum has been on this thread - or is that accusing you too)

1€ per content exactly right. You may even find someone who does it for .50 cents. I stick with the people I work with from the beginning because we have built up a relationship on trust already.

The way you phrases the "1 minute for insane engagement" shows me that there are things that seem no to be clear. A bot does the insane engagement every single day for hours depending on how you set it up.
The setup initially takes time but managing it and adapting if necessary is fast to do.

I kindly ask you ask questions if something does not seem logical or clear to you and leave the cynical statements away.
 
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Jinn Sola

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I am happy to see your success! I moved to Germany 2 years ago.
How long did it take you to grow your business?
What was the hardest obstacle to cross?

Thank you!

My business have been entirely built from the attention I got from Instagram. So I would say 3 1/2 when I created my first account with the purpose of using it to market. It could have definitely gone faster but it took me a while to figure out the strategies I am using today and presented in this forum.

The hardest obstacle was to be patient. It takes a lot of work from the mind to focus on your goals even when things are not going so well. I am a believer in hard work and to stimulate the mind I follow the law of attraction (even if MJ says in his book that the LOA is bs) it still helped me to go through the hard times.
 

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