Social media marketing works. Actually, it works so well that it can now cost you a small fortune to advertise on Facebook due to the demand. As more businesses realize how Facebook’s targeting can’t be beat, more people are bidding for clicks, which is driving the cost for each click up.
But just because Facebook is the preferred social network for advertisers, it doesn’t mean that your customers like it the most. Actually, they like Facebook’s little brother the best.. Instagram. Facebook really stole Instagram when they bought it for $1 billion when you really think about it. Zuck got a hell of a deal.
Facebook will always serve its purpose but Instagram cuts through the BS and lets people see what they want. Pictures. They can comment if they want or just like the picture and quickly scroll through posts.
For us marketers Instagram has sucked because you can’t put links in the posts. There is only one place you can put a link, and that is in the profile bio. You can now buy Instagram ads and make clickable buttons but you will run into the same problem that you face on Facebook: high click costs. Also, people are a bit pissed about Instagram ads so I think you will see very few users going out of their way to click on an advertisement there.
I’ve been testing a way to get traffic from that single bio link dirt cheap..
Introducing.. Instagress
I’ve seen a few posts that referenced this tool but they were asking about building a follower count. That’s fine but honestly I don’t care too much about followers. They are nice, but I want website traffic and money. I would say most everyone that is using this tool is trying to get followers and you can get some using it but it isn’t really effective because so many idiots are using it to spam. I’ve been messing around with a simple method to use it as a cheap traffic source that can keep pushing traffic once you set it up.
I’ve tested this tool for several niches I am monetizing and some of them are better than others. Some small niches I get an extra 50 visitors a day and some better niches I am seeing more than 100 visits daily from Instagram. This is a small affiliate landing page below averaging around 70 hits per day, some days much more..
Lets get down to business..
Disclaimer: You MUST Post Images
There are some Instagram tools that will auto post for you but they don’t have the other features that this tool has (like auto commenting) and they are close to $100 per month and don’t help much. Instagress is based on time. You buy time. You can buy 30 days for $9.99. That is so cheap!
So, in order to keep my account looking really active I manually post one post a day. If you are new to Instagram you should build up an account first and have a good 50 or more posts before you start this automation. People aren’t going to be interested in an account if there are just a few images anyway. You have to make your account look real. A good profile image and a complete (and interesting) profile bio are very important.
So I put whatever link I want to drive traffic to in my bio. I would suggest you don’t use a homepage link here or your money site. I send them to the offer directly or a landing page for pre-selling like the screenshot above. I really want the best chance to convert traffic so I’m making it as easy as possible.
Settings: Best Practices
With Instagress there are a lot of different settings to chose from. Do what you think is best for you. This is what I have found to work the best from the tests I’ve done so far, so take this as my opinion and not a guarantee that your account won’t get suspended for being too aggressive. I’ve been playing with this tool on a few accounts and this is what I find to be the best approach.
Activity speed: They have 3 settings: slow, normal, and fast. Each setting has a different number of likes, follows, unfollows, and comments it will do daily. It’s always smart to run the tool on slow for about a week when you are just starting. Then switch to normal and let that run for a good 3 weeks. After a month of using the tool I flip the switch over to fast. This approach has worked fine for me on over 20 accounts and I have never got in trouble from Instagram.
It’s also important that you don’t use Instagram on your phone that much when this is running. Doing so can trip it up. I user my phone to post one image per account per day and I don’t have problems. I should also warn you that the first time you login it will cause Instagram to lock your account and send you an email verification link to click on to reset your password. Once you do this sync it with Instagress again and you will be fine. Just make sure you use a valid email addresses and you have access to them. I’ve never not had to reset my password when linking accounts with this tool.
Media source: This is how you want to identify targets. I always use hashtags. I’ve tried all the options but I always have seen the best results with hashtags. You should always test, but for the sake of this post I’m not going to get into the others because hashtags worked much better than the other options for me.
Media age: I always go after the newest posts. I don’t think it’s as effective to like or comment on posts that are very old. Going after the newest posts increases the chance that the person is still in the app and if they see your like or comment they are going to click over to see your profile.
Media type: You can specify if you just want to go after pictures or videos. I always go after both. I really don’t see a benefit of selecting one over the other.
Min. likes on media: I always keep this at 0. If you are only going after posts with a lot of likes and comments you will go unnoticed. But if you are commenting or liking a post that only has a couple the person is going to be interested in who you are, making it more likely that they click over to your profile to investigate.
Max. likes on media: Because of what I just mentioned about, I like to make the max 15. I like to go after posts that have a low number of likes. If you are liking the same picture that 300 other people are the person isn’t going to care who you are. It’s a wasted like.
Disclaimer: you need to test to see what works best for you. This is just my opinion based on my own tests, I’m hoping to hear some feedback and twists on this when members here test if out for themselves.
Comment
Have up to 100 comments ready to go and it will randomly post them on pictures that contain the hashtags you are targeting. There are two important things to remember here when setting this part up. Make sure you pick very targeting hashtags and stay away form general ones. Take some time to play around on Instagram and find targeted tags with decent number of volume. When you type them in on your phone it will show you how many of each one there is.
You also want to make sure that you make your comments are very general. You need them to appear relevant no matter what post they land on. You have no control. It might land on a guy or a girl. A young person or an old person. You never know. Make the comments fun, pleasant and very general. Sometimes just a smiley face or a thumbs up emoji is enough to get the person to wonder who you are and click on your profile.. people are curious by nature.
Follow
The follow settings in this allow you to follow people that follow specific accounts. Stay far away from celebrity accounts and very popular ones. Even the bots follow those accounts to seem legit. I look for accounts that I know the perfect customer would follow. It doesn’t matter if those accounts have 1,000 followers or 5,000 followers. I know they are all real and there is a good chance they will be interested in whatever you are selling.
For example, if you were promoting an e-cig online store, you would want to follow users that already follow e-cig stores and websites. There is a good chance they already purchase that product and they might be inclined to click to your website to see if you have better prices or a better selection.. makes sense right?
Unfollow
The unfollow option is simple. You just check off if you want the tool to unfollow people that you have followed that don’t follow back. You can only run the following or the unfollowing option, so to me it doesn’t matter. I actually don’t use this. For me to unfollow I’d have to stop following. I’m not trying to build a super powerful profile here. I simply want people to click to my profile when they see I liked their picture or left a comment on it. So I skip this option.
If your goal is to build a very active following then you can use this option to remove anyone that didn’t follow back. In terms of my needs, it isn’t worth it for me to have to pause the following just to unfollow. I follow people 24/7 and never switch into unfollow mode.
Tags
This is one of the most important parts to make the tool actually drive traffic. The hashtags you select influence this tool so having the right ones are mandatory. You can add up to 1,000 but keep in mind, you can only comment and follow so many people a day so I tend to do no more than 50 – 80 hashtags per account. I research this just like I would do keyword research. I think like the person I’m going after. I think about what they are going to hashtag in posts. Not just the obvious ones. I think about ones that a real person would type out.
I will search more obvious hashtags and then view the pictures and look for other tags that they included. This is a very easy way to get some great ideas. The success of this all plays off your hashtag selection. You aren’t going to pick winners the first time every time if you are in a tough niche. Some smaller niches that you work with often will be easier. Just keep trying new tags until you start to see the results you want. That’s what’s so great about this. All it takes is time, a brain and $10 a month. Use this smart and it can be your cheapest quality traffic source.
Locations
You can add up to 50 locations to target. Now I really don’t use this feature because I’m not promoting websites that are location specific. But if you are promoting a local business this is a great feature to take advantage of.
Here is an example: If a local pet store wanted to get more traffic to their website they would want to create an Instagram profile and jam it full of pictures of cute puppies and cats and other animals. Very funny pictures that will get people to start tagging their friends in.
In the profile bio you would want to mention something about having the best selection of pet food at the lowest price. Then just target every single user in a 15 mile radius of the store. You don’t even have to worry about hashtags or other things, because such a huge percentage of people have pets. Match location targeting with comments like “Come check us out for the lowest priced pet food in (city)” or “Tell your friends about us and be a hero.” As with most things in this business just use common sense.
Usernames
Everyone has accounts that they would love to mirror and this is your chance to target the followers of popular accounts in your niche. Plug them in here (you can add up to 50) and the tool will target the followers of these accounts for liking their posts and leaving comments.
Kind of like I mentioned above, I stay away from celebrity accounts because so many people follow them. I like to find really targeted profiles that have the followers that I would like to steal from them. You can add 50 so even if they don’t have huge followings you can plug them in and then switch out to new ones after you feel you have maxed them out.
Conclusion
As long as you create clever comments and like the right posts (by using smart hashtag targeting) there isn’t a limit to how much traffic you can attract from Instagram for just $10 per month with this. This is a great tool that’s good for a lot more than just trying to grow your followers. I will be ramping up my testing on this shortly with a nice twist I think will work well. I may write another post if it pans out as I hope.
Hope you guys enjoy the read and some of you find this useful. I’d love to hear some feedback and hopefully twists when some of you get around to tying it out. Until next time.. Ciao for now!
