What Are Instagram Promoters, And How Legitimate Are They?
As I represent over 2 dozen social media accounts, I have
the advantage of trying things out, or experimenting, so that my clients &
followers don’t have to.
You may see DM’s in your IG account promising to grow your
account by thousands quickly and cheaply. This is the type of promoter I am
referring to in this article. Some have honed in on a specific niche and only
promote those types of accounts on their account which is also in that niche.
That seems to work really well. Other promoters have a more generic (no niche)
account and will promote any type of account. You can tell that easily by
clicking on the DM and going to their bio to see what type of content they
have. Most often I get promoter DM’s from industries that have nothing to do
with my niche/account. Those are the ones that I completely ignore as they are
just mass spamming people and not looking at the specific accounts to see if it
would be a good fit.
Pricing:
For the 2 promoters I tested here is a sample of their
pricing
Test #1
Test #2
The results:
Test #1
https://www.instagram.com/pets_.era
This company reached out to us specifically on our account and
was in the exact specific niche as we were in. Their pricing was above and we
went with the $25 package #4. They did everything they promised and we did
within a week gain over 6,000 followers. 1 year later over 5,000 of those
accounts still follow us and all that we have audited seem to be authentic
accounts with real live users behind them. That’s pretty good retention in my
books. The promoters were honest, easy to work with, communicated quickly and
efficiently and kept our posts up on their page so that we still get residual
traffic coming from their account.
Test # 2 https://www.instagram.com/canadian.explore
This company had reached out on one of my other accounts and
claimed to be from my country, which was enticing. Everything about their page
seemed legit, so I reached out to them for pricing. They were a bit pushy to
get a response but most promoters are so I couldn’t judge them on that. Their
English was broken in our messaging so whether they really are a Canadian
company I have my doubts. They promised tons of great promotions & you’ll
notice in their pricing they guarantee at least 5,000 new followers.
What I received was one story posted on their page, that of course expired
& disappeared, resulting in no new followers and then they totally ghosted
me. It wasn’t until I called them out on 2 of my bigger channels that they
responded to please give them more time. Then (again) they stopped responding
or providing further promotion. It has been months now since our initial
transaction so clearly, this one is a scam account, or just really bad at their
job;) I did tell him in advance that I would be doing this article and calling
them out for their dishonesty and he still didn’t respond so I have no problem
naming names.
Things to watch for:
~ Make sure that you are aware of what currency they are
quoting you in.
~ Do not give out any personal financial details.
~ Choose companies that leave your promotion posts up on
their accounts, not just temporarily and then it disappears.
~ If possible watch their account first to see how
active they are and how well they promote other accounts.
~ Lots of followers is great but how are the engagements on
their posts?
~ Be wary of poor communicators, and pushy pressure sales.
~ If budget is not a problem it is always safer to hire an
actual marketing person/firm to help promote you unilaterally across many
platforms or to pay the platform itself for direct promotions.
An Alternative:
Instead, find big Instagram accounts in your niche (10k or
higher). Reach out to them asking how much for a story or paid post. So you're
paying popular Instagrammers to post about you. The primary thing should be to
get more followers, and the secondary thing should be to convert your followers
to shoppers/clients if you have something to sell.
To sum it up yes it can be a cheap way to gain a lot of
followers, yes there is a chance you will get nothing, and also a chance that
you will lose some of those followers after time passes. For me it was a good
exercise to test out the validity of the hundreds of promoter DM’s I get a
year.
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