Hush-hush. Secrets to Instagram no one would share. Hey good people! So – I have been obsessing over Instagram for a bit more than an year and I have been through so much. I can't even begin to tell you.
In the following blog I will share with you all my experiences, failures and successes with facts backing me up.
I started out on Instagram with a Travel niche account about 11 months ago. This account I wanted to build 100% genuinely. No botting. No faking. Nothing. I spent 3-4 hours a day on Instagram. Liking and commenting on content that I actually adored. Not just spamming likes/comments to get attention.
It took a lot of patience. I started with 700 followers (family/friends mostly) and ended up with 11.3K followers. We are talking about 3-4 hours a day for 11 freaking months.
During these 11 months. I've done everything from buying and using virtually every bot out there. Opening around 30 accounts with different niches (botted). Buying offshore servers and running Fake Agent scripts. FL, MP, VT – I did it all. I bought 1000 Instagram accounts at one point. I botted them. Lost 300 of those accounts (got caught) – other 700 are still running. Spent a fortune on proxies, Virtual Private Network (VPN), Virtual Private Server (VPS), off-shore servers, FA, Bots and PVA accounts.
Let me back up a bit (Glossary) VPN / VPS (Virtual private servers – I can't bot 1000 accounts on my laptop. I had to buy access to VPS with high config (24 cores / 64 gb ram) to run bots as they are resource intensive Proxies/Internet Protocol (IP) (You can run 5 Instagram accounts on one IP address. So on my main IP (home) I ran 5 accounts. If I ran more than 5 I would get blocked. So I bought proxies. (dedicated proxies) I ran 3 accounts per proxy. FL,MP, VT – These are just some of the bots I used.
Here is what I learned overtime. Something you will eventually realize yourself. Most of this you already know.
FACTS / LESSONS
1. Instagram Intro
Instagram isn't stupid. Botting is not going to help in the long run. Yes I did manage to grow accounts from 0 to 38K in like 6 months but those days are long gone. Instagram has improved a lot! Its literally working 24×7 to crack down on these bots. So – this is a NO NO. Once again – this could have been done before. But no longer. Every other day I'm running into new problems with botting. My advice – don't chase this. (FL,MP … all will soon go off)
2. The Righteous Men
Growing 100% genuine is retarded. And I was one of the retards. Face it. Everyone is doing hanky panky with social media. Politicians, Celebs, Kids … everyone. As you can see – everyone from Sony to Katy Perry to POTUS has fake followers. So – you are the one who is losing out by not making any hanky panky. This is a FACT.
You can never grow BIG by being righteous unless you wanna waste a decade on it. If you got time. Then you can.
3. World of Spam
Even kids have learned to spam and grow. This has become a trend. Look into follow train / like train. Find out on Instagram about this. You will see what I mean.
Example: https://www.instagram.com/p/BbyinUwlVtx/?taken-by=kyliejenner
Latest post by famous Kylie Jenner. See her comments. You'll find tens of thousands of teens commenting LB, CB and some other non sense. These are SPAM tactics used by teens and kids. LB = Like back. You like their photo. They'll like back. CB = comment back. FB = follow back.
WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK EVERY ONE IS RESORTING TO FAKE FOLLOWERS, SPAM TACTICS, FAKE VIEWS, PODS, BOTS? (Something to think about)
Anyways – you can spam on top celeb accounts (LB,CB) and if you are obsessed with it. You can get 1-2k likes and upto 100 comments. (Res assured these comments will be SUPER generic and copy paste)
4. Engagement Pods
To me this was the closest way to make engagement happen. These are groups of people on Slack, Telegram, Whatsapp and EVEN in Instagram DMs who engage with each other.
Its simple. I will like your photo. You like mine.
But these 'pods' (if you find the right ones) are well moderated by admins – have decent people. Good quality Instagram accounts and all.
You can safely get 2K likes and 500+ comments if you are in the right pods. It will be a lot of work but its worth it.
The trick to engagement pods is to join ones that have high quality bloggers. There are also some networks that have exclusive pods for 10k+ accounts, 50k+ accounts and 100k+ accounts. You can imagine what miracles these can do for your posts. Getting 100 comments and 1000 likes from 100K+ profiles is MAGICAL.
Advice – DO NOT use engagement pods that have 'rounds'. Those are filled with spam like / Cost Per Action (CPA) Instagrammers who are there only for the purpose of scamming people.
Join engagement pods that are of continuous cycle. I'll make a post on engagement pods and secrets to using them if I get a lot of requests for those down below.
5. Holy Grail – the Instagram Algorithm
While everyone will beat around the bush as they don't know any better. At the time of this article being published – this is Instagram Algorithm.
Instagram gives you 3 options to go big.
• Pay them cash ( a ton of it – my advice? NEVER do that unless you're a millionaire)
• Reach top post page for your hashtag (this will get you noticed between your niche audience)
• Reach explore page (this is just pushing your content out into the 'front page' of Instagram)
Lets talk about 2 and 3. Algorithm =
If your post gets a TON of traction within first 60 minutes of going live on Instagram you will reach top post page for your hashtag.
Case Study – I reach top post page for the most competitive hashtag once while learning about this.
love (hashtag love)
I made a post and injected 30,000+ likes to it (purchased) within first 10 minutes of post going live. I then managed to get 50 comments from 100K+ profiles via engagement pods.
By 15th minute I was on #love top post page.
This is how to reach the top post page.
Lets say your hashag is #travel. You wanna get to top post page for that? Its easy. Search for #travel and see top posts under that and see how many likes they are getting. Find out average likes of all posts under top post page.
So among 9 posts maybe average likes is 7000 likes for #travel.
You need to get 7000++++ likes within first 60 minutes to reach top post page for that hashtag.
If the hashtag is BIG and you keep your engagement running for first 60 minutes then you will probably stay on top post page for 24 hours.
RESULT? Millions of people will naturally bump into your post. Make it pretty so they end up following you.
LESSON Faking likes and reaching top post page = real traffic + real likes + real people / followers
About reach explore page. You need way more traction than this.
Technique is to reach top post page for 15 competitive hashtags. That by itself pushes your posts to explore.
CASE : Once I targeted 30 top hashtags. Injected 30k likes to my post. Managed to get 177 comments in under 60 minutes via engagement pods from High Quality (HQ) accounts (10k+,50K+,100k+) …
I hit the explore page.
RESULT? I gained 1100 followers in under 24 hours. They all engage with me till this day.
This can be down on a massive scale.
6. Content is King
Yes it is. But everyone has good content these days. Every kid is decent at Photoshop and Lightroom and every iPhone is capable of doing wonderful things in terms of photography.
Content is king – I guess so. Don't sweat on it. That part everyone can do and easy.
That's all for now. God damn. Haha. I had a lot on my plate I guess. Haha.
One more thing – this is all that I have seen and noticed. Not encouraging anyone to juice stats or leave bots that they are already using or start buying fake shit. Do what you feel is right.
I'll do another post on this sharing in depth about each topic (Engagement Pod, IG Algo in depth, Techniques used by Celebs, Social agencies to grow fast by faking it)
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