My story of building a social enterprise around helping businesses beat Instagram’s algorithm
I am making myself vulnerable by telling this story. By making this story public my new business could get crushed by online trolls or it could (fingers crossed) be the tipping point of success…Or quite possibly it could stand in a forrest of content where there are too many other stories trying to peak over the canopy for anyone to notice my story.
But I guess it’s better to go down in flames then never try to take off, so here it goes. Before I tell you about how I got here let me tell you about what I built.
What is K-GROW?
K-GROW is a service that drives targeted traffic to brands’ Instagram accounts. We can help brands grow up to 3000 targeted followers per month for as little as $0.60 each. These are real followers who have opted in voluntarily because they love what you do.
It’s cheaper than Insta-ads, safer than auto-bots, and more transparent and easier than working with influencers and their talent managers.
K-GROW helps brands beat the algorithm, tell their brand story to more people, drive more traffic, and saves time and money. It’s great for businesses of any size but I think it’s most valuable for brands whom are looking yet to hit 10K followers. Once an account has 10K followers they can include click-through links in their Insta-Stories.
We’re so confident in our work that we offer a free 3-Day trial where we will get you 50 followers.
Now for the story on how I built K-GROW and what you can learn from my experience.
The Social Entrepreneurs Menu of Opportunity
About 6 months ago I started building a new business off the back of my existing boutique Instagram-only advertising agency. But I also wanted to make something that did more than just help our customers and make us money, I wanted to make a positive contribution to the world but I didn’t know where to start.
There are so many problems in the world, and I didn’t want to arrogantly believe that I knew what was most urgent or worthy of attention which is why I turned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDGs are a set of 17 Global Goals, which are measured by progress against 169 targets. The SDGs are officially known as “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” Achieving the SDGs by 2030 is not just the responsibility of governments but also of individuals and private enterprises. Looking through the SDGs is a great way for entrepreneurs to identify opportunities and threats. It’s also a good way to see where governments and NGOs are going to be putting their money.
I feel that all of these goals are important but two categories jumped out at me.
#5 Gender Equality
#8 Decent Work & Economic Growth
But how could an Instagram advertising agency like us contribute towards these goals?!
First, I looked at the industry I operate in; I knew that people wanted to grow their Instagram accounts; that Community Management (liking/commenting/following) worked to grow Instagram accounts because we had 3 years of experience using it successfully to grow our clients’ accounts; and I knew that all the automated”bots” had been shut down by Instagram. But the demand to grow Instagram accounts remained because Instagram’s algorithm is a mystery to most, and this has meant follower growth has slowed for almost all but the largest brands on the platform.
There seemed to be an opportunity for us to expand and refine our existing service of growing Instagram accounts for brands. But how to link this opportunity with the two SDGs that resonated with me?
Getting to an idea
I did some research and found compelling arguments for getting women into the workforce in developing economies, but also uncovered some of the barriers to this happening such as women’s role in unpaid domestic and care work.
I then thought that maybe we could train women from developing countries to do community management (liking/following/unfollowing) on behalf of branded accounts by using their mobile phones.
This would mean that they could work from wherever and whenever they had spare time. Such a strategy would grow clients’ Instagram accounts while providing flexible employment for women who greatly need it. A Win/Win for all.
An idea is one thing but making it happen is another
Something I never normally do is promote our business or ask for help. This blog is only the second time I’ve done so, the first time was applying for a SOLVE grant from Atlassian to pursue this idea. And because of promoting ourselves through SOLVE we were found by Kiteka, the first all-female, all-mobile digital outsourcing network. Kiteka enables female entrepreneurs in Uganda and beyond to access the global digital economy by providing smartphone technology, training, and connections to international businesses in need of intelligent digital outsourcing.
Kiteka are the perfect partner. They have the knowledge, experience, and network of women from developing countries like Uganda. While we have the proven strategies and techniques to guarantee follower growth on Instagram.
Turning an idea into a functional business
Over the last months we have used Google Sprint methodology to design our service offering; worked with a software engineer in Nepal to design our processes in the back of house to make sure our clients are well looked after and our team is clear on what needs to happen and when, and we have worked together with Kiteka to train a team of 10 ladies to use the strategies and techniques to deliver our clients targeted Instagram followers.
At the start of training all of the ladies had finished highschool in English (the national language of Uganda) but none of the ladies had Instagram, and few could locate Australia (where our main office is) on a map. But within 2 weeks of intensive training, and another month spent working on growing accounts each of the ladies had managed to grow at least 1000 targeted followers in four weeks for an account we had given them. They had learned not just to use Instagram but how to scan peoples profiles and content to identify whether they fit the desired target audience or not.
Our partnership with Kiteka has been great success so far; the ladies have enjoyed the work; they have delivered consistent results for the test clients they have worked on; and their new flexible jobs that are fairly paid has already helped the ladies in ways we could not have imagined.
For example, one of the ladies in the group was very excited after her first month of working with us because she had earned half the amount she needed to pay for her young daughter to attend university for a year, something she could not afford until this point. And she had earned this money in her spare moments between her unpaid work being a mother, a sister, a daughter, and a friend.
Another lady in the group even chose to continue growing followers for a client while she was in hospital recovering from giving birth! She was happy that she could make some extra income to provide for her family while she was away from home.
This shows not just the dedication of the ladies on our team but how much they value the opportunity given to them, and how having flexible and fairly paid work is the gateway to generational change.
The struggle is real
Since finishing training the ladies I’ve been going through my contacts and asking for introductions to business owners and brand managers whom may find K-GROW beneficial. I’ve had some luck, there are a few ongoing conversations, but I need more leads to businesses that we can help!
So now it’s time to go public…
Can you please help me?
I need to accelerate this project. We have 10 women trained and I would like to have them all employed with 2 clients each by the end of March (that’s 5 weeks away) so I need 20 active clients. If you believe in this story, and you believe that K-GROW is not just a feel-good project but also a valuable business service then I have two questions for you:
1. Is K-GROW something you could benefit from at your work or
businesses? If you’re at all curious to find out how we could help
you then please message me: hello (at) kgrow.co
2. Can you think of two friends of yours who work in a position that
might be suitable to use K-GROW? If so, could you please introduce
me over email to them? I’m on hello (at) kgrow.co*
That’s it! If you have any thoughts or questions please leave a comment or email me. There’s also more info over at our website https://kgrow.co/ Thanks for reading to the end :)