Surely not every journey can lead to success, some do and some don’t, even if you do everything you physically can to succeed.
So for the IG journey, when you’re building and doing all that you can, and not achieving your desired growth or scale, when do you decide to quit and move on to another strategy, method or service?
For instance, I’ve hit a point where I just can’t seem to get a following, and while my account is small, it just doesn’t give me the willpower or reasons to keep trying. After a few months of what I’d personally consider pathetic levels of growth, I may decide to quit. But, would you?
When do you call it a day and move on?
Edit: I dont mean with MP but just IG in general. I absolutely love this tool and am addicted to making it work, but feeling defeated by my lack of success, unrelated to the program.
I was having similar doubts about this whole process and instead of shutting down the whole operation, I started looking ways to reduce time and costs. So, I think it’s better to keep thing moving instead of shutting down. What I am trying to accomplish now:
Reduce the time I spend on IG by configuring repost and setting daily limits [1 hour in the morning, 2 hours in the evening, for instance]
Reduce costs by looking for cheaper proxy options + switching to 6-months MP Subscription
Keep myself busy with infrastructural issues, e.g. website, looking for affiliate programs, trying to understand how different platforms work, how to make more sales through your website, etc.
I was thinking of quitting after I tried to make sales to 10K followers and got nothing in return after a long wait. Now, I am just waiting these numbers to hit 20 or 30K and then I’ll try again [with fewer expectations]. In your case, I strongly suggest asking MP admins to make a TeamViewer session to check everything’s OK with your settings. Alternatively, you can DM me screenshots if you feel like it.
It’s a doggy dog world out here man. If you give up someone else is getting that piece of cake that you should have. IM is unstable if you are not 100% in it but hey what is not ??
That’s the beauty of it, people that give up are doing 9 to 5 that they don’t like and real boys are working hard. Don’t get me wrong I still do this 9 to 5 fuckin job , wright now I’m on my job doing night shift but dream is something else that I’m trying to achieve.
Believe me one thing never give up 100%. Every loss every account getting banned is another victory and another experience that is important.
Wow this is exactly what I’ve been doing for the past week with unbelievable results. Before I used to spend a lot of time writing captions and caring about to many factors, I simply had no time left to implement the things I knew that could improve my whole operation. I was sitting at 30 - 50 followers per day, but last week I’ve dropped all the bullshit, started to improve my targeting, my content, my hashtags, my engagement and got to 250 followers per day (55% follow back) after 3 days of work.
Now that I have more time I can think and observe better, for example I saw a new competitor in my niche that was pulling insane numbers, after some hours of examining everything about this competitor I kinda discovered his secret and even replicated it with amazing results (70% follow back rate). I know for sure that I would have never thought of doing what he was doing, even though it is so simple and makes so much sense. I feel that we have our heads too wrapped around certain things and we forget to take some time to analyze what the actual effects of our actions are, not just some numbers.
I feel that Instagram is still a really good place to be, now you just have to be better than the others, skill is definitely a major factor and that is a good thing for someone that wants to learn.
Do you guys think luck plays a big role too? Putting aside sources of followers, at least. Nailing down the timing and what not seems like a huge gamble.
Going based on others research about posting patterns, most viewed times to post photos, etc, never seemed to make a difference. The biggest thing I remember reading at and saying ‘holy shit this can’t be real’ was data published by some popular new media blog saying that posting an image at 2am on Saturday morning was the most popular time to get engagement. I tested the theory, knowing full well it was bullshit, and it turned out to be.
But anyway, there’s a lot of misinformation out there in terms of ‘what works’, because as you discovered @vir7 someone else had an odd method and it ended up working. I’m actually curious to see what it was.
I guess personally my biggest failure is finding sources that will follow back. I’ll give you a hint, I’ve started posting portraits of women, my own photography, which should get a decent return, right? I’m not an amazing photographer but I can’t say I’m as bad as some of the guys out there with 50k followers.
Ian,
As anyone here using MP can attest, luck has nothing to do with it.
Given that we are all using an automation software, that’s kinda given isn’t it.
I am assuming that you all went through this, ‘oh I will publish HQ photos and people will followback’. It turns out it doesn’t work like that. Cheesy, but you kinda create your own luck.
If we go back to the specifics, I am sure that you got excellent photography, but perhaps not the perfect sources/settings? Did you try other sources? Did you try switching between ‘follow the most recent followers’ and ‘follow user that interacted’? Do you see anything wrong with the settings of either of these sources?
If any role than it’s so small it’s not worth thinking about it, sure you might make a post that specifically speaks to a random guy that just happened to be online this very moment and he ends up buying your photos or whatever.
I am just getting started with MP but say I had spent months with it and tried different niches (not just one do or die niche), done my research, tried stuff and settings and not getting an increasing return I would move on for sure. There is a lot of ways to make good monies but I feel this could be one of the easier and less hard one, again I am assuming so far ;)…
I’m relatively new to MP. But when you consider the massive advantage the tool gives you over the poor knuckleheads doing everything manually, you’ve got some serious leverage.
Work faster, put it more on autopilot… set and forget. Fly under their radar… in time it will grow!
FB are scum. You need to push on and shove one up there kazoo.
Stay strong… learn, tweak your settings, keep going.
Remember the early days of email marketing, facebook, twitter, the days before we spam the hell out of that platform and make it’s engagements go to the ground. Users would click pretty much anything, because they don’t had prior bad experiences. I used to think that Instagram is already pretty much dead in term of real engagement, but I was looking in the wrong place. There are still hundreds of millions of users that have still not interacted with a brand, for them IG is the same as it was 2 years ago. When you follow such a user, it is viewed more as a friend request, a personal one, so the followback rates are insane. Find those oasis of organic engagement and farm them.
`[quote=“Salamouna, post:13, topic:2511, full:true”]
and how i can find those users ?
[/quote]
Each niche has its own type of users. Make a profile for each kind of user and think what are they doing on Instagram, if it helps think about real people that you know that could match a certain profile, go to their page and try to find some similarities that you can further exploit to mass target people like them.
For me it seems that people living in hot places surely love snowy landscapes, they always comment how beautiful they are. You should extrapolate this to other niches.
What would we normally do? Target the people that are already following other pages, but they are already getting spammed. It is still better than randomly picking users, but nowhere near as good as finding those “pure” users. You would still have to support your page with top notch content, but that should always be a priority no matter what.
That makes sense, I’ve tried targeting those users but fear they get spammed too much to the point of ignoring any comments (even more now that you can just like a comment without replying, that is a shot in the foot for engagement)
Anyway, thanks for your motivational talks, I’m not going to give up yet, just a bit defeated. Will have to do some serious analysis of my sources and try finding some smaller accounts that have higher / real engagement, and go after those users, and keep recycling those resources because it seems the big accounts just attract bots and spam.
@vir7 a week is a really weak sample size, but I’d definitely be interested in seeing some data over a larger sample.
As for OP, I’m still very new to MP and I have to say I’m loving it. However, I am very aware that this journey is a long one. You need to have patience and put the work in before you can even expect to see a ROI on your time and effort.
If you’ve been doing this for a year and working hard on it, and still not seeing results maybe you should give up. However I don’t think that is the case. Sounds like you’re having a doubtful / frustrated episode and are questioning yourself. Thats pretty normal for even the most successful people, and it’s sometimes necessary to go through these feelings.
@tom.loughlin90 It’s only been a few months on this account, so I’m not at that point yet, just frustrated. I absolutely love MP, it’s an amazing tool, and I don’t see any reason to stop using it. But yeah, good things take time. Part of my frustration is probably from jealousy of these other huge accounts that seemingly “don’t deserve it” (again, a creation of my own bad mentality) and lack of patience, both horrible traits to have
@ian looking at the big accounts can be frustrating…
Until you realise they’re not really doing anything you can’t do.
I can tell from comments you’ve made around the forum that you’re a smart guy. Apply that intelligence to beating the system.
Instead of trying to deliver art (or wonderful material) to the platform… think about what it wants (and deserves!!!)
Your average account owner on Instagram is half, and more often than not fully, brain dead. These are the sort of people who feed on manure…
So give it to them…
That’s why quotes about becoming wealthy, fast cars, expensive boats, tits, ass, and more tits light the platform up like a firecracker.
Who in their right mind looks at an account like @foundrmag and gets inspired? Not me. And certainly no one else with more than three brain cells.
But it’s a classic example of what rehashed quotes, dumb as sh!t pop psychology, and images of unattainable objects displaying obscene wealth do for the Instagram audience.
We’re all in the mouse wheel dude. But if you shovel in enough lowbrow manure, you’ll do well enough to buy some sneakers.
Think less. And instead, become efficient at shoveling shit (rehashed quotes, pop psychology, tits and ass) into the machine.
