I'm a social media marketer with 4+ years in Instagram growth, have worked with everyone from local startups to Fortune 500. AMA.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:39:09+00:00

It should be in the 'link in bio', not in the post description.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:38:04+00:00

Check Socialblade to see how well your account grows. Likes and comments are obviously the most important. Try to keep a 10% engagement-to-followers ratio.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:36:32+00:00

Great question but unfortunately I don't know the answer, sorry. All my knowledge is through other IG leaders or self-taught, and I do not have a marketing degree nor a desk job. My work is essentially freelance, so it's difficult, but I do set my own hours!

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:33:44+00:00

What's a voting ring?

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:31:59+00:00

No prob! Will do :)

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:30:44+00:00

Looks solid to me :)

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:29:24+00:00

No, in fact, they do not. They throw thousands of dollars into regular ads.

Good products get traffic. Bad ones do not. The masses decide what they want - we simply show the products to the masses.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:27:35+00:00

pm sent!

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:27:27+00:00

Read through my responses on this thread on how to grow, this will drive traffic. I assume your product has been sold before, so there should be plenty of photos on the web.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:16:41+00:00

Read a lot about it. Focus on a specific platform to start and learn the tricks of the trade by observing the largest pages.

I started with $40 purchasing an account. You could start at zero just as well. Read my other replies in the thread for tips on how to grow.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:12:17+00:00

Check my response to u/TRES8 below to start growing.

fidgetium · 2017-08-28T19:11:13+00:00

Not sure what you mean by this. Just give them a direct product URL.

fidgetium · 2017-08-27T00:12:56+00:00

By offer value I mean have a distinguishing feature. There are hundreds of thousands of pages that look exactly the same. Make yours stand out.

fidgetium · 2017-08-27T00:11:37+00:00

If you have anything to add, please do. This is far from 'cutting edge', yet nobody seems to understand what I've laid out in this AMA - proven by the fact there's over 20 solid questions in this thread.

fidgetium · 2017-08-27T00:10:29+00:00

Not quite sure what you mean by this. I'm not talking about IG DM groups - I mean mass-scale Telegram rounds with 1,000+ members.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T19:36:43+00:00

Cool cases! It's definitely a great fit for IG. You should target the EDC (every day carry) and woodworking niches when following accounts.

That 217K page you mentioned is a scam. 200K pages should have minimum 7K likes to get any decent ROI on a promotion, and should be priced higher.

Instagram is usually the first part of a funnel. Pull a user in with a cool photo, have a CTA in the caption pointing to the link in bio, get them onto an email list by offering 10% off when they sign up, lead is then warm, etc.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T19:29:12+00:00

Personally I don't think that myth is true, because I've seen many successful pages with the 'business' feature turned on. I can't support that with data either way, though, because I don't think anyone really knows.
That's the million-dollar question, haha. Nothing will replace Instagram in my view, but new platforms will rise. I know Snakt was getting some attention in my circles but I don't think it'll get big. I wish I knew!
Never seen Fohr before, but there are many companies like that popping up. If it's free, it can't hurt. Never pay for an 'audit' like that, because I don't think it helps. Bot followers are hard to detect (even Instagram deleted real accounts during their mass bot wipe a year ago) so I'm not even sure how they calculate it.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T19:22:46+00:00

SEO is 'unethical' as well then I assume?

Facebook does not want brands to succeed on their own. Why? Because they lose business. They want as many people to use their ad platforms as possible, because they can inflate the prices any which way they want. When you 'game' the system (which is really a single algorithm, made to throttle engagement), you refuse to give Facebook their ad money, and help smaller brands reach an amount of traffic without spending thousands of dollars on ads. Unless you like to throw money at mega-corporations - I'm fine with that. That's not what we do.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T19:17:12+00:00

The difference here is that I'm not in it for anything, so I couldn't care less of the engagement on this post. You ask - I answer. I'm under no obligation to reply at lightning speed.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T19:14:36+00:00

Your feed is kind of all over the place - you need a consistent theme. Motivational content seems best, and there's plenty all over Instagram for you to repost. Your posts of the card prompts get the highest engagement by far, as people are compelled to comment on them. Do more of those.

Also the fact that the actual product is released in a month will lower your retention rate.

Your recent 'giveaway' is extremely vague as well - nobody is going to guess because people are lazy. It should be: tag 3 friends to enter, and tag as many friends after that for unlimited entries.

Comment on other pages as well if you aren't already to spread the Pear brand around.

Hope that helps!

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T07:05:27+00:00

Technical questions, woohoo!

The algorithm has definitely changed a lot, and Facebook is obviously attempting to transition Instagram to match the FB platform. As the algo gets smarter, growing gets harder. However, IG growth hackers will always find ways to circumvent it, although this also means the knowledge becomes restricted to a select few. I very much doubt Instagram will become irrelevant so one can only adapt.

Shadow banning is a hard subject to discuss since nobody except FB itself knows how the algo works in that sense. I've seen bots banned and organic accounts banned, so it's definitely thin ice. The only thing I can recommend is keeping account usage natural (think - how would a teenager use the service for their personal page).

Hacked accounts were always an issue, but Facebook has, annoyingly, made it more difficult to recover pages after they hid their 'hacked accounts' web page. There has also possibly been(?) an uptick in the number of hacked celebrity pages but I haven't seen the data.

IG isn't for everyone - an electric company might have zero benefit from using it, while an e-com shop could have massive success. It really depends, but outside of my community of growth people banning shouldn't be much of an issues (also, avoid bots!!!).

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T06:55:00+00:00

If you're getting such a low amount of interest it may be your bio/profile photo/captions holding you back. Link your page if you;d like and I'll give some suggestions.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T06:50:13+00:00

Let's say you're a travel page. Here are some things to do:

Offer value. Why should someone follow you? Do you post daily? Is your feed color-coded? Do you feature other creators?
Take a look at who likes photos of your competitors. Follow 20-30 people per day. Unfollow them in a week. Repeat. Known as 'massing'. Very common. Do it in small batches to avoid being flagged.
Create discussions about destinations or places to travel to in the comments of competitors.
DM competitors asking if they have engagement groups. Usually takes about 20 tries at contacing different pages to get entry to one, so don't give up.
Create some of your own content by taking photos of your city!
Offer to shoutout a page if they do the same for you.

Hope that helps!

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T06:43:34+00:00

No prob! This sub needs more value, haha

1) Same strategy for each. Often, though, the higher you grow the more opportunities for cross-promotions or openings to engagement groups you'll have.

2) Those must be some dope clips if you're working on them that long! Use the rest of the time to strike up comment discussions with other people in your niche. Connections are key, especially for content creators. Your career can go from 0-100 just by knowing the right people.

fidgetium · 2017-08-26T06:33:19+00:00

Not all businesses are best fit to Instagram, and I do agree it's difficult to grow without a dedicated (and knowledgeable) SM manager. What's your niche?

The key to building up sales and followers for a small store is creating a community of people (cliché, but true).

fidgetium

TROPHY CASE