I get this question asked A LOT: Should I be buying likes to push my post to the Explore page? If you made it this far with reading then continue, the next 5 minutes and 45 seconds will be a big Instagram eye opener for you. I even bet $100 that you won't regret reading this and if you do you got $100 to invest in buying likes....
( 5 minutes and 45 seconds to go, YOU CAN DO THIS)
Here's your answer:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
You NEVER EVER want to buy likes!! And let me tell you why, but first of all let me explain what 'buying likes' actually means for those of you who don't know
There's a shit ton of services that tell you that if you buy so called 'real likes' than you will hit the Explore page all the time and that the engagement on your account will skyrocket, these likes come 90% of the time from fake profiles and 10% from real profiles that you can just call fake as well because they're no better than a fake profile.... It's the biggest (my way of explaining 'BULLSHIT' ) in the world and this post will actually show you the exact reason why
(5 minutes and 21 seconds to go before you get your InstaDegree)
Knowing this let's continue:
This post will be split into certain sections which will be put together at the end but I just want you guys to get a basic understanding of how the algorithm works ⚙️
1️⃣st of all Instagram's goal is to keep their users as long as possible on the platform, for example when you click on a link in someones bio you'll notice that you're still on the Instagram platform even though you're on someone else's website.
So how does Instagram make sure their user stays as long as possible on the platform? It's pretty simple, Instagram tracks how much a user engages with an account, the more a user engages with a certain account the higher the account will end up on their news feed, because it shows Instagram that you like this page and it shows instagram that when you see more of this account's content you'll stay longer on the platform.
Besides that Instagram will also use this info to show the user similar accounts on the users explore page because the user showed Instagram that they like that type of content which makes Instagram display you similar accounts in order to give you (the user) the content you like so, you will stay longer on the platform. It all makes so much sense
Knowing this we'll move to the next section
(4 minutes and 24 seconds to go before you're THE #1 Instagram Expert)
2️⃣nd of all Instagram has a niche categoriser which means that when you start your Instagram account the algorithm will start tracking all your actions in order to categorise your account:
- what posts you comment on
- what posts you view
- what posts you like
- what people like your post
- what people comment on your post
- who you follow
- who follow you
- what type of content you post (this is calculated by their pixel calculator, so Instagram actually knows if you post a Lamborghini or a lipstick or anything)
- what type of captions you use
- what hashtags you use
- and a lot of other things
They use all this information in order to categorise your account and put you into a certain niche box, in each niche box there are 2 types of accounts:
- Instagram users
- Instagram influencers
These 2 types of accounts are put into the same niche box if they have the same interest, so if you're a luxury Influencer you want to end up in the luxury niche box in order to get seen by your targeted audience that's been proven to like luxury content
So what you want to be doing if you're an influencer:
- Like, Comment & view content within your niche
- Follow other influencers in your niche
- Post content in your niche
- Use hashtags in your niche
TFFFF, that makes so much sense
If you do this right Instagram will categorise your account in the niche box you want to be in order to get engagement from your targeted audience, because when your targeted audience (the users) starts engaging with your account your account will spread on the explore page of the niche you're in.
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3️⃣rd of all you want to be getting on the explore page, for a lot of people this is the most difficult part however as behind everything there's a certain formula you want to be using and it's pretty damn simple.
In order to hit the explore page and reach your targeted audience there's a few things you want to do/get:
- Get influencers in your niche to engage with your content, here's an example:
If you have a luxury account and you get liked by another luxury account that for example has 100,000 followers and 20,000 users that are actively engaging with that account, the post that got liked by that account will show up on the explore page of their 20,000 active users (wow makes so much sense, I know right), however if the account for example likes 1,000 post per day of luxury accounts those 20,000 people will get divided by those 1,000 posts which means your content will only get shown to 20 people hence you want to get as many accounts in your niche to engage with your content so your content shows up on the explore page of as many people in your niche as possible.
Further reading: https://www.androidtipster.com/buy-instagram-followers/
Now you got on the explore page however, there are so many posts the user can choose from so you want to be using viral content, you might think now, well Sem... how the f*ck do I find viral content, again there's a formula and it's really simple:
- Find a page in your niche that's already performing really good then calculate the average likes of their recent 12 posts, so for example if 12 posts got a total of 94,547 likes you do: 94,547 likes/12 posts = 7,878 likes on average, now put 30% on top of that so 7,878 x 1,30 = 10,242 likes... Find all pictures with more than 10,242 on that page because your targeted audience already showed you that they like that picture more than the other pictures which gives you a higher chance of going viral ( I know, makes so much sense again
(1 minute and 56 seconds, you're almost there)
NOW let me put this all together so you understand why you should never buy likes
The average account you get likes from when buying likes has 100 'followers', ZERO engagement, super inactive, like 10000 posts every day which causes them to be categorised in 100's of niches because they like so much different content in different niches every day... Just to come back to all the sections above and put it all together:
1st: Getting likes from fake accounts makes the categorisation of your account much harder for Instagram because basically you're f*cking up their categorisation algorithm which causes you to bundle above all these niche boxes and you don't get to reach your targeted niche box you want to be in to get engagement with your targeted audience...
2nd: You'll never ever hit explore page by using these likes and here's why: These accounts have ZERO active users and they like thousands of posts every day, so lets say they do have 2 active users and they like 5,000 posts every day which means your post will be on 2/5000 = 0,0004 people's explore page IFFFF they are in the same niche box as you which they're not so just equals 0,0000000000000000000001 people....
3rd: it hurts your goodness score because Instagram tracks EVERYTHING, Instagram literally stalks you... Instagram actually knows when an account is fake and it also knows when you're receiving fake likes which causes your goodness score (score that gets calculated by instagram by tracking all negative and positive activity data on your account) to go down drastically because Instagram doesn't like fake likes....
So what does it mean if your goodness score goes down, it means that Instagram will favour other accounts in your niche over yours, which causes that the audience you actually want to target to end up on a competitors page...
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Conclusion of this: YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER BUY LIKES, and people that tell you it's good, they're full of shit
So how do you want to actually get to the explore page, it's quite simple:
- Get categorised in the right niche box using the methods described above
- Get likes from accounts in your niche (by getting into engagement groups with accounts in your niche)
- Be consistent
How to get most engagement from the explore page:
- Post Viral pictures and use engaging captions with a good CTA
- For content creators: Find an account that is similar to yours and that is already performing really good, like Picasso said: good artist copy, great artist steal, I'm not saying you should steal their content, but steal their content strategy and make it even better
Why didn’t I mention hashtags:
- Hashtags don't get you to the explore page, hashtags are a tool Instagram uses to categorise your account which eventually plays a big part into getting to the explore page and you can leverage hashtags in order to make people find your content through them searching on certain keywords in Instagram's search bar.
Make sure when you're using hashtags that you don't use the biggest possible when you're just starting out and have low engagement, see it like this:
Using big hashtags is like whispering your message during the Super Bowl, no one is going to hear you, same goes for when you don't have a lot of engagement, your post will float down the hashtag feed within seconds, use smaller hashtags when you don't have a lot of engagement on your posts yet in order to get some attention to your post.
0 minutes and 0 seconds to go, you've made it!!
I hope this was helpful for you guys, I honestly don’t know why I haven’t shared it before. I honestly thought that most of You were aware of all of this, but given the interaction from the group, and how people are growing I understood that this actually was a “SECRET” for most of you! We love Instagram, and we love its users, that’s why I’m sharing this. I don’t want people to ‘ruin’ their Instagram by buying likes, and given that in order to ‘know’ what I’ve shared above, “GURUS” ask for hundreds of dollars!