How to get suggestions on instagram

How to become Instagram suggested

Last night I put down my phone at 9:30pm. I had a call earlier that day with David Taylor, my productivity coach, and he helped me discover that being on my phone until late at night was one of the factors causing me anxiety and sleeping problems.

So no screens one hour before bed!

Before switching my phone off, I took a screenshot of my followers and growth metrics:

Then, next morning, I woke up at 8AM, feeling fully rested, and after my morning routine, I checked my phone. I was astonished to see this:

I thought this to be unreal! This meant that I grew 1,000 followers overnight, from 66,000 to 67,000, almost 100 followers per hour.

I've seen many people in my industry achieve that same spike of growth in the same period. Which means that this phenomena is not unique to me. We must be connected by the algorithm, and that boosts some of us to get more followers.

The only way this kind of linking can be possible is due to the "Suggested for you" feature.

You may have noticed that when you follow someone, a window drops down, suggesting you similar accounts.

To find out if you are suggested on other people's accounts, you need to look from a completely unbiased account. I have an account with 0 posts, 0 followers and 0 followings to check such things.

Turns out that I am being suggested on many big pages now:
@thechrisdo (297k) followers: I'm number 3.
@thefuturishere (218k) followers: I'm number 3.
@dainwalker (71.5k) followers: I'm number 1.
@tomrossmedia (31.1k) followers: I'm number 1.
@creators (351k) followers: I'm number 8.
@instagramforbusiness (1.7M followers): I'm number 52.

And I'm being shown on many many other accounts as well.

Funny thing is that you only see suggestions you don't follow yet. So if someone decides to follow @thechrisdo, but they already follow his #1 and #2 recommendation, then I will be shown on the #1 slot (instead of the original #3).

If you imagine this over a longer time period, what happens is when someone from outside of this "bubble" follows any one of us, sooner or later they will end up following all of us.

There are some dangers to this though. I see many people just following me without engaging with my content (no likes, comments, etc.).

They don't even find me through my content. If they don't regularly consume content like mine, I will have a hard time showing up on their feed, thus my engagement (likes, etc.) will not increase with this huge influx of followers.

This changes a few things about my Instagram strategy, and I will update you once I figure out the best way to increase engagement and story views coming from these followers. Because if they don't engage with anything and don't even see my content, this whole thing is pretty much worthless...

But let's talk about the first step for now. How to become a suggested account.

If you search for this on the internet, you will find all kinds of answers, and as Instagram is constantly changing the machine learning algorithm, it's hard to tell what the current situation is.

I'm going to keep this very simple, and only share things I have observed or things confirmed by Instagram.

What accounts get suggested?

Accounts with similar audiences.
Related accounts (friends on Facebook – if the account is linked).
Accounts that engage with each other.
Accounts in a similar niche (due to #1 – having similar audiences).

So, now the actionable part. How can you be a suggested account?

First, make sure this feature is turned on for you. It's turned on by default, but here's how you can check it:

Log into your account ON DESKTOP.
Click on Edit Profile.
See if you have Similar Account Suggestions enabled (checkbox).

Be careful, if you turn this off, no account will show up on your end, but you won't show up on other accounts either.

It's like a button for scarcity vs. abundance mindset.

Once you have that, do these:

Link your Facebook Profile with your Instagram account.
Add the people you want to show up on as friends (hopefully they accept your request).
Start engaging with the accounts you want to be suggested on.
This will help IG understand the connection, and
Maybe get a few new followers for you, thus build your audience of similar people. (See #1 on the first list.)
Start promoting the accounts you want to show up on. Help them grow, send them your followers. Again, this helps Instagram understand the similarity between the two audiences.
Use similar hashtags to what they're using.

This is a long process, but if you are consistent, you will see results like this one day:

Yup, that's 1,700 followers yesterday. What's more exciting is that I wrote this article first as an email to my newsletter subsribers on May 1st. And since then I grew 50k followers in 2 months, and the more consistent I am with posting, the more followers I get.

Whenever I stop posting for a few days, the follower influx starts to decrease a little bit, and I think it's because Instagram starts to slowly reduce how high I rank on other accounts (among other factors like not getting shared by others and not showing up on the Explore feed).

So one thing is to get there, the other is to stay there. Good for creators is you have to do the same thing to achieve both. Keep posting content for your audience on a regular basis. The more often and more relevant content you can share, the higher you will rank on other accounts.

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See the best Gumroad alternatives here

How Does Instagram Know My Friends and Who to Suggest?

With the rapid growth of social media and the internet, privacy may seem like a dwindling concept today. People are sharing almost everything on social media, from their recent vacation to what they had for breakfast that morning; we’ve gotten more and more used to everyone knowing about everything we do.

But how exactly do these suggestions work? Social media apps are improving with these suggestions every year, even detecting and suggesting people who don’t seem connected to you on any other social media. While your inner circle of active friends is easier to detect, as your social media and sharing frequently involve them, it gets more complex as it reaches the edges of your social circles.

How Do Suggested Friends Show Up?

There’s no need to worry – social media is not stalking you everywhere you go, or is it? Rumors have sprung up in recent years of Facebook and other apps tracking users’ locations in correlation to others and using that to suggest potential friends – but for this article, we’ll assume that the developers are just getting better at making the algorithms. The algorithms that work toward providing you with fresh and relevant friend suggestions take numerous factors into consideration, including:

Linked Social Media Accounts – Since Facebook owns Instagram, it does not come as a surprise these two social media apps are tightly intertwined. If you friend somebody on Facebook, they will frequently appear as a suggestion on Instagram soon afterward. Similarly, if you follow someone on Instagram, they will often appear on your Facebook friend suggestions.
Phone Contacts – Instagram will also use your phone’s contacts to make friend suggestions. When you link your contacts to your Instagram account, your contacts who have connected to Instagram will suggest them as potential people for you to follow. Even if you don’t have that user in your contacts, they may have you in theirs.
Search History – If you recently searched for someone on Instagram and spent time looking at their profile without following them, they will appear as a suggestion later. The algorithm also considers time spent on their profile, linked pictures, and other factors here.
Hashtag Use – If you use many of the same hashtags as someone else in your posts, and those hashtags are niche enough, they will likely appear in your suggested friend list.
Mutual Friends – Instagram often suggests you follow people with many mutual friends. The more mutual friends you have with a person, the more likely they will appear in your list of suggested friends.

Some computer algorithms have become so good that it seems like the program is stalking you. In terms of social media as a profit-hungry industry, they’d be likelier to stalk information for marketing purposes than a helpful feature like friend suggestions.

How To Access Friend Suggestions

How do I see my suggested friends, though? Well, there are two easy ways to check Instagram’s latest recommendations for you:

Find “Suggested for You” In Your Feed:

Log in to the Instagram mobile app. Then, tap on your Profile icon in the lower right corner.
Select See All in the discover section.
Or, you can click your Following list and scroll to the bottom.
Click on Find People to Follow.
Scroll through the list to discover friends’ friends, your Facebook friends, and other recommendations.

Find People

If you follow either method outlined above, you should be able to see a list of users that Instagram suggests you follow. New suggestions occasionally appear as Instagram improves its algorithm and picks up more of your social circles. On the top of the Discover People page, you’ll have the option to connect your Instagram account to other social media accounts or your phone contacts for Instagram to provide you with better and more relevant suggestions for who to follow.

To see which one of your Facebook or phone contacts is on Instagram without waiting for them to be suggested, you can navigate to the Contacts tab on the Discover People page.

On this page, you’ll see the total number of Instagram contacts. You can even follow them all at once. If you’ve already requested to follow them or are already following them, you’ll see “Requested” or “Following” next to their names.

How to Disable Friend Suggestions

If you dislike this feature, don’t worry, there is an easy way to get rid of it. Visit a web browser (this isn’t an option in the app) and do this:

Navigate to your profile on the bottom right.
Tap on Edit Profile near the top of the screen.
Uncheck the box next to Similar account suggestions. Then, Submit.

You can also manually delete suggestions. Do this:

Find the Suggested friends section in your Instagram feed. Then, tap the x in the upper right corner of each friend.
Tap See All to view all your suggested friends.
Tap the x next to each suggestion.

Instagram’s goal is to keep you interacting with people so your suggestion list will populate again. But you can delete the people you don’t want to befriend.

What Does Instagram Know About You?

Because there are so many questions regarding friend suggestions in social media, it’s essential to understand what information the company collects when you agree to their Terms of Service. Located in Instagram’s Privacy Policy, we can learn a few things about what this site is actually tracking and, therefore, better understand Friend Suggestions.

There is a lot of conjecture on how Instagram suggests friends who aren’t even in people’s contacts. People you don’t get along with and haven’t spoken to in a very long time. So, it’s normal to be weary about what information Instagram collects.

You probably already know that Instagram collects your name, email address, and contacts because it asks for them when you initiate service. But Instagram also gathers information from related companies (like Facebook) to enhance user experience, and it collects information about your friends and their activities too. This could explain why you see the incredibly odd suggestions that you do. For example, if your friend on Facebook tags, likes, or comments on someone’s Facebook post, then they comment on your Instagram post, Instagram may suggest that person as a friend.

The company also collects information about the device you’re using. So, if you have two separate Instagram accounts, the company may see the friends on one account and suggest them on another. This could explain why you have eerily accurate suggestions on a completely unrelated account.

Check Instagram’s Privacy Policy for more information about what data the company is actually collecting about you to learn more.

The Privacy Question

Is Instagram stalking us and who we socialize with, or are they just trying to make our lives easier? Sometimes it seems too coincidental not to assume that Instagram is, in fact, using your location or some other method to suggest friends. For example, if you go to a cookout and meet a friend of a friend, they’ll likely show up as your suggested friends within a matter of days.

Either way, the suggestions are a nice, convenient feature of Instagram that allows us to check out new people to follow. They can even help you expand your social circles if that’s your goal! If you do not want Instagram to show you these suggestions, or if you don’t want to appear in other peoples’ suggested friends, you can even simply turn this feature off.

Share your opinion on this in the comments below.

How to start a business on Instagram from scratch and get real results - Marketing on vc.ru

Writing about the promotion of social networks is a thankless task. And not because there are now more experts than customers - just the speed with which the platforms roll out updates kills all romance.

130 781 views

And everything would be fine, I would work quietly further, but somewhere between the analysis of the next account and communication with a marketer on Facebook (by the way, were you also offered such a unique opportunity?) I realized one important thing. The problem of most entrepreneurs is in a fragmented picture.

They read bloggers, brand articles, watch free webinars, save posts with snippets of information, and test everything they see. Pieces, without understanding the basics, without a system.

And yes, tests are good. But strategies need to be tested - concepts and tools within the framework of these strategies, and not just the next "finds" of information gypsies.

Therefore, here I share a step-by-step launch and promotion system. Everything is as it is.

Developments went through fire, water and a couple of dozens of trials in real businesses. They will come in handy for entrepreneurs who are just entering Instagram, and for those who have already managed to screw up with bots, cheats and masslooking.

In general, I will write briefly and to the point. Get comfortable. And if anyone needs it later, extended information can be taken in PDF.

Strategy

Everything always starts with a strategy, even shopping. What can we say about business?!

But!

Before the strategy, you should have a clear understanding of the audience (oh my bastard, I wrote this) and defined promotion goals. With goals, I'm sure everything is clear, but with people it's harder. Businesses need to find those who will willingly leave their money with them. But is the one who pays always the initiator of the purchase?

Does a big and busy politician himself choose gifts for his ladies? Or is he looking for a place for dinner? And does mommy overwhelmed with duties look out for handmade gliders herself?

No.

Wives, girlfriends or even helpers come to the politician with their requests; to mom - the daughter comes and points her finger at the account in which you need to order something.

Therefore, before defining your audience, ask yourself a couple of questions:

Who pays for your product or service.
Who makes the purchase decision.
Who influences the choice and to what extent.

And now the strategy

It should grow on the overall marketing strategy and be tightly tied to the sales plan.

There are three basic scenarios that you can promote on Instagram today, adjusting any of them to fit your reality.

Development of a full-fledged blog, a community of people with the same interests

These are always accounts with a useful component. Regular posting and high-quality content are important here - tons of unique photos and engaging texts - to keep the interest of the existing audience and attract new subscribers. Focus on organic reach and all the perks that go with it.

The option, you understand, is not simple and definitely not cheap.

Creating a showcase - posting if necessary

When there is something to say, something to show and something to share. In this version, the focus is not on the community, but on a quick result.

We put ads on each post and control the volume of traffic, coverage, recognition, interactions, responses to invitations, sales, and so on.

The strategy is suitable for businesses that simply have nothing to write blogs about - developers, sales of special equipment, transportation - or those who do not have a budget for a constant flow of content.

Combined version

Keep a blog, gather an interested audience around it, and advertise some of your publications to enhance the effect. Here are the results of content boosting we received in a travel blog about Italy:

RK for involvement even for a couple of bucks gives excellent results Marina Velitchenko

OK, we have chosen a strategy, created a business account, let's move on to the settings.

Preparing page

In Instagram, the system is important.

The system is the parts that work together in a large mechanism.

Therefore, everything influences the process and the final result of promotion.

Normal design, competent filling of information, use of all the tools that Instagram offers - pinned stories, TV, marks, branded content, and more.

All page elements should match in style with adjacent objects and send readers a magical vibe, just kidding - should clearly present the business. Be understandable and pleasing to the eye for a specific audience.

We all like to watch beautiful accounts, and even more so to buy from a business that has not stinted on a normal brand packaging. Personally, I just love the @petroglyph_water page.

Conciseness, naturalness and "wild" atmosphere permeate every element - from a brief description of the page to the style of photo processing and truly live content.

Two short sentences in a header, but how catchy

When not just pink and blue presets from the network, but normal author's processing of photos in the same style

I will not describe how to correctly fill in the account description or set tags here - everything is in the document. But let's talk about content and its design.

Content

Promotion does not happen without a thoughtful content plan. Even if you or your copywriter are truly brilliant, there will come a time—in a month or three—when the ideas run out, the showcase products run out, and you still need to go on air regularly.

For these purposes, they are working on a strategic content plan. Not just a set of ideas from the Internet, but a sales system through text. Make a plan at least a month in advance. Ideally, three to six months. How to do it correctly, I already wrote on vc.ru.

What to publish

Many things. Who needs ideas - a lot of ideas - for content, write to me, I'll give you huge collections. But the main thing is that all these posts should be positive. As Anketologist reports in one of the latest studies, Russians have already formed their own feed and are accustomed to its appearance and effect. They see and want to see more positive things.

I would venture to suggest that people have enough problems and "pains" that someone is already pressing on in everyday life. In social networks, they want to relax. Give them that opportunity.

How often to post

It is not so important with what frequency, the main thing is with the same frequency. Every day, every three days... if once a week, then strictly once a week, on the same day. It is important. Failures in posting are fixed by algorithms and reduce organic reach.

Y - uniqueness of posts

And their naturalness. Real product photos sell better than polished stock photos. Galleries get less coverage, videos, on the contrary, get more coverage and charge live emotions, which is always good for business.

And unpacking videos from customers show the result even cooler, because they combine both social proof and motion, which our attention clings to more readily.

But all this must be unique, like the content on the sites, in order to be properly indexed and get more impressions.

Visually

In brand style. Filters, of course, can be used, but this is already out of date. Endless tapes also sunk into ... somewhere very far away.

Now the trend is block design - publication of 9-12 photos from one photoset or location. I found the most beautiful example of this concept from @brunellocucinelli_brand.

You can play with color and shape, you can shoot your product on one - preferably inactive - background, as here:

You can get confused with the design, take multi-layered photos, alternate near, far and macro shots, or you can just make a neat look of a classic checkerboard. And you can never go wrong with light colors:

If this is very difficult, long, unbearable, order a set of neutral templates from the designer. It's not expensive, but it helps out when there are not enough product photos.

Optimization

In social networks, these are hashtags. The same search queries and keywords by which new subscribers will find you. Instagram is one of two social networks where these tags work to their full potential.

Would you like to see how it works? I give screenshots of the current project with a statue of literally a couple of previous weeks.

Want to be even tougher? The same 500-600 subscribers, and this is the buzz:

Geotagging

Here, too, everything is extremely simple - they work, and not bad. It is important to mark not cities or countries, but specific locations: maternity hospitals, art schools for children's goods; cigar clubs, expensive restaurants and country resorts for a luxury shoe manufacturer.

Aim consciously and you will be happy.

But Instagram notifies restaurant owners about marks. Vasya tagged the men's club in his Stories, a notification about Vasya arrived on the club's account.

Good way to track your audience, collect user generated content and even find advertising partners.

Stories

Instagram Stories. Why do you need them if you sell pizza ovens? Not everything is so simple here - Stories have ceased to be a toy for children and lifestyle bloggers, they are constantly turning into ... turning ... into a powerful marketing tool - Stories are viewed by more than 500 million users a day.

In the summer of 2018 it was 400 million, and in the fall of 2017 it was about 300 million, in 2016 it was 250 million. The pace is reactive, right?!

Let's see how they help you:

What to do with it all

Play . Now it is in trend. Screenshots of predictions, rebuses with emoticons, mazes, chains of questions with stickers - all this appeals to the audience and algorithms.
Telling stories . Literally. Stories are used for multi-page storytelling - such a consistent story on several spreads. You can write about anything in the storytelling format.
Put active links to products or other social networks. The feature is also available for accounts with less than 10,000 followers. If you confirm your page with documents - get a blue checkmark - you can put links even with 20 subscribers. This works for brands as well as people.
Run long advertisements . You can now start targeting from the Facebook account for Instagram Stories on videos 60-120 seconds long, instead of 15, as it was before.

Promotion

Promotion methods directly depend on the business goals. What do you want from social networks - recognition, subscribers, traffic to other resources, sales? What? Decided? Then choose from the list.

Paid and effective methods: targeting (works especially well by geo), bloggers, advertising in public, mailings in direct (a mini analogue of email marketing), native advertising on websites, in articles, in videos - everywhere, where the hands and imagination will reach.
Free , but slow options: optimized profile header, beautifully designed page, normal content, tags - hashtags, geotags, name tags - post relinking, external links to an Instagram account, cross-posting, guerrilla marketing, commenting, liking and following (preferably in manual mode), networking, contests, mutual PR and joint promotions.
Gray and frankly toxic methods of developing a subscription base: giveaways - they are also star contests with expensive gifts and a bunch of sponsors - activity chats, like-times, etc. d.

Useful resources

I left the full list of services in the document, here I will quickly go through the most useful ones. I’ll tell you about the little-known ones in more detail, so that you understand what to expect from them.

Microlendings

To group contacts and business cards if there is no site: Mssg.me, Taplink, Linkin.bio. Or a direct link to WhatsApp: https://wa.me/[your number].

In addition, a whole WhatsApp ecosystem is now developing, where you can assemble a convenient landing page, connect a bot and completely forget about other sites.

Official delayed posting

Facebook Creator Studio or Boompublic - Content can be purchased from creators. Business sets the price. There is a convenient editor, a calendar for planning, cross-posting to all social networks and, most importantly, safe posting on Instagram.

Crossposting

Content reposts from Instagram to other social networks are limited, so onemorepost.ru helps a lot. It knows how to distribute even old posts in auto mode to VKontakte groups, to most popular social networks and instant messengers.

Moderation

This is a pain for every SMM manager, and even more so for a businessman who manages social networks himself and often misses important questions in the comments. It is advisable to use the official Pages mobile app from Facebook, but it also often loses comments. There is a legal alternative.

Morecom.ru - collects and does not lose comments, sends them to VKontakte or Telegram. Works officially, approved by Facebook to use the Graph API.

The bot helps answer questions directly from Telegram, the answers fall exactly into the original comment thread, and do not fly apart. You can work with a team and multiple accounts.

There are extended statistics on the page and search by comments - by phrase, nickname, tags. Soon they promise push notifications and binding to Slack. Our sales team is very helpful.

Analytics

Livedune is the only Russian-speaking Instagram partner in the niche, and the most adequate in terms of price and features.

For target

Deep links or spacers to open ads directly in the Instagram app - as much as some colleagues may protest against these assistants, I recommend using urlgeni.us. Why am I there - Facebook marketers recommend!

Audience parsers

There is no way without them now. Pepper.ninja or InstaParserPro are good but expensive.

SERM - online reputation management

YouScan, Brand Analytics will show what was said about you, even if it has been removed.

Marketing base

Without the basics of doing business, no promotion will be successful, so here is a link to a free business development program. Joint project of Google and Sberbank.

I have everything.

Use, upgrade Instagram, get more sales. #instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks. As of April 2020, Mediascope estimates its monthly audience in Russia at 61 million people, 28 million of which check the feed daily. This is the fourth most popular social network, users spend an average of 30 minutes a day on it.

72% of users have an average or higher income level, 10.5% work in managerial positions. Instagram ads are the right tool to tell these people about your products and services.

WEB-Index Mediascope about the audience of Instagram

Instagram belongs to Facebook, so you can run ads here in two ways: through the Facebook advertising account and through the Instagram application itself. If you run ads through the Facebook advertising account, then you will have access to all the features of this tool: retargeting pixel, dynamic creatives, detailed statistics. When launched through the application, there are fewer opportunities, but the interface is simpler and it will be faster to launch ads. In this guide, we'll take a look at both tools.

Content:

Preparation
How advertising on Instagram works
Registering an account
Connecting a business profile
Creating and filling an account

Launching ads through the Instagram app
Promoting the performance of a publication 9020

We launch advertising through the account Facebook
Creating a campaign and choosing a goal
Setting up an ad group
Designing an ad

The ins and outs of Instagram advertising

To summarize

Preparation

How advertising on Instagram works

Advertising on Instagram is targeted. This means that you describe the target audience - its interests, geography of residence, demographic characteristics - and the social network looks for such and users and shows ads to them, and not to everyone in a row.

We have a step-by-step guide to working with Instagram for business. Let's recap the key steps you need to take to get your account ready to run ads.

Registering an account

If you plan to launch advertising through your Facebook account, then you may not need an Instagram account - a company page on Facebook is enough. But if you want to communicate with users directly on Instagram and show them more information about the company and products, then register an account for this.

You can create an account through an application on a smartphone or in a browser on a laptop or computer. To do this, you need mail, phone or Facebook account.

Registering an account in the app

If you don’t have the Instagram app on your smartphone yet, download it from the store:

Instagram on Google Play

Instagram on the App Store

to which you want to link your account. Enter the verification code, create a password, and enter your date of birth.

Registering an account in the browser

Open the registration page in the browser. You can log in to the social network with your Facebook account or create a new one. To do this, enter your phone number or email address, create a username and password. On the next screen, enter your date of birth, then the confirmation code that you will receive by mail or SMS.

The easiest way to use Instagram is from a mobile device, so we recommend downloading the app anyway.

Connecting business profile

A business profile is a commercial Instagram account linked to a company's Facebook page. It differs from the usual one in a set of additional features:

You can view statistics of publications and stories, detailed information on account subscribers: their geography and demographics, the number of subscriptions and unsubscriptions for the last week.
You can add information about the company: opening hours, address, phone number.
You can add a button for communication: when you click on it, the user will see your mail or be able to call immediately.

Compare what a regular profile and a business profile look like from the side of the account owner:

Regular profile

Business profile

burger menu in the upper right corner → "Settings" → "Account" → "Switch to professional account".

Instagram will clarify which category you belong to: "Author" or "Business". The first option is suitable if you are a blogger and develop a personal brand. If you have a company or a store, use the second one.

Specify which category your goods and services belong to, specify contact information. Then link your Facebook account and specify the business page that your Instagram profile will be linked to. If there is none, you can create it here.

Filling the business page will not affect the operation of the advertisement. It is worth paying attention to two points:

When creating a page on Facebook, indicate the correct category of your business, Instagram will use it for the business profile.
If you run ads through your Facebook account without an Instagram account, the system will use the cover and title of this business page in the feed, so it's better to choose a good avatar and name.

Creating and filling an account

Account name, avatar, name and description

Advertising can also be launched from an empty profile, but if a user becomes interested in an ad and opens a page with nothing on it, he may lose interest and leave. Therefore, we recommend filling in information about yourself - adding an avatar, name and profile description.

Pay attention to the avatar and title - this is what the user will immediately see in the feed of publications and stories. We recommend choosing those that will reflect the essence of your business, while being quite simple. For example:

Choose a suitable name - it will be displayed in the search under the account name. The name can contain up to 30 characters. It is worth adding keywords here: occupation, niche, geography and other characteristics that do not duplicate the account name. For example, “Land Law Lawyer” or “Fast Flower Delivery in St. Petersburg”.

Add a description for the account, it can be up to 150 characters long. Tell us what you do, add information about promotions and special offers, if necessary, indicate the hours of operation or the exact address.

A good description will help develop both the business account and the individual author. The account of the Keep Looking network is displayed one of the first on the request "Beauty salon". And the founder of the Generation Z online school develops a personal brand and tells why it is worth subscribing to.

First publications

If you have a new account, before launching an advertising campaign, place posts on a couple of scrolls with detailed information about goods or services, delivery terms, prices, and benefits. Show the product from different angles, share customer reviews.

These publications are needed to convince the user who went to your profile from advertising to buy your product, sign up for a service or order a service. So pay attention to the images, videos, and text you will be using.

In addition to posts, you can also post several stories at once and add them to Highlights, a feed of saved stories. Stories can be divided into groups, for example: product information, delivery information, reviews. Or a separate group for each category of goods or services.

For most products and services, it's worth bearing in mind that the easier it is for a user to get additional information about your offer, the better the ad is likely to work. The design of the profile in this regard works like a good landing page design - it does not convince by itself, but helps the visitor make a decision in your favor.

If you have a physical product, like Dodo Pizza or Boca furniture studio, tell us about it in the feed. If you have services, share cases, work principles or stories of employees like the Huge agency:

Dodo pizza feed

Boca furniture studio feed

Huge agency posts feed

As a result, you have an account with a suitable name, name and description, contacts are filled in, there are first publications and saved stories - it is easy for potential customers to understand what you offer and whether they are interested in it. Great, you are ready to start advertising.

Run ads through the Instagram app

If you have connected a business profile, you can run ads directly from the app on your smartphone. It’s convenient — it’s just a few clicks before the ad starts. On the other hand, there are fewer options available than when working with the Facebook account.

You can only promote posts and stories through the app that you already have in your account. So first post all the content you plan to promote. Please note that you can't promote IGTV posts right now.

Promoting the publication

Destination

Open the publication that we will use in advertising and click "Promote". If you are running ads for the first time, the application will tell you more about where you can send traffic: to your profile, to a website, or directly to direct. The first option is suitable if you want to attract new subscribers. The second is if you are promoting the site. The third is if you want to immediately engage the audience in communication, for example, so that they request a catalog.

Ivan's is an online course for students and recent graduates. On his Instagram account, he publishes useful materials on the subject of the course: potential students sign up, get acquainted with free materials, gain confidence and then pay for the course. The account has both native posts with tips and life hacks and commercial posts promoting products.

Ivan connected a business profile and filled in the feed:

On the one hand, advertising on Instagram for Ivan is an account development tool. So when promoting native publications, he specifies the profile as the destination: users see useful content and subscribe to the account. On the other hand, it is a source of traffic to the site. So in commercial publications, he sends customers to a landing page: users see an interesting offer and go to the site.

If you select a website as a destination, the application will pull up the address specified in the profile settings. Here you can also edit the call to action if you are sending traffic to the site. By default, it is "Details", you can choose another one, to do this, click on the small "Edit" link in the "Your site" item.

Select the appropriate text on the button and click Finish. Then - "Next" in the upper right corner on the screen for choosing a destination.

Room

Let's move on to setting up the audience that will see your ad. You can trust the algorithms and select the "Automatic" option, then the social network will look for users who are similar to the account's current subscribers. This is a convenient option if you have an organic and active base that is interested in your products and services - in this case, Instagram understands which users to look for.

If you don't have many followers yet, or if they follow you because of contests and not for your content, it's better to set up the audience yourself. To do this, select "Create your audience". Here you can specify the geography, interests, and demographics of your audience.

Specify the geography of potential customers in the "Locations" section. In the "Regional" tab, you can specify all the cities or countries that you plan to cover. In the "Local" tab, you can specify a specific address and the radius around it, from 1 to 30 kilometers. Convenient if you are looking for clients for a local business, such as a coffee shop or a beauty salon. Or if you have a limited delivery radius.

In the "Interests" section, in the free form, enter the interests for which you want to reach users. For example, "travelling", "cars", "raising children". Select the appropriate item, and the system will suggest similar interests.

Specify the age range and audience gender. For example, ads can be shown to women between 18 and 35 or men over 30.

Sometimes Ivan publishes entries that are aimed at readers from Moscow, and sometimes at those who live in the regions. When promoting different posts, it uses different geography settings. But interests usually do not change, its subscribers are actively interested in self-development, career, business.

"Places" is a mandatory section, "Interests" is an optional section. The application will tell you how many people match this set of descriptions. If the potential audience is small - usually less than 2500 users - the system will tell you that the potential reach is too narrow. Advertising in this case may be ineffective - few people will see it. To fix this, you can expand the geography and age range, or add additional interests.

Add a name and click "Finish" - the audience will be saved and you can use it for future campaigns.

Budget & Duration

Specify the daily budget for the campaign - from $80 to $20,000 - and the duration in days - from 1 to 30 days. low budget and short duration.

Ivan promotes each post from three to six days. He thinks so: less than three days is too short, the algorithm may not find the right audience. More than six days is a long time, the same people can come across the same post several times. And in the range from three to six, it is optimal: even if the algorithm shows campaigns to the same people, they will constantly see different content.

There are exceptions: if Ivan publishes a very important and viral post, or he announces a new product or event, then he runs the ad longer, up to 14 days. In this case, reach is important to him, and he does not worry about repeat impressions.

The campaign is ready to run. You can click "Promotion Preview" and see how users will see your ad in the feed, in stories, and in the "Interesting" section.

Add a PayPal card or account from which you will pay for advertising. Click "Payment", select a country and enter payment details. If you run ads from Russia, then keep in mind that the system will additionally charge VAT - 20% of advertising costs. That is, if the total campaign budget is 10,000 rubles, then in fact you will pay 12,000 rubles.

Click Create Promotion. The ad will go for moderation.

Promoting a story

Promoting a story works on the same principle — select one of the published stories, indicate the platform to which we want to lead customers, describe the audience, set the budget and send it for moderation.

You can promote a story that you have posted within the last 24 hours, that is saved in your Instagram Highlights or is archived. Open the story, click on the three dots in the bottom right corner and click Promote.

There are several restrictions when promoting a story:

You cannot promote stories with clickable elements: hashtags, polls, user marks.
Stories that may violate the rights of others, such as gifs or masks from the Instagram collection, cannot be promoted.
You can't promote stories that were published too long ago, the statute of limitations is about two years.

Tracking performance

You can track the results of your ads in the Promotions section of your profile page. For each promotion, the application will show the number of impressions, audience parameters, budget expenditure.

Launching advertising through the Facebook account

To launch advertising through the Facebook account, you need to set up a campaign, an ad group and the ad itself. At the same time, only Instagram must be specified in the placement settings of the ad group, then ads will not be shown on other sites. Let's go in order.

The subtleties of advertising on Instagram

Advertising on Instagram must comply with the same rules as on other Facebook sites. Here are a few more recommendations that the social network gives for setting up ads.

Use a separate image format for Stories ads

Don't use the same media for feed and story ads. Prepare a separate version of the creative with a 9:16 aspect ratio and use it for ads in stories. And for the ribbon, leave the standard rectangular or square image. Please note that if you promote the gallery through the Facebook interface, then the images in the feed can only be square.

Do not overuse text on creatives

Facebook has a negative attitude towards images, more than 20% of which are text. This can lead to the fact that ads will scroll more slowly and fewer users will see them. It is better to put the text in the description, and leave the image clean.

Consider the interface

If the image has text at the very bottom or top of the screen, the interface elements will overlap it: the profile icon on the top, the call to action on the bottom. To prevent this from happening, place them at a distance of 14-15% of the height from the top and bottom edges. If you are using an image that is 1600 pixels tall, back off 220-250 pixels.

Don't forget that the user can turn off the sound

If you decide to promote the video, don't forget that the user can view it without sound. If you plan to convey important thoughts with your voice, then duplicate them with subtitles so as not to lose such users.

Check your account statistics

See which of your posts get the most engagement: likes, comments, bookmarks. It is probably worth using such recordings for advertising - they resonate most with your audience.

Promote new products, services, and offers

Instagram promotion is a way to promote an upcoming sale, new product launch, or special offer. Advertising will help convey information about the new product to an audience that may be interested in it.

Don't delay when using video in Stories

A story is only 15 seconds long - don't put off showcasing your product or brand. If you use a long introduction, then some users may simply go to the next publications and not even figure out what you offer them.

Show, don't tell

Show users the product in action: how other people use it, what are the non-standard uses for it, tell how you work on it. Tell a story, not just describe the benefits of a product.

To summarize

Advertising on Instagram can be launched in two ways: through the Facebook advertising account and directly in the Instagram application.

Prepare your account for launching ads: add an avatar, description, website link, contacts. Post several posts that will help users get to know your offer better.

Switch your account to a business profile. To do this, you need to link your Instagram profile to a Facebook page. It will take just a few clicks, but additional features will open up: you can view statistics, add information about the company, and run ads through the application.

Only posts and stories that have already been published can be promoted through the app.