Бесплатный фрагмент - Become Instagram Famous

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“Become Instagram Famous”

www.instalex.co

2017 Instalex®

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at:

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All events and statistics presented in following book are up-to-date with the date of writing a book.

Last update: 20.08.2017

Version: 1.00

Preface

From the author

I first got introduced to Instagram back in the year 2010, just after several weeks the app first launched I downloaded it from AppStore. The first impression was mixed: there was no one there, your only options were editing your photos and then posting them to some odd “feed’. So I edited and uploaded a couple of photos and only came back about half a year later. Then I realized you could “follow’ other people: at that time, some of my friends downloaded the app so we simply followed each other. I liked the idea of posting photos for your friends to see, the design was minimal and really functional: unlike other social networks (i.e. VK or Facebook) you only had three options and all of them were essential: like, comment, follow, and nothing else needed.

We were addicted to Instagram. In about two months all my friends and friends of their friends were on it and so it began… Questions like “How many followers do you have?” “How come that guy has so many followers…” and so on and so forth… Then I thought: is there a way for me to increase my follower count and therefore likes on my photos? I started searching the Web but at that moment there was nothing, no promotion services nor any programs nor bots.

However, the hashtags were there! The basic premise of a hashtag is simple: you post them in your photo description, people from all over the world search for them and then follow you. Most of those people were total strangers. The idea fascinated me and I started using dozens of hashtags which resulted in getting more than 1000 followers in one week, all of them were real people who were leaving likes and comments under my posts. I had, so to speak, the “coolest’ Instagram account in my neck of the woods. Whenever I met my friends they asked same exact questions: “Where did you get all these followers?!”, “Who did you pay for that?”, “Could you please plug my account?!” etс.

After a couple of months my account reached 3000 followers, providing dozens of comments and hundreds of likes. It was around that time when Instagram started to take over the world. At one point I reckoned that I had less and less new followers through hashtags. Everybody was using them in large amounts like I did so after about a month people stopped coming altogether: I would not have more than a couple followers a week. Stopping at just 3000 people was not enough for me so I started looking into other ways to boost my follower count.

I could not determine any certain ways to grow as there was no information about in on the Internet yet. Though soon I noticed an interesting notion among more popular accounts: they followed enormous amounts of people, and that just seemed shady. In the beginning I figured they are simply friendly and excessively interested in others’ lives so there is nothing more to it than that. However, after I encountered more and more such accounts following from one to two thousand people each I was convinced that the friendliness was not the case.

And so I finally found out about mass following and immediately put it to use: I started following everybody. I was spending hours doing that, following hundreds of people a day. To my surprise, almost immediately people started following back and the conversion rate was tremendous; in my first day of mass following I obtained more than 500 new followers, more than half the amount of people I followed returned that. Such numbers I could get after around 3 to 4 days of hashtag promotion.

With that I pushed further: following from one to two thousand accounts a day for several days. Then I found out the limits of Instagram: you cannot follow more than 3000 people in one day and cannot follow more than 7500 overall. When I reached that limit I was perplexed: I only had 3000 more followers than I had had before.

Logically, I cycled this process and unfollowed everyone and started all over. After 2 or 3 months I obtained 10000 new followers. And then I realized how much time I wasted…

Turned out while I performed all these monotonous operations in my home the automatized Instagram services were in work already. The first one I encountered was Bootup — it was too sophisticated to use and required various Safari plugins. Thanks to Bootup such processes as “following’ and “unfollowing’ were streamlined. There were no filters although there were options to set delays in between the actions and specify profiles you would like to follow.

It was a costly venture and at times I was not able to pay monthly fee to keep my account growing. Further down the road I encountered first desktop tools dedicated to profile promotion and optimization, such as Tooligram, InstaTool and InstaSoft. The first one was unreasonably expensive with almost 1399 rubles ($25) monthly subscription. The other two were popular on forums such as Zismo, especially their free versions, although the usage of them was complicated and the words such as “proxy’ and “multichannel’ were just too big to comprehend.

Browsing through dozens of forums and hundreds of topics led me to a man by the name of German Yakushev: he was the biggest person in our timid SMM community, he was featured on TV, he had immense bot networks and so on. I was interested in his startups and by sheer coincidence we met at one event in Moscow.

At this event I learned about Instagram bots. For me this was a game changer: you could pay 100—300 rubles ($2-$5) and get a couple of thousand bot accounts who would permanently follow you. Yakushev told me about his huge bot database and he could give me a hand with promoting my account to which I agreed. Afterwards I obtained 10000+ new followers and therefore my account had more than 20000 followers overall: half of them were real people and another half were bots.

And that is when I learned the golden rule of promoting your Instagram account: you combine mass following and promotion through buying bots. Firstly, you buy some bots, then you follow about 2000—3000 people and get the best of both worlds: in case somebody wants to see whether your followers are real they will only see the first “real’ ones with bots being at the bottom of the list.

From here on out I became advanced Instagram user. By using bots and mass following I started to get more and more new followers. We stayed in touch with German Yakushev who introduced me to an invite-only Telegram group called “Startup Academy’ with the most common topics being Instagram promotion, operations with bots etc. With my hands-on experience I had got heavily involved in various discussions on different topics. In one week I learned more about Instagram than in a year of self-education.

Yakushev always followed trends and tried to adapt to them. This is when he and his partners started his own Instagram promotion script “Insta+”. It was very intuitive: you just need to install it, connect your Instagram profile and then the script would follow your followers back. The price was huge for that time: 3000 rubles ($52) but I still was among the first who bought it and so my work continued.

The script was great: it considered the limits of Instagram, followed and even occasionally liked other users. The only downside was that it only worked when the PC it was running on was working. I had to keep my PC turned on at all times and at one point I even installed remote access app to my phone so that I could keep the script going while I was at work or university.

My hobby slowly turned into career. I analyzed the most active followers, what “donor’ account I may use for more followers and the accounts I had the best conversion with. A month later I attracted 30000 followers with the ratio of 10000 bots to 20000 real people. Then I thought to myself “Why am I so focused on only one account?” and created 5 more additional Instagram accounts, each with different theme, set them up as a VK public groups dedicated to different things and uploaded a few fine pictures. Two were car accounts, one was dedicated to traveling and two more were beauty inspiration profiles.

After a while it appeared to me that the amount of niche or “public’ accounts was growing on Instagram. A lot of people followed such accounts, the conversion in them was incredible: you could promote your other profiles and people would follow them instantly. Thus, my additional accounts were public accounts now and in two months each of them had 10000 active followers, they had an active following with people regularly liking and leaving comments.

And so began the public accounts and advertisement period for Instagram. My feed was packed with ads and I myself started advertising. But I was not promoting any products, I simply advertised my own public pages through my other public pages. All of them had steady conversion and were growing evenly. This resulted in owning more than 10 accounts with 10000 to 15000 followers in each of them; my personal account had 40000 followers at that point.

This is where I decided to start monetizing. I have been using the Yakushev script for about 5 months and still had not made the money I spent on it back. So I have come up with ingenious business plan or so I thought: according to it, I charged 500 rubles ($8) a month for account promotion on Instagram with my own script OR I would sell said script for 1000 rubles ($16) and complete freedom of use for its buyer.

I followed simple steps: created a new account, filled it with content, offered my promotion services and put my mobile number and WhatsApp in the description. By promoting my account with the script others were tempted to use it to promote theirs. This may look redundant but it was extremely successful. At that time, I came up with a name for my project after a 10-minute brainstorm and to this day it stays permanent: the name I came up with was Instalex.

My donor accounts — those I had my followers coming from — were offering Instagram promotion also but that was via mass following or involving bots, while I involved real people into promotion and at the same time could completely adjust the process to the clients’ needs.

My first clients started coming in. On the first week of business I sold a script to my classmate plus received some promoting orders. On my first two weeks of work I made the money I spent on the script and increased the volume by creating 10 additional advertising accounts for my script and promoted via, you guessed it, the script itself. By the third week more than 10 people bought the script and I had 6 more promotion orders. After one month in business my venture generated 10000 rubles ($174): my first ever personal income.

As a freshman, I was ASTOUNDED and to be honest it felt awesome. Of course, it was not all hunky-dory: after my 20th client my PC started to show signs of weakness: constantly working for almost a month without rest it started to lag and actually was dying due to my own script. I decided to switch to another script because my computed would not handle any more orders. In dire straits I was looking for another software or different script to switch to. Two of the most important features for me were standalone performance and cloud-based system.

I was constantly looking for another options while my current orders were carried out with insta+. Tooligram, Instatool and Instasoft were not any good to me since they were pretty much same as insta+ and required my pc to be constantly powered up once again. But soon, something else came up: German Yakushev was about to release his own Instagram promotion service which was cloud-based and suited perfectly for me. If only it was not for one thing…

When German finally released Instaplus it was in work for a couple of months and then was hacked. The hackers had the user base and access to website accelerators on their hands. German released the source code for Instaplus, his insta+ script, user database and all the information related to the service. The script started being used by everyone from your average SMM manager to inexperienced youngling. Soon the company noticed the flaw which script was using and patched it altogether: the script has ceased to work for good.

The launch of Instalex

After what happened I have decided to create my own Instagram promotion service. Back when I befriended German Yakushev and frequented “Startup Academy’ I also met Misha Kitin, a programmer who was working on his own solution for promotion software for Instagram. I reached out to him and we decide to create a joint venture. Our team consisted of just two of us: I was responsible for the service development and client involvement, Misha was improving the system and maintaining it. After 5 months of our collaborative work we have rolled out the first version of our platform under the name Instalex.

From the very start we were in many ways different from our business rivals in terms of interface and how everything was set up: in its core it was a cloud-based dashboard which allowed its users to easily get access to it, promote any amount of Instagram accounts and oversee the process online from any gadget at any time. I realized how important the cloud hosting was in promoting not only for me but for others also.

With the first version of our software released, we started to look for user testers and many people responded. It was not a surprise since the service was free to use for the test period and it was something completely different from others at the time. We spent a month on testing and were ready to officially launch the platform. But, to our great disappointment, after the launch and enabling paid subscriptions all of our testers turned it down, saying they “were not interested’ in using the service for a fee.

Everything from the how system worked to our website design was different comparing to what you can see on Instalex website now. Actually, there was no design or any logos whatsoever. We were using free templates from Bootstrap and lated designed and created the logo ourselves; everything was pretty much handmade. But our main quality was, of course, functionality. From the get-go, we had a unique system of promoting all accounts simultaneously. You only needed to sign up, add your Instagram profile and choose “promo’ — a channel through which your accounts would be promoted. Our catch was the accessibility, since it only required 5 minutes to start using the platform and setting it up would have taken even less time. You only had to set everything up once and forget about it for the next month. Instalex promotes each account using one “promo’ account at a time and does it 24/7 without any malfunctions or delays. When analyzing Instagram promotion software market, I have not seen another service that would allow its users to set everything up only once and never be bothered with checking back for any additional adjustments.

The next groundbreaking thing was the auto-commenting feature. Mass commenting was a big pain for every promotion service, even when there was such function in use, adding dozens and even hundreds of word combinations for comments was tedious for users. And so we were the first in the world to implement Spintax technology to arrange auto-commenting on Instagram. After the registration, each user would receive a preset comments kit. You only needed to add a channel which you want to promote and the system would do the rest for you.

And so it went on: we were rolling out new features while trying to handle the marketing predicaments. The first attempt at marketing failed miserably: our first advertisement was hosted by an Instagram blogger with impressive amount of followers who posted the photo of our service and gave a shout out to our platform. We have received no less than 300 visits from that add and no less than 0 purchases after those visits. We realized that without any budget this was not an option and started to look into other places to promote our product. Month after our website launched I put out advertisements on every forum, social network page or blog related to advertising in social networks. People were coming, but did not buy anything. We started to realize we were doing something wrong.

After analyzing the market and our opponents we have found out why nobody wanted to buy our service: there was no free trial period to test out the platform before purchasing it. A 3-day trial period was added for our clients and the business was slowly recovering. The next day we had a couple of new users and in a week we already had about 50 new users on our website. I have updated all existed ads and placed some new ones on about dozen other websites.

Things were going better and better. We had a steady flow of traffic and new users to our website. From the start the only supported language was English so we had clientele not only from Russia and other CIS countries but also from abroad. A month passed and we already had 600 users on our website! People from all over the world were coming to us because of our unique approach to business and because of our high-quality tech support. Feedback was among the most important aspect of communicating and staying in touch with our clients: we gathered their ideas and recommendations, considered them and added more user-requested features.

In the next six months we have witnessed substantial growth, with our ads being placed on every platform and forum that was possible for me to find. More people started coming from the word-of-mouth, our platform was promoted by our own users who recommended it to their friends and coworkers. After a while we became major players on the promotion market.

People on forums did not like us much, however. We were hugely criticized by big SMM-forums and bot-farm owners who left dozens and hundreds of negative reviews on our product. They claimed our platform was “too expensive’, we lacked the functionality and were “just another small-time promotion-service’. Against all bad-mouthers I believed in our product and kept on improving it. Only after 3 months we determined our target audience which was not the self-proclaimed SMM experts but rather average users who were solely interested in growing their followers on Instagram and nothing else. And so we have finally found our niche: small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs. Our platform was suitable for any user and it was easy to use for everyone!

Our first year in business ended on this positive note. We have seen considerable growth from 50 users to 100000 in just a 1-year period! We were featured in numerous publications and various mass media outlets and slowly were overtaking the Instagram promotion market. We have worked on every opportunity to reach a wider audience whether it required additional investments or not. We have collaborated with everyone from large brands to small ventures, promoted tens of thousands of Instagram accounts, acquired experience in marketing field, constantly, received advanced training and applied our vast knowledge in practice when working with our website. At the moment our website services an audience of 600000 users, our license provided to companies in over 16 countries, we have given more than 100 franchises to dealers from all over the world, while at the same time developing our platform and reaching more and more users!

From the day one we have seen our fair share of ups and downs, we have seen both immensely successful cases and met various obstacles on our way. We sure do have something to tell you about as we have been through a lot. I started from nothing with no money to invest and only because of the experience I obtained and by learning on my own mistakes me and my business could reach the heights that we have reached! We have managed to develop the product, attract wide audience and become favorites of our users. We still have got a lot to learn and this is not the end as after all we still keep going forward and keep pushing boundaries and make our product better and better! Thanks to our now 9-person team and our prolonged cooperative work we have met the result that we have today!

After more than 6 years of working with Instagram, we have gathered massive amount of knowledge and material to combine it into a single package which is the book you are currently reading! In the next few chapters you will learn about the details and secrets of Instagram promotion, learn a lot about automation services and what is more important is that we will try to give you a simple and comprehensive description of how you can monetize your own Instagram account! On these 200+ pages we have gone through every aspect of Instagram monetization and promotion, unveiled the secrets of traffic arbitrage on Instagram, explained the mystery of celebrity accounts and their growth, talked about the blogger phenomenon and public accounts and last but not least — explained the real cases and reviewed the real success stories of people, who already make the money on their Instagram accounts!

“In this book you will find various recommendations and advice from our experienced authors, arbitrage traffic professionals and others! As for me, I am going to tell you about monetization of your Instagram account, how you can make money out of Instagram and turn your profile into income generator! We wish you pleasant reading and godspeed to you in all your endeavors!”

Alexandr Metelev

The founder and inspirer of Instalex

First steps

Why choose Instagram?

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks and photo-sharing applications worldwide. Instagram is a free mobile app which, despite its free-of-charge system, worth approximately US$1 billion. It was launched as a photo- and video-sharing service which allows application of various filters on uploaded images and videos. It was launched and currently supports every popular mobile operating system.

History of Instagram

The idea of a startup which will soon become Instagram as we know it belonged to Kevin Systrom. He came up with the idea of using filters to hide imperfections in image’s quality and also with the idea of creating a service to share such photos.

The creation of Instagram was a result of developing another application which was called Burbn. Burbn had the functionality of a social network and allowed to edit photos and check into locations. Systrom, together with Mike Krieger, were developing the platform but it was not popular and could not compete with numerous rivals on the market. In order to become more popular there must be a unique feature and for Burbn that feature was photo filters, which made low-quality pictures look better with applied filters.

In 2010 the development of Instagram has begun and on October 6, the first version of the app was officially released through the Apple Store. On the first night of release it was so popular amongst users that the servers needed additional maintenance so that they would not crash and stop app from working. With time, more members joined the development team: Josh Riedel joined the company as Community Manager, Shayne Sweeney joined in as an engineer, and Jessica Zollman joined as a Community Evangelist. In January 2011 hashtags were introduced to help discovering more photos to Instagram users. In autumn a 2.0 version was rolled out which included new filters, tilt-shifting, high-res photographs and an updated icon. Instagram was growing in popularity but still did not make enough money. For many users it was akin to a game app and was not anything serious.

In spring 2012 Instagram was bought for $1 billion in cash and stock by Mark Zuckerberg. Both Systrom and Krieger are still working on Instagram, however, and do everything to keep their platform growing. A 2.5.0 version was released shortly after acquisition by Facebook and allowed to connect an Instagram account to Facebook profile.

First appearance of ads

It was inevitable to Instagram to include ads sooner or later. After all, it is owned by Facebook which is among the biggest companies whose main source of income is advertising.

In October 2013 ads and monetization were officially announced as a platform’s feature. The announcement did not come as a surprise and in early November to all American users the first advertisement was shown — it was a Michael Kors brand ad. To indicate an ad “Sponsored’ tag was placed at the top right of the image. The ad was being shown to specific users, which parameters coincided with the settings. When publishing an ad on Instagram, user’s age, gender and location can be specified. When user meets all of these specifications he will see an ad post even if he does not follow that advertiser’s Instagram profile.

The first advertisement from luxury designer brand Michael Kors was met with overwhelming negativity which people were expressing in ad’s comment section. They were not just angry; they were outraged by the feature. But the statistics did not show any decline and later on, following Michael Kors’s example, other American brands such as Adidas, Levi’s, Burberry and Lexus were lining up to promote their products on Instagram.

Advertisement development on Instagram

Ever since ads were introduced back in 2013, Instagram has become a popular platform for a myriad of brands. After a while in November 2015 the Instagram’s own API was implemented to find suitable marketing partners for different ventures. Later on the platform was allowed for both small- and big-sized businesses. It took one and a half years for the developers to create a fully functional advertising platform for large brands. The next step was creating a similar plan for other companies as well as further targeting improvements to fulfill all advertisers’ needs.

In advertising, targeting is a form of promotion which advertisers use to target a certain audience which would be more receptive to certain approaches. A user would receive an ad that supposedly would be more interesting to him. An API was later introduced for further expansion of advertiser base, which allowed advertisers to create their own ad campaigns.

At first, it was up for Instagram to decide which brands could advertise on the platform. Brands were selected by a group of experts at the company. Nowadays, it is free to advertise for all users, just like on Facebook.

The new features were also added: “Buy” and “Learn more” buttons helped users to take a closer look at the product in just one click. The new additions assisted to advertisers and boosted their traffic and viewership as well as number of sales, followers etc.

With the enhancement of advertising functionality, it is estimated that in 2017 the Instagram’s global ad revenue will be 5 times more compared to year 2015: from $595 million in 2015 to $2.81 billion in 2017. Even before the advertising update the app saw a significant growth in popularity. According to Instagram itself, a third of all professional advertisers prefer Instagram to promote their products and reach their clients. Other social networks that were popular in the past, such as Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn are now dragging behind Instagram.

The development of official ads on Instagram and new formats of advertising

A first Instagram ad in Russia was launched on September 30, 2015 in cooperation with marketing company AiTarget. Each user would see an ad which included photo, “Sponsored’ tag and additional function buttons. It is only possible to start advertising on Instagram if you have a Facebook account.

There are three actions an advertiser can include to the official Instagram ad:

— Go to advertiser’s website;

— Download the app;

— Watch the video.

Sometimes the advertiser wants to increase following of their profiles, but their ad or the UI is not suited for it.

For example — a Russian banking company Sberbank which promoted their Instagram profile utilized a “Go to advertiser’s website’ function in their ad which included a link to their Sberbank’s official website but only allowed for redirects via web-version of Sberbank app. Without authorizing in the web version of the app it was not possible to follow Sberbank and not everyone is keen to recall and enter their login and password from another app just to follow a company on Instagram. There is also “Open in app’ button in between all those operations, however, it does not always work and additionally may close Instagram even if the app did not open. When testing on Android app this happened almost every time.

More functions and features appeared on Instagram and the visual design was also constantly changing over the time. Ads were changing, too. Advertisers include links to their website, which is an effective and quite common way of generating traffic. Video-ads were introduced lately, and they were even longer than videos from users — 30 seconds instead of regular 15. Nowadays the limits are set at 1 minute for both ads and users’ videos.

Another mean of promotion is by offering an official brand app which is not only suitable for Instagram format, since it is a social network app as well, but may be rather fitting for the advertiser to reach and keep the audience and raise their interest in the brand.

One of the newest formats of advertising on Instagram is carousel-ads, recently it was made available for users from Russia and other countries. You can now add multiple photos in one advertisement post and by swiping them users will interact more with the ad, show more interest and remember the brand better. This method of advertisement is largely adapted by huge companies and established brands who give more extensive reviews of their product and larger overview of their company as a whole.

Finally, Marquee ads are not visible for all users but also are types of ad which are more in use by large enterprises with significant budgets invested into them.

Why mass following is not suitable for targeting format

Before we answer that question, let us define mass following.

In a sense, mass following is a form of spam which includes rather prominent, aggressive even, following of large amounts of profiles with consequent unfollowing profiles that did not follow back later on. It results in an active process of promoting your account amongst users and expanding your follow base.

With targeting becoming more and more widespread on Instagram mass following and mass liking is not as relevant as it was but is still being used by many. In 2017 in the US a huge number of automation services were closed so it is expected to see less and less such platforms in Russia as well. Right now, though, they still exist and are just as helpful for some as problematic for others.

Mass following is a grey method of promotion and is considered grey marketing. It imitates ordinary user actions and generates traffic for selected profile. Some years ago it was considered an effective mean of promotion for the users but not for the market as a whole. The popularity of mass following is gradually lower than it used to be. Nowadays, people prefer communicating and sharing news and stories over visiting strays of questionable profiles which desperately try to sell them diet pills, phone cases, elastic stockings and whatnot. People started to manage their following themselves, making their profiles private so that ad profiles, which seemed to be more and more prevalent on the network at one point, would not follow them.

The way SMM people and traffic cheaters see it, they can create a user database so perfect for their clients, the moment those users see a profile which sells hand-made jewelry it will occur to them that they always wanted it and immediately buy it. In reality, most of those traffic cheats usually include follows by spam accounts, other sellers, people from other countries who probably would not be able to purchase your product but never potential clients. Neither product sales nor even general demand will grow with such methods. The promoters, however, will try to convince their clients that a lack of sales is temporary while focusing on the fact that obtaining such massive pseudo-following somehow improves brand’s image.

But in reality, black and grey marketing creates a lot of problems for reasonable and official promoting methods. The aforementioned methods manipulate their audience and trick them, their long-term efficiency is vague but the damage they do to companies is very much real. People will not come back to targeted ads from the company that just the other day irritated them with mass following. Finally, Instagram itself condemns mass following and takes action against profiles who use mass following for their promotion: mass following leads to profiles getting suspended, pessimized or shadow banned. After that, no target ads will recover brand’s reputation or relevance.

How Instagram fights against automation services

In 2017 Instagram moderates and intervenes in automation services’ work, prevents mass following, auto-posting and auto-liking. For owners of those services and their clients this is nothing but bad news. And it all started in April 2017, when Instagress, one of the biggest automation services, has been shut down. It caused uproar amongst American users because the service had immense popularity in the US. According to Instagress itself they were forced to close their website by request of Instagram.

A month later other automation and promotion services, such as Peerboost, Instaplus, Fanharvest and Massplanner, also stopped their work. None of them disclosed any details on why they ceased their work but all of them referenced requests from Instagram themselves.

Those services were easy to terminate because they were working on the US territory and were affected by the US law so Instagram had no problem with them. It is speculated that Instagram does that with sole purpose of turning more people to targeted advertisement which, consequently, results in more revenue for the company. For small companies targeting is too expensive, however: right now only large companies can afford official advertising on the platform. Small business still lives on automated promotion from smaller services that are not as popular to be shut down directly by Instagram.

Some automation services are more precautious than others so when Instagram decides to change something those services already know how to handle the changes and adapt to them without losing their business. Such services will keep functioning until Instagram finds a way to shut them down. For automation platforms operating from Russia and some other countries the situation is still uncertain due to the fact that Russia does not fall under the jurisdiction of the US, therefore Instagram cannot shut them down on legal grounds. On many forums Russian service are already known as “Russian Offshores”. Hopefully, Instagram will be more considerate towards Russian automation services and that they will be able to keep functioning.

How Instagram became the largest advertisement platform for small, medium-sized and large businesses

Instagram promotion platform grows tremendously, in part due to a decent start, but also on account of new features being added constantly plus by making promotion easier for both small and large businesses. Advertising on Instagram can be described as fast, convenient and accessible. This is why according to recent surveys, 34% of America’s largest ventures prefer Instagram marketing for their brands.

Instagram combines Facebook’s most advanced advertising technologies and allows to focus on different segments of consumers. The ad targets users of certain interests, age and locations. Instagram constantly develops the functionality and regularly implements new advertising tools, staying among top largest advertising platforms for all businesses. With Instagram ads it is possible to notify your clients about new products and services and even conduct deals without leaving the app. For the most part, advertising on Instagram was mostly suitable for large businesses with established names and recognition. Later on the developers updated the system to be more small-business friendly with additional options such as:

— adding long promotional videos;

— adding panoramic images and videos for carousel ads;

— a premium Marquee feature

By constantly adding new features for more comfortable advertising, Instagram managed to create stable income which grows even bigger the more popular the app gets.

How can thousands of advertisers create the audience and make money on Instagram

A popular account on any social network and in particular on Instagram is a long-term investment which is helpful for when you decide to start your own business. The economy is uneasy at all times, and the fear of downsizing and unemployment enables people not only to create their own businesses but also effectively promote them via Internet — the best promotion platform in this day and age. Instagram is the most efficient way to help you with that, but, why Instagram exactly?

Remember that your Instagram profile is your personal space and you can do whatever you want with it: according to Terms of Use, you are responsible for any activity that occurs through your account. Since Instagram most certainly is not going away any time soon, your ownership is practically indefinite which means the opportunities are endless as well. The problem of effective Instagram promotion is on many companies’ minds: for some the promotion is already potent, others have only just started their long way to become Instagram famous, and for some it is easier to let companies, created specifically for Instagram promotion, to handle it. Instagram offers huge prospects and it still has a long way to go, unlike many social networks. More and more companies now try to start their Instagram profile promotion and make it lucrative as soon as possible.

Your course of action:

Work on a theme and develop your message. For many advertisers it is important to reach wide audiences by offering them something to relate to: not too personal but not too general, something that holds attention and is actually interesting. You decide on the message you want to spread to your audience, be that wide masses or small customer demographics. Your main goal in developing your social network profile is to define your target audience.

You can combine defining your target audience with attracting more followers to your page. If you want to get more followers naturally you need to be active on your profile and outside of it, upload frequently, like and comment both your followers and random people. Alternatively, you can use automation services to grow your followers count.

Keep your account active at all times and be regular with your publications. Maintain a schedule, balance between frequent and seldom posting. There are various activity charts created by more experienced advertisers that allow you to define the best time for publications and maintain your timetable better.

After a while, when the goal of creating your page is more or less fulfilled and the income from it is stable, you may hire an account manager for further promotion and keeping your profile active. Hiring a manager is important for entrepreneurs who value their time and can manage passive income.

For many advertisers one of the biggest dangers is the suspension of their profiles. If you do not want all your work to be for nothing, always be careful with what kind of ads you publish. For example, promoting alcohol and tobacco products is usually very risky. For each ad there must be thorough overview with background checking and knowing exactly what type of product is being advertised.

There are different general methods to grow your follower count. Some of them are:

Follow different communities of people and public pages. For more efficiency you need to be especially active on Instagram, engage in discussions, like and leave comments, follow people and so on. Your profile will be more recognized and attractive for people to visit. The downside is overwhelming amount of posts in your feed after following a lot of people.

Be more active in communicating with users. Many new users engage more with those who are genuinely interested in them, you can express that interest by liking and leaving original and nice comments. With such comments users will be motivated to visit commenter’s profile so it is better to have an already established and developed profile.

Always respond to comments in time and do not leave any comments without answers. For real people it is essential to be genuine, answer their questions, thank them for compliments etc. The sincerer and more interesting discussions you have on your profile, the more users will be curious to follow you. Think of your comments and consider every detail before posting them.

Think of interesting questions and conversation topics for your followers. Any popular profile has to keep users involved. For any publications that do not include advertisement, and those publications you must have, come up with thought-provoking text and offer your followers a follow-up question which they would want to discuss in comments.

Integrate your profile with Facebook profile. With connecting your Facebook business account you can double your traffic and viewership which results in getting more followers on both platforms.

Bio is essential. Whenever your visitors see informative and thorough information about your business they get to know you better and trust you more.

Take nice and unique photos, make them colorful and charming. Discovering something new and memorable is always great so if you want to stay relevant keep your photo bank diverse, put a lot of effort into your photography and do your best at resonating with viewers. Having said that, the amount of selfies should be as minimal as possible.

Business accounts usually make decent income starting from 2000 real targeted followers without including bot followers, spammers or other business accounts. From that point the success of your profile is up to you and your personal approach.

The growth of Instagram over the years

In 2017, Instagram reached 700 million monthly active users. Comparing to previous years almost 100 million users joined to the usual growth ratio in 2017. To put this in perspective, from the launch in 2010 the platform with all its popularity managed to reach 100 million monthly active users only by February 2013. In March 2014 the amount of users reached 200 million and afterwards it kept growing with a ratio of 100 million people more for each 9 months. The trend changed in December 2016 when Instagram reached 600 million users and then it took only 4 months to get 100 million more and reach the milestone of 700 million users by the end of April 2017.

In terms of functionality Instagram constantly develops and adds more and more functions with regular updates across all mobile phone OS. A recent Android update added an offline more for the world regions without constant Internet connection. It is more than likely that in the following year the amount of users will grow once again and finally reach 1 billion mark.

According to the statistics, only 22 million of Instagram users are from Russia.

What Instagram features were added in 2017

In 2017, Instagram introduced more features and released more updates that ever before. Most of those updates made Instagram even better and easier to use. Common users are always intrigued by new types of content and for entrepreneurs they are helpful in expanding the range of promotion tools.

Instagram Stories were introduced on summer 2016 and made Instagram even more popular and serviceable. From there on out Stories received several updates, developers constantly add new features and quirks to it without any signs of stopping.

Here is how content promotion on Instagram changed in 2017:

As a part of Instagram Stories, live video functionality was added, allowing users to broadcast themselves live while other users can leave likes and comments to the video. Additionally, a viewer count displays the amount of viewers. After Live feature was introduced it received further updates, which included saving live videos to your phone and adding previous broadcasts to Stories where users can watch them in case they missed it live. A lot of customers really enjoy live broadcasts and they can help you with establishing a better connection with your audience.

Gallery feature allows to create a single post with up to 10 swipeable photos and videos in it. It was first introduced in 10.9 update for Android and iOS. The update was very well received by users.

In 2017 more new features and tools were added to Stories which allowed to attach augmented reality stickers, use brushes, add temperature, geolocation and timestamps to them. Other features include:

— hands-free feature which allowed to press Record once instead of holding it to record videos;

— more than one text addition to the Stories;

— for iPhone users a Stories gallery was introduced which allowed to see all Stories from their followers over the past 24 hours;

— disappearing photos and video function;

— rewind feature;

Finally, augmented reality face filters were introduced akin of Snapchat face filters, which allowed to create even more unique photos and selfies.

Why Instagram is such a big platform for advertisement and why every business should go public and start advertising on Instagram

A lot of people associate Instagram with the audience of pesky teenagers who share tedious selfies with each other and nothing else. But for more experienced entrepreneurs Instagram is the platform with endless opportunities in business promotion which helps marketing their products and services by exposing them via their business accounts.

Here are some arguments indicating that Instagram is already the biggest advertising platform out there and why all types of businesses need to pay close attention to it:

— ever growing popularity of the app with more than 54 million photos uploaded daily, more than 8600 liked posts each second and thousands of comments left;

— enhanced user engagement with enormous amounts of people interacting with each other and brands of any size. In comparison to Facebook, Instagram engagement is 15 times higher;

— Various means of presenting your content as well as huge content consumption ratio. For people it is easier to look at the pictures than reading text ads;

— Instagram’s accessibility allows to get access to it at any times and any place. With business life tempo of today, the platform suits perfectly for any enterprisers.

Reasons why you need Business Profile to conduct business on Instagram:

— Interactive contacts — you can call and mail to other business profiles in just one click;

— Targeting offerings under your posts which makes using your profile easier;

— Business accounts are specifically suited for the salesmen and people of commerce who pursue the goal of promoting their product rather than people like bloggers who may have 1000 followers but who do not actually sell anything.

Today, Instagram is one of the best ways for visual advertising of your content. This platform has a set of features designed specifically for that purpose and is constantly developed and introduces new features. The key elements of success for any business that decided to start Instagram promotion is to create interesting, diverse and unique content, analyze the results of publishing that content and use fair methods of getting more followers.

Instagram for Business, an A-Z guide

Setting up a new account and adding content

When starting your Instagram business account, the easiest and fastest step is creating a new profile. To do that, you will need to use an official iOS, Android or Windows Phone application. Instagram is an app-based social network and it is inadvisable to buy a preset Instagram account as such accounts tend to get blocked soon. It is crucial to set up a new account only via official app.

The essential part of every Instagram profile is bio section. This is the information which users see upon visiting your page. For every business account the bio must be very thorough and informative.

First, you need to create a username for your profile — it is better to use the name of a brand which you represent, and if you do not represent any brands, think of something captive and recognizable. Try not to use symbols in your username i.e. periods, commas or underscores. Limit your options to a short name that will either indicate your business name or the direction of your enterprise.

Second, choose your avatar carefully. You will probably have to develop a unique logo for your profile. Do not use images from the Internet as they may contain small details and artifacts which worsen the image quality when viewing the page on a computer or phone. One way is to contact a logo designer to develop a logo for your business, in that case the cost varies from 2000 to 4000 rubles ($35-$70). The other way is creating your own logo using Photoshop.

Third, think of a good full name for your profile. This is the first thing other users will see when you follow them. It is better to not duplicate the information from your username in your full name, avoid repeating same words several times. Determine the most precise wording that can describe your business: this is what you put in your account’s full name.

Finally, write a thoughtful and informative description of your profile in Bio field. Here you explain what your business is about. This includes: your field of work (goods and services which you provide to your clients), your address (where you can meet your clients in person for further arrangements), your contacts (your mobile number in international format and company-representative e-mail addresses; this information is useful for when a company does not have a street address; avoid using emotes or Emoji when specifying mobile numbers as they may not be visible for users with outdated gadgets) and finally your company’s website (should be short and memorable and shouldn’t transfer to any third-party resources). If your enterprise does not have a website, connect your business or personal profiles in other social networks i.e. VK or Facebook via “Linked Accounts” section. Use Emoji and emotes in your bio if you wish but do not overuse them. A good idea would be to format your bio in another messenger to have a better look at it and only then put it in your Instagram profile.

The content of your profile

At this point, Instagram is already oversaturated with business accounts where almost every business entity has its own profile. Even small businesses have their own Instagram accounts, especially those in DIY and beauty industries. But good account promotion is not the sole ingredient to success. The key to prosperity for a business account on Instagram now is the quality of its content — that is your photos and videos.

Your photos and videos is what will make your business profile unique and distinguishable from others. Lots of things can be captured and published on your profile — the product that you sell, user reviews and even your clients themselves. Nowadays, there is no need for hiring a photographer to make good content: you can create outstanding photography with good cameras on modern smartphones. Pay attention to your lighting and framing — with those elements in mind your content surely will be of highest quality.

For each customer there must be a personal connection to your product, which is why you always have to use models to show what you sell. Make sure your model is presented on photos in full body shot. It is better to not use photos taken from third-parties especially without their consent as you may get reported and your account will be suspended for violating Terms of Use.

Do not forget about publishing glimpses of your behind-the-scenes as well. Showing your workplace from the inside, posting photos of your clients and how you interact with them and creating a couple of production videos will keep your followers engaged and as a result will attract them to your product. It is as interesting for your customers to see you from the inside as it is to see you from the outside.

You can reach to your customers and ask them to share their experience with your product. If they publish a photo of them with your product on their profiles, you can repost it to your business account. That way you can attract new customers and spread the word about your venture.

There are three time periods when it is generally better to publish your new content:

First is a period from 7 to 10 AM. People wake up and get on their Instagram to see what is new. Good time to post some photos of your product and tell people about it.

Second period lasts from 12 PM to 2 PM. This is generally a “break-time’ for those who work and study which results in high activity on Instagram. Now it is the time to post some of your behind-the-scenes material or customer reviews — posting about your product is not as needed, people are not too keen to go shopping on their lunch break.

Finally, a third period lasts from 9 PM to 12 AM. People come from work, get their housework done and leisurely browse Instagram afterwards. This could a good moment to share another photo or video about your product.

Before you get started

Signing up to Instagram is not too hard. What is harder is maintaining your page and keep it safe. Here are some security steps that will help your profile to stay safe and not get blocked.

Firstly, make sure you used a working e-mail address and can confirm it after completing the signing up process. You ought to do it as soon as you finished your registration.

Secondly, verify your account with your phone number. Go to “Options — “Two-Factor Authentication’, tap “Require Security Code’ and enter your mobile phone number. Shortly afterwards you will receive a security code by SMS which you will need to enter and tap “Next’.

Finally, connect your Facebook account to your Instagram profile. You can do it in “Linked Accounts’ section in “Settings’. After that you will be able to use your Facebook login and password to log in to your Instagram account. These steps will help you when you promote your profile and here is why: every account’s activity is being monitored by Instagram. If your activity is too high, the account may be considered as spam account and as a result will be suspended. By connecting your e-mail, mobile phone and Facebook profile you will make sure to protect your account from being blocked and can carry on with posting.

Social influence

The social influence can be explained with this obvious on first sight but in reality quite effective idea which is “you have more followers the more followers you have’. It works like this: a large amount of followers, likes and comments attracts more attention from other users which, in return, generates more followers, likes and comments.

Same idea applies to business accounts; having a good amount of quality content, satisfied customers and positive feedback on your account will draw more users and potential clients to your product. Obviously, potential customers trust popular and trendy ventures more than small business pages with modest amount of followers and mild activity.

This is why at an early stage it is not bad to utilize various means to help you grow, such as using Instagram bots for followers. Sure it is not much of a fair way of promotion but soon you will be able to replace them with real followers. Additionally, you may buy Instagram likes at a ratio of 200 likes per 1000 bot followers. Finally, a lot of services these days can provide you with user reviews and comments from real people. With all these things considered, your social proof will grow and you will gain more and more trust from real users.

Setting up your business promotion

One way to spread the word about your business on Instagram is via Instalex service. Instalex provides means to optimize your business account promotion on the basis of full confidentiality. Instead of giving your login and password to third parties you log in through encrypted webpage with SSL protocol built into it. Another feature that distinguishes Instalex from other Instagram promotion services is that it is a cloud-based system. You will be able to operate online through browser instead of installing additional software. Before you start working with Instalex take a minute to setup the preferences to improve your experience.

Instalex allows to help and enhance your promotion process. One way to do that is setting up Instalex to interact exclusively with accounts that are part of your target audience. To find such accounts, this service offers several major filters:

— Photo age filter;

— Geolocation filter;

— Hashtag filter;

— Gender filter

and 70 more additional filters.

Service also includes various supplemental filters with which you can control the pace of your promotion, find target audience of your business competitors, create databases of your user base via Target Hunter and Cerebro. Each filter comes along with interactive tips which illustrate the features and peculiarities of working with more specific filters.

In addition, in order to facilitate the users experience, Instalex offers a myriad of instructions in both text- and video format. You can find those materials on Instalex website or Instalex YouTube page. You can contact tech support through your personal profile page: tech support works 24/7 and will help you with your questions in no time. You can contact tech support by typing your questions in chat which is located in the bottom right corner of your profile.

Starting your business promotion

Before you start your promotion it is good to add any content to your business profile. An already established profile supplied with content will attract people better. It is better to have around 40 to 50 posts already published before you begin.

First of all, you need to complete a registration process at Instalex official website. Each new user has three trial days to get acquainted with the website functions: that includes trying out the site services, from free options to fee-for-service. Each user will be able to purchase the full version of promotion package after the trial ends. A monthly cost for a single account promotion is 799 rubles ($14), each user can promote an unlimited amount of profiles. Each additional account and service feature is paid separately.

The service works 24/7. It is possible to setup the activity period for your promotion. Instalex can work automatically and is able to produce on average 600 likes, 100 comments and provide 500 bot followers in one day (24 hours). As a result, Instalex interacts with more than 1000 accounts per day; add Direct bulk messaging and it provides even more additional followers to that number.

A preset limit for each Instagram profile on how many people it can follow is 7500. Instalex monitors your business account and how many profiles it has followed at each period. When the amount of followed accounts almost reaches 7500, Instalex automatically starts unfollowing those users who either did not follow your account back or did not visit the page at all. The conversion ratio which compares the amount of followers to the overall activity on the account is also important — for business account a good percentage indicative of successful profile promotion is from 5% to 7.5%.

Working with the clients

When working with your customers one thing is important to keep in mind: they will not wait long until you respond and answer all their questions. Answer any private messages or comments from your potential clients as soon as possible. Merely several hours without any answer and your client will turn to your competitor. Your clients are not here to know the specifics of your product or to be a qualified expert in your business specialty. Answer all their questions accurately and in calm manner, even if they are obvious to you. You have to respect and cherish your customers, even if they end up not buying anything they must feel like they are your favorite customers. Use Direct to ask for a mobile number to stay in touch or discuss the business in another messenger as Direct is not exactly suit for prolonged discussions: it has character limit and does not always notify you about new messages.

Your number one task in communicating with people is to convert them from your follower to your client. Speak clearly and stay professional, answer all the questions and be eloquent when they are indecisive as to whether they need to buy something or not. Do not be too persuasive, however: nobody likes intrusiveness and aggression. Keep the dialogue balanced, do not prolong it or cut short, do not put too much pressure on your customer and make them become interested in your product.

Your first sales

Before you start selling, remember the golden rule: “you have more followers the more followers you have’. Your business’s large following makes it more appealing to other Instagram users. The amount of followers is the amount of the product you initially will be able to sell.

Work on your sales script. Think of the way the dialogue should go for you to end up with a client. Having a prepared welcome message and a set of answers for most frequent questions will help you save time instead of spending it on typing out your message. Do not cut ties with your customers after the deal is finished: message them about your brand new product, give them bonuses for purchase, get them involved in giveaways, all in all, make them come to you again. All these thing will help you build loyal and fruitful relationships with your clients.

Advertisement through public pages and paid endorsement

Another effective method of promotion is buying ads on other profiles, which makes your account much more exposed when it is presented on various places. When ordering ads on another Instagram page pay attention to the comments people leave under the posts. If they are related to that post and written in your target language you may consider contacting this page for further cooperation.

First of all, you need to find an appropriate advertising account to publish your ads on. There are numerous Instagram promotion platforms which can offer you a list of specific advertising profiles to order an ad. Prepare and send a welcome letter to a profile of you choose that will contain your offer to conclude the ad contract. Specify the cost of arrangement (in case it is not listed already) and the time it will be published (best time for publishing is in the evening when there is a considerable activity among users of the platform overall). Send an ad itself and the ad text for description to the profile representative. Payment for cooperation is usually carried out in before publishing as a prepayment and should be specified for each case. Afterwards the profile will publish your advertisement.

Ordering ads from bloggers and other social media influencers usually does not differ from ordering elsewhere. One thing to point out is that it is usually much costlier — from 3 to 5 times more expensive compared to ordering from advertising accounts. The coverage from blogger pages, however, is substantially higher than from advertising pages, therefore your ad will reach more people.

Finally, a relatively new way of advertising on Instagram is official advertising by Instagram itself. Your ads will be published by the platform in other users’ feed. It is vastly more expensive to order your ads that way, for the most part only large companies can afford it. According to statistics, mass following remains not only the most effective way of promotion on Instagram but also the most popular — more than 50% of business owners use it to promote their business accounts. Various SMM services allow to order mass following for your promotion.

Choosing your theme

Your profile type and your monetizing method

Before you become a public account and start monetization of your Instagram page, you have to decide on your theme and your profile type. Your further steps and endeavors will differ depending on that choice. Besides, raising your follower count or getting your account popular is one thing; when it comes to monetization methods, it gets harder. Unfortunately, but without careful thinking it may easily turn out the best way to get any profit out of your account is to sell it.

How to choose a theme for your profile

Why is it important and what factors may affect your choice?

For each sector there is a certain target audience which you will have to work with. In some cases, you can easily identify the target audience: the audience for “Instagram mums’ is, obviously, parents or future parents. In other cases, it is possible but much harder to define a certain audience.

This is why deciding on how are you going to monetize your profile now is essential: afterwards you can determine your theme and how exactly are you going to make profit out of it. From there on out you may choose your strategy and a theme for your public profile.

Not all audiences have paying capacity and that is a fact. As an entrepreneur, you will have to choose a sector that would attract users who are willing to spend their money. Sounds easy, but in reality there are complications.

For example, there are certain themes that at first glance seem to be profitable, but in reality they are not: such themes we may call “theme traps’. Good example is men & style Instagram accounts: at first sight, the followers must be really interested in fashion and therefore would be more willing to spend money to buy various accessories and other things. When you dig deeper, however, you will realize that most of the followers usually are young men who are here to look and leave likes on nice pictures, not to spend any money.

Not every popular sector is profitable either. Pet Instagram accounts, for example, are immensely popular with their frequent updates and quality content. But when you think about it, exactly what kind of audience on such accounts would be interested in your ads and your business? If you cannot with certainty define your target audience, there may be problems with further monetization of your profile.

When deciding on your public profile theme, there are three major principles you would want to consider:

You must confidently define your target audience: your account must be fit thematically for certain clients. When an entrepreneur gets asked to “define his target audience” he must do so without any hesitation. That means cute animals, movies, interesting facts or world mysteries are not good themes for your profile because these themes do not have a defined target audience.

Know your audience’s paying capacity. You need to not only understand your audience but also know how you can turn that into profit.

Remember that you need to easily attract followers. Your audience has to be profitable but also extensible: i.e. choosing house purchasers as your target audience is a good idea but maintaining and expanding that audience might be extremely difficult.

Another good advice is to act on contrary: first you decide on what type of account you want to be, then you choose your monetization strategy and then define your target audience. Sometimes this method is more effective than other means. With these recommendations you will find your account type and can easily monetize it later.

Personal blogs on Instagram and their peculiarities

It is getting more and more popular these days to become a blogger, maintain interest of your followers and through that fulfilling your monetization goals. Not everybody knows what a blog is, however. A blog is a webpage which functions as a personal diary for its owner. He expresses his ideas and feelings about what is happening to him, shares his content and does all that via webpages or social networks. With each text post on Instagram a blogger attaches a video or photo related to that post. Usually bloggers keep their posts related to a certain theme such as sport, childcare or what they do professionally.

What distinguishes blogs from personal profiles

An interesting theme that resonates with large audiences. Unlike personal profiles, there is always a theme that you can follow through blog posts. Personal pages have a theme too, usually they tell about a person’s life and what surrounds it, but the audience for them is quite limited.

Posting frequency. For blogs there are much more posts per day than there are for personal profiles, sometimes bloggers manage to post multiple times a day in order to keep their blog relevant and sustain followers’ interest.

Each blog requires promotion. No matter how, via automation services or on their own, bloggers need to promote themselves. There are two factors that define a popular account: first is genuinely interesting quality content, which is also long-term engaging. Second is the blogger’s persona: people follow his or hers blogs no matter the theme but rather because they are really interested in that blogger as a person.

Blog’s starting numbers. For each blog there must be a certain amount of content and a certain amount of followers already on your account. After that you can start defining and obtaining your target audience which, combined with your starting numbers, will result in getting stable growth for your profile. With personal profiles there is no such necessity to get as many followers as possible: those profiles are created for user’s “casual’ use.

Lucrativeness. Bloggers’ pages can make profit by publishing ads which are offered to them by advertisers. Personal profiles most likely cannot do so due to limitations in following.

Each personal Instagram profile is created for a purpose of socializing and communicating with other users. Blogs serve various purposes for their creators: artistic expression, attracting audience to the persona, gaining profit.

Designing a blog on Instagram

Interesting photos and publications are necessary for any blogger to attract audience and make people engaged and interested in blogger’s persona. First thing everyone notices is your design and this is the first thing that shows others what type of content you create. Here are some general rules to design your blog-styled profile:

Photo quality. It is better to use professional photos for a blog. Do not use third-party logos and images even if your page is not created for profit purposes. According to statistics, profiles that represent real people gain more followers. A color scheme would also make your blog look more interesting: for that, your photos should have same color scheme or style.

Your Bio. Add as many information about you as possible, describe what you are doing on the platform, your contacts and general inquiries. All in all, open to your followers so that they know you can be trusted.

Your first post. Do not start your blog with soapy long stories about how you chose your business because it is likely that at this point nobody really cares. In the beginning it is better to set up a theme of your blog for your current and future followers.

Put as much effort as possible in making your content interesting, or else soon people will unfollow you and most likely will not come back. Here is some advice on how to create good posts:

— No long stories. Brevity is the soul of wit, and to Instagram it applies better than to anything else. People get tired reading long posts, usually they leave them mid-sentence or do not bother to start reading at all.

— Divide text into paragraphs. It is also good to divide each paragraph with space.

— Do not overburden your text with details. Most followers do not care about every single detail which led to the post, keep explanations at minimum and get straight to the point.

— Complete your text by attaching a photo. Each photo must be somehow related to your publication.

Public pages on Instagram and their peculiarities

You may compare thematic pages on Instagram to a web-magazine which collects posts related to certain interests, i.e. sport, fashion, music, cars, inspirational quotes or cooking. Most users thoroughly enjoy such pages: people like to look at nice pictures related to some activity, read interesting and insightful posts about that thing etc. It is quite easy to advertise via such pages while at the same time make it look natural and not distract users from the content.

Most popular niches already have popular public pages so it is not easy to become the most popular profile related to certain subjects. Besides, you would not attract as many followers when you talk about the same old thing. This is why you will have to invest a certain amount of time and be prepared for expenses which then, however, will be covered up with ad income.

Another type of thematic accounts is accounts related to a certain product. You can find various types of content there, both entertaining and meaningless posts and other ones which describe a product, its characteristics and price. For example, a person wants to sell vape kits and all the accessories related to it. To do so, they create a thematic page related to vape and post all types of content there — jokes, interesting facts and also occasional advertisements of their products or services. We have already discussed how Instagram became more than sharing platform for all types of pictures of food, cute cats or what you recently bought; now it is a large advertisement platform and using it that way will attract substantial income.

Designing a public page on Instagram

Unlike public pages on other social networks, such as Facebook or VK, Instagram pages are not separate types of profiles. They are the same accounts which use a different bio, different blogs or different posts. Here are some essential rules of designing a thematic account:

— Use keywords in your Username. Think of a simple yet memorable and creative username to your page. Ideally, people would look at that name and instantly associate it with what type of business you have.

— In Name Field, include what you think would describe your profile’s theme best; you can use emojis for that.

— Choose Profile Photo carefully. It should fit the theme and be of really good quality.

— Include all the information about your profile in Bio field. This is one of the most important parts of your account. For potential advertisers leave your business contacts and inquiries.

Celebrity Instagram accounts and their peculiarities

There are different “levels’ to fame on Instagram: it can be a celebrity that is famous in the city (from 1 to 10 thousand followers), in the country (from 50 to 500 thousand) or worldwide famous (more than 500 thousand followers).

A celebrity account is a personal page of a famous person (actor, dancer, singer etc.) which can be maintained by social media manager or a team of managers. In those profiles you will see news about celebrity’s activity, personal life or interesting facts about them and their life. Such accounts are suited well for advertisement but it requires thorough planning which should be developed considering a famous person that you represent and how he or she handles their Instagram account.

How to operate a celebrity Instagram account

Keep the account active and always make it interesting for the followers. You need to not only keep your current audience but also involve new users. An effective strategy for that is regular giveaways or any types of interactions which involve prizes.

Use hashtags to attract users. Do not put more than 3 to 5 hashtags in your publications and make sure they fit the description and are not just the most popular ones.

Publish new posts at peak activity time (from 5 to 9 PM according to most stats). Balance your publications and try to post actively but not too much. A good ratio is one post per 3 or 4 hours.

Talk to your followers but do not forget about the haters as well. Each celebrity has both and you can take different actions against the latter: you can ignore them, respond to them or block them. But talk to the former for as much as possible: answer fans questions, thank them, chat with them. It creates a good image for celebrity and leaves a good impression for both admirers and naysayers.

Pay attention to what photos you are posting. Do not post same or just very similar photos twice. Do not post too provocative and shocking pictures which may lead to controversy, unless you are intentionally do that in order to make people talk about you.

Analyze what photos your followers like more. For each celebrity there is a different image, and there is a certain one which your followers like better. For Russian users it is interesting when celebrities talk about their families and their personal lives while people from other countries prefer lifestyle photos, pictures from professional photoshoots and photos related to sports. Usually after a certain time with the audience the celebrities themselves know better what their fans like and what type of photos people would want to see from their idols.

Always include an interesting caption for any photo or video, do not hesitate and include English translations for your followers from all over the world (that is in case your comments and captions are not in English already).

Each celebrity has their own strategy on how to operate their famous account. Some stars almost exclusively promote their projects, some talk a lot about their personal life and others carefully mix both. There are many attributes that distinguish celebrity accounts and how they operate in comparison to common users.

Designing a celebrity account on Instagram

Usually, there are very little differences in how celebrity account looks comparing to other profiles. One exception is Bio where instead of long descriptions celebrities include their official websites or inquiries, as well as links to their new products or projects. A lot of celebrities include their agents’ contacts and advertising contacts.

Another important feature of most celebrity accounts is verification badge which you can see near their account names. Most of the time, they also have their photos as avatars for quick recognition.

Commercial and Brand Instagram accounts and their peculiarities

A while ago, Instagram introduced Business profiles to facilitate business operations for companies and brands. There are several features which distinguish such accounts from others:

“Contact’ button;

Additional stats on publications and activity;

New advertising features;

An option to include company’s physical address.

Here are some recommendations on how to operate a commercial account on Instagram:

Always provide fresh news and new information for your followers, keep them entertained. Try and divide your content into different sections: as a clothing line on one day you may publish a picture of your client in a new dress bought from you, on the other day you can publish a fresh package to send out to one of your customers, next time post an interesting fashion fact or behind-the-scenes photo etc.

Do not post too much, 3 to 6 posts a day is a sufficient amount. The exception is when you have a special event or important news to tell your followers about, on that day you may use from 5 to 10 photos.

Despite your account being commercial, try and mix your professional photos with random pictures from your daily routine made on your phone rather than professional camera. People like more “humanity’ in their company and will appreciate that type of sincerity from you.

Publish your photos on specific times:

Morning: 6—7 AM;

Afternoon: 12—2 PM;

Evening: 5—9 PM.

For each region and each business sphere a time may differ so after a while you will see when it is better to add new posts.

Think of your strategy of Instagram promotion. Come up with around 10 first publications, make them interesting for new users and keep them intrigued for the 11th post. Make your brand look original for people.

Do not forget about live broadcasts. For any business accounts a live video where each customer may receive answers for their questions is a great opportunity.

Do not be too focused on your commercial image, your behind-the-scenes footage and photos are just as important: show your brand from inside out.

Always inform your followers on any upcoming events. This will boost the events’ popularity and attendance if necessary.

Designing a business account

Some advice on how to design your commercial account:

Instagram is a highly visual social network. Create quality and bright photos which will leave lasting impression, think of some interesting “gimmick’ for your pictures. Come up with a creative approach to your products and fulfill that approach on photosets for your products.

Use your brand name as the account’s nickname. Sometimes a name that you want to use is already taken, or cannot be used for other reasons; in that case use a name that could be quickly associated with your business or relates to it directly.

Use your logo as your avatar but design it beforehand.

Include all the information and fill out every info section. Put a link to your website, describe everything clearly and thoroughly.

How to design your publications:

Interact with your public: ask them questions in the description, play the “capture this’ game, entertain them with other small activities;

Despite being a common thing amongst all users and bloggers, do not hesitate to use hashtags, it still works even after all these years.

Use common hashtags even if they are too basic: for example, a gift shop could use hashtags such as #giftshop #gift #present #bestgifts etc.

Methods of Instagram monetization

There are three ways to make profit out of your Instagram account:

ads selling;

paid account promotion;

business advertising.

If you are serious about making profit out of Instagram you need to learn more about these methods and analyze them to choose one that suits you best.

The first method is selling advertisement. You need a fairly popular account with couple of thousand followers in order to choose that method. Your account can be a blog, a public page or a celebrity profile. Most popular accounts with dozens of thousands of followers usually choose from various ad offers themselves. But on the other hand it is fairly common for account owners to offer their profiles for promoters to place their ads on. There is no need to wait for a good offer when you can come to the advertisers yourself and show what your account can do. Another way of doing that is via promotion platforms where you can buy and sell ads. Usually there are numerous options and some may suit you better than the others.

The second method is paid account promotion. It is a fairly new way of promotion but is already proven to be really effective. Many companies have already tried hiring a promoter for their social network account, so-called “Instagram manager’. Here are some things that you need to do as one:

profile designing for a business account;

creating content and developing strategies for business starts and reaching mass audience;

applying different methods of account promotion (which includes using your popular Instagram profile);

organizing ad campaigns and working with other advertisers.

Third method is business advertising. One of the most popular demographics on Instagram is women who are 18 to 30 years’ old so your business will be popular if that demographic is considered. Some businesses on Instagram look out of place and probably will not attract many people: trying to sell construction supplies or cars on Instagram is probably pointless since Instagram relies heavily on visuals. Cosmetics or candies, on the other hand, would attract more users by just being visually pretty, so a lot of people would be interested in buying such products.

Here are some businesses that are popular on Instagram:

café, restaurants, bakeries and pizzerias: food attracts more people both online and in real life, making such businesses rather popular and profitable;
beauty salons and gym accounts that are popular in real life would reach wide audiences on Instagram also;
businesses related to teaching;
hand-made accessories and DIY;
baby products;
candies and pastries;
jewelry and accessories;
clothes and shoes;
perfumery and cosmetics;
generally speaking, everything brand new and unique: there are many popular items that are “revolutionary’ and “innovative’, i.e. bottled stockings, push-up bras, Kylie lipsticks etc.

There are many different niches and businesses that are not yet popular but have potential, i.e. wholesales, liquid makeup, budget travel, sand animation DIY master classes and clothing repairs etc.

Monetizing each method and average numbers

Now that we established three main methods we can walk through each of them:

Selling advertisement: the price for each ad — be that publishing a photo or mentioning a company that is being advertised — depends on how many followers you have on your account. There are businesses of all sizes on Instagram (small, medium, large-sized) and each has its own budget for advertising and its own audience. A large brand probably will not ask a blogger with 10 thousand followers to advertise their product, just like an average online clothing store will not be advertised by a celebrity. The prices are all over the place on Instagram with starting numbers at around 300 rubles per post ($5). Usually ad price ranges between 1 and 10 thousand rubles ($15-$175) with most ads costing about 3—5 thousand rubles ($50-$90). Some accounts can make more than 30 thousand rubles ($500) from ads monthly. Alyona Esipova, a beauty blogger with more than 600 thousand subscribers on her Instagram account, makes roughly 300 thousand ($5200) rubles from advertising per month. Anastasia Volkova, a popular professional photographer with 400 thousand followers, asks for 50 thousand rubles (almost $900) per ad post. Celebrities also are not strangers to advertisement as additional source of income: Kseniya Borodina, Russian TV personality, demands 70 thousand rubles ($1200) per ad. The most expensive ads on Russian Instagram are on Ksenia Sobchak’s profile: she charges 250 thousand ($4300) per one ad.

Paid account promotion: anyone can start promoting accounts, even with little to no experience. You only need an already popular account of yours and a couple of months to understand various specifics. In Russia, the price ranges from 5 to 20 thousand rubles ($90-$350). You can easily make 80 thousand rubles (roughly $1400) a month if you have 3 or 4 companies as your clients. You can promote profiles from anywhere, the promotion can even be automated for your convenience. For example, you have a profile called “prodvizhenie’ and it offers mass liking and mass following for fairly small prices: 100 rubles ($1.2) for 1000 likes or subscribers. Other services from prodvizhenie include profile promotion with creating target audience, hashtag selection and promoting accounts to top searched or most viewed. You can offer 3 service packs: Basic (1500 rubles, $25), Professional (3990 rubles, $70) and Gold (6990 rubles, $120). Your Instagram promotion account has 171 thousand followers: theoretically, your 10 clients would want you to mass like or mass follow their profiles, two clients purchased Basic packages and three purchased Professional packages and in that particular case, even with such timid numbers, it gives you 31500 rubles ($547) per month.

Business advertising: for example, we have a profile dedicated to hand-made. A young woman really likes making toys, hand-made soap or she is really into scrapbooking. With Instagram she can turn her hobby into business by just creating a profile! So she makes an account under the name “tree4happy’ and it is dedicated to pyrography and she creates albums or books with hand-made decorated wooden covers. On average, the price can be 3000 ($50) rubles with 1 to 3 daily orders. Her favorite hobby would return in a monthly income of 50 thousand rubles ($900) and everyone wins!

Another example: you want to promote your workplace — a fitness studio, a beauty salon etc. Let us create a profile called dr.carreras_cosmetology and start promoting that by creating inspirational posts, giving advice and consulting people, all in all, reaching wide audience. With more popularity online you would have from 3 to 5 clients daily and that is a lot of people considering the price for beauty treatments might range from 12 to 15 thousand rubles ($200-$250 in Russia).

How to transform your personal profile to a public profile, how to start applying your monetization methods

Here are some reasons why your Instagram account can be permanently banned:

ignoring suspensions and reasons for them: after a third suspension your profile will be banned permanently;
when using other peoples’ photos without tagging them (you can tag authors by using @ with their nicknames);
automated posting detected on your profile;
getting a lot of bot followers;

visiting your profile from different IPs at the same time — that means people from different places and, probably, automated services use that account.

You can easily evade a suspension when transforming from personal to public account by following these easy steps:

do not go over the limits. Usually the urge for quick promotion results in quick suspension; do not spam in the comments of other profiles, keep it to less than a thousand likes and followings per day;
act naturally: when automatizing your promotion process you can easily reveal that by mass following or mass liking many users in short amounts of time;
use personal proxies. If you have your own account and another one that you automatically promote and they operate from the same IP it will be detected so it is better to use individual proxy for different profiles.

Do not be afraid to let professional services and managers translate your account from being a personal one to a public one even if it involves additional expenses. Of course you can do it manually but you will probably spend a lot of time and put way more effort into it that with paid services. On the bright side you are less likely to get suspended if you take your transformation slowly and smoothly, by steadily modernizing your content. There is another rather safe method when you remove all content altogether from your page, wait for stats to go down and then start posting again, this time your new content as a public page.

Growth of your account

Stages of growth for your account

So, you have got yourself a brand new account, you have decided on your theme — everything is according to plan. Now, let us discuss what stages of growth your account will experience and what results you might get with white and grey marketing. We will follow through the growth process using a personal profile of just another user from the platform that does not have any large following.