I don’t know if this was done before. I would like to get review of my instagram profile: @susonsjack (photography/travel niche). I am located in Berlin and post most of the pictures from Berlin and other cities in Germany. My profile analytics is HERE
I know that my content is not viral material even in my niche. I try to restrict my editing mostly with Lightroom and only jump in to Photoshop if I personally feel the need for it.
The actions performed/status of my account are as follows:
f/uf manually using my smartphone without any proxy or bots (50-100 limit in both actions per day).
Participating in engagement pods and powerlikes.
Hashtags never or rarely works for me.
I wasted so much money in growing my account (personal account manager, ebooks - all amateur growth strategies) and failed.
I have been featured in many big groups naturally for my content but never seen substantial growth in followers.
Feeling terrible waking up everyday seeing something like 10 new followers and 7 followers lost.
Foolishly waited to connect with brands thinking my account must have atleast 10K followers (worst tip from few of the ebooks I read).
This year, I would love to grow my account with the right strategies and collaborate with brands more (I am connecting with few brands who are interested to work with me).
What should I change or start performing in this brand new year to grow my followers, and make it as a business?
I am by no means a growth expert but I can review the content side of things. From the aesthetic perspective your feed is very cohesive, there is clearly a theme and style. I genuinely like it.
When you say powerlikes, what do you mean by that? You pay specific big accounts so they engage with your posts? You pay some service like fuelgram etc?
I have a pretty large personal account myself (54k followers), and I will say I’m in a similar niche and your feed is cohesive and very aesthetic, but I can tell right off the bat before reading your post that you’re in engagement groups and your likes aren’t organic. You shouldn’t really be buying powerlikes with a following that small IMO. If you were to follow me, you’d never get a follow back because one look at your account and I can tell it’s all smoke and mirrors. Focus on natural engagement. Engagement groups aren’t the end of the world, but powerlikes make your engagement rate like 30-40%. That’s super sketchy in my opinion. You likely have a 5-8% organic engagement rate. The goal should be to increase that. Ask questions in your captions, create a call to action, make your actual followers want to engage with you. Here is an example from my own account: https://www.instagram.com/p/BsX3sylg8VW/
Here is a friend of mine and competitor in your niche: https://www.instagram.com/ellvitz/
I’m sure some of his comments are from engagement groups but his likes are organic. When someone looks at his account, they see the same aesthetic visual, but a 10% engagement rate. It looks real, he seems more approachable. When the average person looks at your account they think “what the hell, why does he have so many likes but no followers?” and they’re immediately turned off. Tone down the fake engagement and focus on real engagement and people will see you as more approachable. Your content is great visually but there’s no story being told in the caption. The biggest things I notice with personal accounts is the ones that succeed tell a story. Here another example account, closer to my niche (travel/photography/dogs): https://www.instagram.com/briannamadia/
Look at some of her captions. Sure the posts are visually nice, but she’s truly engaging her audience and being vulnerable and personal. If someone views your profile for the first time, fake likes aside, and looks at your most recent post, what emotions do the caption invoke? How does the caption make them feel? Do they connect with you in any way based on that? Absolutely not. They will see no value in that post as it does nothing for them but look pretty. Content is king, and having a pretty feed is only half of the content. Your story and captions are equally as important in our niches.
Another friend of mine(similar niche): https://www.instagram.com/jeff.n.brenner/
His feed is gorgeous but his captions have questions and calls to action. He’s trying to connect with his audience. Your problem in my opinion is the disconnect between you and your audience.
Thank you buddy! I just use powerlikes from free telegram groups and I never used fuelgram or other paid services. Even the free powerlikes, I don’t over do it just as I didn’t want to risk my account.
Great profile Connor. First of all, thank you very much for detailed reply for my question. You are right, most of the big profiles and influencers have 5-10% engagement rate at the max. I started using powerlikes to hit explore and gain more followers. It did work great for the first four pictures and I gained more followers.
I was struck in that bubble now having around 30% engagement rate. The powerlikes doesn’t get me to explore page anymore and luckily I didn’t buy the powerlikes. I believe I have a good amount of loyal followers as in the first hour of posting, I get 300± likes from my followers. The struggle started that I was at a saturation and couldn’t get more followers or potential collaborations. As I mentioned, I read the wrong books and wrong advises wasted a lot of time restricting myself reaching out to collaborations.
Thank you for sharing your analytics. I see you do f/uf too. Do you use proxies or other services? Will be really thankful if you can shed some light!
No worries. To be honest I don’t think you can necessarily call likes from those groups “powerilikes”. I have experience using them myself and depending on the group it is mostly a wild mix of accounts, lots of them being secondary accounts with 100 followers with their sole purpose being giving out likes. Yes, lots of people use their real accounts to give out likes too but not that many are 100k+ accounts which in my vision are the ones whose likes can be called “powerlikes”. Unless you are lucky and have a telegram group with lots of big accounts in it?
Agree. The accounts I get likes from are kind of slave accounts with followers anywhere from single digit to 5k followers. It is not helping out much but boosts my hashtags to a certain level to gain more exposure.
Groups with powerful accounts are either very difficult to join or way too expensive.
Yeah, those groups help me reach the top for most hashtags too, but I feel filtering out those groups is very important. Some only give you junk level engagement. It takes time to find good ones.
