Evaluate My Instagram Strategy, plz

[tok997]

Hello guys,

I started this topic to get an advice from some of you. After reading a bunch of threads on the forum I came up with a certain strategy to build a big Instagram account. Of course, it's far from perfect. That's why I hope you could help me to avoid major mistakes. And I hope this thread will be helpful for somebody in the future.

My intentions:

- to build a massive IG account (1m+) in a completely white hat manner (manually, with no bots) with live active users (in a particular niche)
- eventually use account to drive traffic to a website (in order to build a list and/or promote some affiliate offers)

Below is my strategy and some questions:

1. I'm uploading 4-6 pictures/day related to my niche. I read that there's not much sense to upload more, cause it will look like you're spamming.

2. Right now I'm not paying much attention to my post template and tags. I'm just using tags from TagsForLikes in my niche. I know that many people recommend not to put a lot of tags (and I agree, but I think it relates for big accounts), but that's where most of my likes are coming from at the moment.

3. Following people who're liking and commenting on big accounts in the same niche as mine. Usually I'm going to their profile, liking 1-2 of their latest photos and then following them. Also, I follow back everybody who is a real user. So far I'm not following a particular number of people per day, I'm still trying to figure that out. As far as I know IG limit is 60/hour. People on the forum saying different - some following 200-300/day, some 700/day. But I guess it's a bit different when you're doing it manually instead of using bots. What kind of methods worked best for you when following users?

4. I'm not unfollowing people. I saw somebody mentioned that it doesn't make much sense to unfollow people. Of course, your followers/following ratio should be good though.

5. Buying followers. I know it's not white hat at all Some people recommend to buy followers at the beginning, some say it's better not to. But everybody agrees that it's quite hard to get organic growth of your account at the beginning. So far I bought just a hundred followers to see their quality. Most of them look more or less real. So at the moment I'm planning to buy 5-8k followers just to make my account look more presentable to real users. I suppose once I hit 10k+ the organic growth should be easier/faster.

6. Many people suggesting to invest money into shoutouts instead of buying followers. I'm considering to do that after I'll have 5k+ followers. What are your thoughts on this? What's the decent price for a shoutout (I know it depends on many factors, but at least approximately)? What's indicating that certain account is good to buy a shoutout from?

7. If I understand correctly commenting on a popular accounts will help to attract users to my own account? I suppose some of them are just going to check out my account after they see my comment?

8. What else provides an organic growth when you already have a big amount of followers? For example, let's say you have 150k followers, I heard that it's possible to get several thousands of followers per day for such accounts. But obviously you're not doing more actions than before (following, liking, commenting). So, does it mean that even if you'll be doing the same amount of following/liking/commenting you'll get more followers per day just because your account looks more presentable?

9. What would you recommend to put in my bio for now, when account is not popular yet? Right now I only put account name there (which is kind of niche related) and that's it. Or should I wait till account has more followers?

Well, right now I can't think of anything else I wanted to ask. I hope you'll be able to help me out with some questions here. I'd appreciate any kind of advices from you!

Thanks for reading guys!

PS - if anybody would like to discuss IG strategies on Skype - add me (Skype name - tokyo889)

 

[Empire007]

Not to discourage you, but i think first thing you should do is to reduce the goal of 1 mil. Start with 10k give yourself a time limit. then gradually increase it. hope i helped

And also i think you will need a bot

 

[tok997]

Not to discourage you, but i think first thing you should do is to reduce the goal of 1 mil. Start with 10k give yourself a time limit. then gradually increase it. hope i helped

And also i think you will need a bot

I know that 1 mil sounds huge. But of course I have some intermediate goals, and 10k is one of them. I indicated 1 mil goal as my final goal, kind of jack pot

I just don't see a point to buy a bot to manage one account since I have time on my hands to do it. I want to keep it as white hat as possible

Thanks

 

[Spuffed]

But you're saying you want to do it white hat, but buying followers is a black hat method...

 

[tok997]

But you're saying you want to do it white hat, but buying followers is a black hat method...

Yes, of course it's black hat. But I see it as a small boost at beginning. I'm not intended to do it once I'll start getting decent organic growth.

 

[MauiWaui]

I think your strategy has 1 problem. Even if you are taking this thing the white hat road, you should never put all your eggs in one basket. Imagine having 25k+ followers after hard work and then losing it all at once, you're left with nothing.

I would actually suggest doing a few bots and proxies if your goal is making money....

However it seems like you have a strong plan! So keep it up!

 

[LleixG]

Don't buy fake followers because it's useless. It's 100 times better to invest in shoutouts if you have the money

 

[tok997]

Don't buy fake followers because it's useless. It's 100 times better to invest in shoutouts if you have the money

I agree. But even if I invest in shoutouts at this point it's more likely to get more followers if people see a bigger count of followers on my profile. I want to buy them just for a "better look", nothing else. And only at the beginning.

 

[nameless7]

You plans is ok, but i totally agree that you shouldn't buy fake followers. Nice pics + following, liking and commenting is exactly what you need right now

 

[HoNeYBiRD]

i just don't see the point why not to use bots, bots are not the devil, everything depends on what do you use them for and how, they're a real time saver, buying followers and shoutouts isn't really white hat, so you might as well use bots
unfollowing does make sense or else it wouldn't be an option in the first place, why would you follow somebody who doesn't follow back/not interested in you? and what you said, following:follower ratio should look good, also there's a max following limit, when you hit that, you can't follow more, so you need to unfollow, you just need to be careful with it
4-6 images per day it's a bit much, most big accs - what you aim for - only upload 1/day or even less
but i guess if you have time to check out and like/follow/comment on hundreds of accs daily, more power to ya

 

[tok997]

i just don't see the point why not to use bots, bots are not the devil, everything depends on what do you use them for and how, they're a real time saver, buying followers and shoutouts isn't really white hat, so you might as well use bots
unfollowing does make sense or else it wouldn't be an option in the first place, why would you follow somebody who doesn't follow back/not interested in you? and what you said, following:follower ratio should look good, also there's a max following limit, when you hit that, you can't follow more, so you need to unfollow, you just need to be careful with it
4-6 images per day it's a bit much, most big accs - what you aim for - only upload 1/day or even less
but i guess if you have time to check out and like/follow/comment on hundreds of accs daily, more power to ya

I see where you're coming from. In my opinion (based on what I read on the forum) it's easier to loose your accounts when you're using bots then when you're not. There was a thread (sorry, can't post links) where OP started with bots and plenty of accounts and was making decent money, and then eventually lost almost all his accounts due to IG changes. And after that he decided to grow his account without any bots and as I understand doing even better right now than with hundreds of accounts running by bots.

I understand they're timesavers, but imho the risk to loose account is higher than when you do it manually.

 

[HoNeYBiRD]

I see where you're coming from. In my opinion (based on what I read on the forum) it's easier to loose your accounts when you're using bots then when you're not. There was a thread (sorry, can't post links) where OP started with bots and plenty of accounts and was making decent money, and then eventually lost almost all his accounts due to IG changes. And after that he decided to grow his account without any bots and as I understand doing even better right now than with hundreds of accounts running by bots.

I understand they're timesavers, but imho the risk to loose account is higher than when you do it manually.

yea, the risk is higher, but only if you don't play by the rules and w/ a bot it's easier to go over the rational limits than if you'd do it manually, that's sure, but bots itself won't get you banned, i mean the decent ones, it's almost always the user who's at fault when an acc gets banned, not the bot itself, w/ a decent bot you can emulate human behaviour or something very close to it, using random delays & mixing tasks
with botting you can still choose 2 main routes, the one you mentioned, when you have hundreds of accs and maybe not even caring about those accs, just burning through them for quick profit and you can bot w/ one or w/ only a handful of accs, building them for the long run, for instance that's why followliker has 3 types of licenses, one for 1 acc, one for 2-5 accs and the other one is an unlimited license

 

[tok997]

yea, the risk is higher, but only if you don't play by the rules and w/ a bot it's easier to go over the rational limits than if you'd do it manually, that's sure, but bots itself won't get you banned, i mean the decent ones, it's almost always the user who's at fault when an acc gets banned, not the bot itself, w/ a decent bot you can emulate human behaviour or something very close to it, using random delays & mixing tasks
with botting you can still choose 2 main routes, the one you mentioned, when you have hundreds of accs and maybe not even caring about those accs, just burning through them for quick profit and you can bot w/ one or w/ only a handful of accs, building them for the long run, for instance that's why followliker has 3 types of licenses, one for 1 acc, one for 2-5 accs and the other one is an unlimited license

Somehow I thought that using bots is not allowed by IG and can get you banned. I will look in to it, but so far I don't mind doing it manually. Honestly, $50 for a bot I prefer to spend for some shoutouts At least at this stage.

Anyways, thanks for your suggestions.

 

[HoNeYBiRD]

Somehow I thought that using bots is not allowed by IG and can get you banned. I will look in to it, but so far I don't mind doing it manually. Honestly, $50 for a bot I prefer to spend for some shoutouts At least at this stage.

Anyways, thanks for your suggestions.

account creation w/ any automated tool is against the TOS:
"You must not create accounts with the Service through unauthorized means, including but not limited to, by using an automated device, script, bot, spider, crawler or scraper."

managing the account, i'm not sure about that, scraping, crawling by automated means or using their private API is not allowed

however buying/selling followers is sure as hell against their TOS, maybe buying/selling SOs too
"you agree you will not sell, transfer, license or assign your account, followers, username, or any account rights"

so if you want to abide all the rules, you can't buy followers either

moreover if you want to play 100% by their rules, you only allowed to upload photos, videos which are yours:
"Don't share photos or videos that aren't yours.
This includes other people's posts, and/or things that you have copied or collected from the Internet. Accounts that solely consist of only this type of content may be disabled at any time."

 

[Paper-Boy]

@OP, there's nothing wrong with mixing in accounts that use bots and other accounts that you can use without.

There are even people with legit instagram accounts that lose accounts as well. Either hacked or banned because of too many ips, devices logged in and/or someone reported them for spam.

So be sure to take these in consideration.

 

[tok997]

account creation w/ any automated tool is against the TOS:
"You must not create accounts with the Service through unauthorized means, including but not limited to, by using an automated device, script, bot, spider, crawler or scraper."

managing the account, i'm not sure about that, scraping, crawling by automated means or using their private API is not allowed

however buying/selling followers is sure as hell against their TOS, maybe buying/selling SOs too
"you agree you will not sell, transfer, license or assign your account, followers, username, or any account rights"

so if you want to abide all the rules, you can't buy followers either

moreover if you want to play 100% by their rules, you only allowed to upload photos, videos which are yours:
"Don't share photos or videos that aren't yours.
This includes other people's posts, and/or things that you have copied or collected from the Internet. Accounts that solely consist of only this type of content may be disabled at any time."

Haha! Well, yeah, probably in my case it won't be white hat at all, despite what I mentioned at the beginning. If I will see that I'll have at least some progress within next 2-3 weeks, I'll probably consider buying a bot.

Thanks

 

[tok997]

OP, there's nothing wrong with mixing in accounts that use bots and other accounts that you can use without.

There are even people with legit instagram accounts that lose accounts as well. Either hacked or banned because of too many ips, devices logged in and/or someone reported them for spam.

So be sure to take these in consideration.

I definitely will, thanks! Of course, no surprise that there are people who will report you on purpose.

When you're saying "mixing in accounts" what do you mean exactly? It's like having one main account which you're promoting with bot accounts? Or is when you have plenty of accounts which are cross-promoting each other?

Thanks

 

[dalinkwent6]

Don't buy fake followers because it's just dead weight. You want to keep your followers and likes ratio decent. Having thousands of followers and 5 likes on ur pics looks really bad

 

[tok997]

Don't buy fake followers because it's just dead weight. You want to keep your followers and likes ratio decent. Having thousands of followers and 5 likes on ur pics looks really bad

I know it's a dead weight, I don't consider it as an asset. As I mentioned above, I'm considering doing it just for a "pretty count", so real users who will come to check out my account will see decent amount of followers, and will be more likely to follow me.

So far my average likes count is 15-18 with just hundred followers. But I post a dozen of popular niche related tags with pictures.

Cheers

 

[dalinkwent6]

I know it's a dead weight, I don't consider it as an asset. As I mentioned above, I'm considering doing it just for a "pretty count", so real users who will come to check out my account will see decent amount of followers, and will be more likely to follow me.

So far my average likes count is 15-18 with just hundred followers. But I post a dozen of popular niche related tags with pictures.

Cheers

Thats a good number. Honestly, when i see accounts that have thousands of followers and small amount of likes on their pics, i know that their followers are spam so i dont even follow them. Most people know this thats just me. Just use a bot and like pic that use the same tag as you. That way you will lure them into your profile and if they like your stuff, then they will follow you. Thay way they will like all your pictures in the future.