How to gain thousands of engaged Instagram followers with Fiverr
Stop buying fake followers, and start enticing real people.
I just finished a great book called The Go-Giver. In it, a business mogul reveals his secret to his mentee. The message is simple:
“Typically, the more successful [people] are, the more willing they are to share their secrets with others.”
As a social media manager, my secret to growing my personal Instagram from 0 to almost 4,000 followers, as well as growing my clients’ accounts, has been using the crowdsourcing gig website Fiverr.
I do this for a living, and have accelerated the growth of five clients who’ve decided Instagram is a platform they want to own. (Clients: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
IG can be an incredibly lucrative mechanism to attract new customers, build brand awareness and convert sales. But, building a base is a huge challenge. There is so much competition amongst the app’s 700 million active monthly users, that it’s hard to break through.
Some people buy fake followers (including from sites like Fiverr) to make their account look successful. But, fake followers do the opposite. They make your profile appear illegitimate because of low engagement. People with social media savvy can sense fakes, and sites exist that show what percent of a person’s followers aren’t real.
Effectively using Fiverr, on the other hand, can grow your account, and help you execute on your objectives.
Here’s an overview of how it works, with detailed steps below.
- Sign up. Visit Fiverr.com, and find an Instagram Marketer.
- Do your research. Send the marketer you choose a list of similar profiles to yours, hashtags you use, and also places relevant to your customers.
- How it works. The marketer follows and engages with (comments and likes) individuals following those similar profiles, posting with those hashtags, and posting in those places. In turn those individuals may visit your account, and if they like what they see, follow you. It’s a sort of “followback conversion.” The marketer then usually unfollows the individuals who didn’t follow you back, and in some cases unfollows them even if they did.
Disclaimer: some people feel following and unfollowing people is unethical. While I respect their opinion, Instagram is a really competitive marketplace, and sometimes it is necessary to use tools to help you reach your business goals. In my opinion using Fiverr is like drinking a protein shake after working out. You’ve done the hard work of creating engaging content (working out), now supplement it with a marketing strategy (protein shake).
Still, Fiverr alone will not boost your account. You must make high quality content to publish on Instagram. Moreover, followers are an empty statistic. So are likes. What matters more are your goals for using Instagram. My personal account goal is to entertain people and document my life. Often, my clients’ goals are to help their customers and in turn, sell more of their products, and raise brand awareness.
Finally, Instagram may not be the platform for you. It’s best for visual industries like fashion, food and fitness. If you prefer writing to photography, a platform like Medium may be better for you, have less competition, and thus higher potential for growth.
With that, let’s walk through the three step process in more detail.
1. Visit Fiverr.com, search “Instagram Marketing,” and choose a professional to market your account.
After testing a handful of people, my preference is Max Pauwels. Max runs a successful Instagram account. His service effectively gains you real followers for an affordable price. The people who’ve followed my account and those of my clients are engaged, and often like and comment on our posts. Occasionally they also purchase what we’re selling. You can find him on Fiverr here, and for a discounted price on his new company site mysooty.com.
If you sign up on mysooty.com and enter the code “GrowYourGram,” Max will give you 15% off your purchase.
I’ve also worked with Vasily. His service is effective, however he follows up to 6,000 people in order to attract them to your account, which in turn makes your account look less valuable. Still, accounts I’ve left under his supervision have grown by thousands of followers.
Then there’s SocialSolutiion. He grew one client’s account by approximately 1,000 followers, but neglected to unfollow roughly 500 or so random people who we had no interest in following long term. Recently, I messaged him, and he fixed the problem. I would consider working with him again.
2. Do your research
You’re going to submit a four-part report to your Instagram marketer. It’s going to detail.
A) Your username and password
B) Similar users (most important step)
C) Hashtags
D) Places (if necessary)
A) Your username and password
Yes, you will give him or her your credentials so that the marketer can log into your account. It is secure. If you want to make it extra safe, change your password. You can change it back when the promotion is over.
B) Find similar users (most important step)
Now that you’ve found your ideal hashtags, it’s time to find related users. In many cases, especially if you are a business, these other accounts may be your competitors. For example, with the retail store I work with (Cry Baby Ranch), I decided to find other clothing stores that were both in our same western wear niche as well as stores in a similar geographic area — a shopping district called Larimer Square in Denver.
These were the similar accounts that the owner of the store and I came up with:
@rockmountrw @savannah7s @redfordranchstyle @tasha_polizzi @ddranchwear @maverickwesternwear @westernlifestyleretailer @cowgirlstylediaries @rodeovogue @cowgirl_kim @alliefalcon @westdesperado @boot_barn_official @cavenders @cowgirlmagazine @originalcowgirlclothing
These accounts even include brands like Tasha Polizzi and Double D Ranchwear, whose products we carry in our store.
If you’re a business you probably know who does similar work to you. If you want to find more similar businesses, simply navigate to a similar user’s page, and tap the arrow next to the blue “Follow” button or white “Following button.” That will pull up “Suggestions for You.” Put those similar users in the report you send to your marketer.
C) Find your target hashtags
If you haven’t been using hashtags on your Instagram posts, then start. They’re a great way for you or your business to get noticed, and increase engagement on your publication. You spent all that time taking a photo, editing it, and writing a caption. Now do the final leg work, and include up to 30 relevant hashtags.
For the research you’re going give to your marketer, find 20–30 relevant hashtags. For example, on behalf of my client Cry Baby Ranch, I sent these:
#larimersquare #westworld #westernwear #westernstyle #cowgirlchic #westernjewelry #cowgirlfashion #rodeostyle #rodeofashion #cowgirlstylediaries #cowgirlfashion #thiscowgirllife #westernchic #denverfashion #denverfashionblogger #cowgirlstyle #cowgirloutfits #denverliving #denvercolorado #dnvrcolorado #flashesofdelight #madeinamerica #shoplocal #vintagewestern #instafashion #fashionmagazine #whatstrending #crybabyranch #countrywestern #ontrend
These hashtags include searchable terms with small, medium and large contributions. They also include information about specific and more general places (#larimersquare and #denvercolorado). Finally they’re targeted at both the general fashion industry (#whatstrending) and the niche market we occupy (#westernchic). The hashtags I sent are often ones that I use in the posts themselves.
Want to know how to find great hashtags that will increase your engagement?
Check out this video.
D) Places (if necessary)
Finally if you are a local business or think that people in your vicinity will be especially attracted to your page (perhaps because you promote tourism or a specific lifestyle), then add a report about places.
For example, SocialSolutiion tells the following story:
I recently had a client come to me who had a go kart race track that he wanted to market on Instagram. So, we figured out one of their target audiences is families. We started to look at what those families did for fun in that area. We found that they enjoyed…an indoor surf company called Provo Beach Resort . This… company had a geo location tag on Instagram, and when you click it you can see all the pictures that people have tagged there. This location tag can be used by us marketers to target everyone who posted a picture on Instagram and tagged it geographically.
Social Solutiion then enticed people who’d posted at Provo Beach Resort to visit the go kart track.
If you want more information on specifically thinking like an Instagram marketer, you can download “Instagram Target Market Research” from SocialSolutiion by clicking this link.
3. How it works
Once you send that report to your marketer, he or she will log onto your account. Then they will engage with people who’ve used those hashtags you sent, are following the users you mentioned or visit the places you noted.
For example if you submitted a hashtag like #DenverColorado, the marketer will like a ton of photos from today of people who posted with that tag.
Or if you suggested the user @tasha_polizzi, the marketer will follow approximately 200 people who are following that account. The hope is that in turn they will come to your page, and like what you have to offer.
Finally, if you suggest a nearby similar place, the marketer will comment on photos people have recently posted there. In turn, they may come to your page and see that you offer a similar service that they want to support.
Yes, the marketer probably uses a bot. The ethics of this have been discussed at length in this article by TimG, who also shows you how to set up your own, if you are familiar with coding or want to learn.
For those of us who have no interest in coding, go ahead and use the marketers on Fiverr such as Max.
That’s it!
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Special thanks to Cody Brown for editing, and Steve Campbell at The Ascent for supporting this publication.
