I see a trend on BlackHatWorld (a popular forum that I sometimes contribute on). Time and time again, threads emerge created by enthusiastic newcomers eager to start their own Instagram success story. Full of ambition, and their minds fueled by the idea of living one of the lavish lifestyles of the Instagram famous, these energetic marketers set out to conquer the Instagram world. They see themselves living a life of luxury – never having to work another day in their life. Their dream is so close to them; it’s so realistic in their mind. They can picture it, and it’s everything they’ve imagined it to be!
There’s only one problem: Almost all of them fail. While they have the motivation, willpower, and resources to make their dreams come true – they come up short. Their execution is flawed from the beginning, and they have a difficulty grasping the key principles on which every successful Instagram account is based on.
My mission today is to break down the reasons why people are failing at Instagram. Hopefully, my analysis will shed some light on you if you are a newcomer, struggling, or thriving with Instagram. But first, let me share a quick story with you…
When I was in the initial development process of this eBook, I sent out a rough draft copy to about 10 other internet marketers. I received a load of helpful advice and constructive criticism on how to improve the layout, content, and general flow of the eBook – and almost all of them had the same question for me: “Why are you so aggressive during the ‘Why Some People Suck at Instagram Marketing’ section?”
I was originally going to make this section seem nice, encouraging, and motivational, but that just doesn’t get the job done! Do you want to know why so many people fail in life when they set out to do something? People fail all the time because they surround themselves with people who won’t tell them that they suck.
Here's a quick example. Let’s say Jane opens a restaurant because she thinks it’ll be fun. Jane hires her best friends to work at the restaurant with her. Jane keeps pushing bad ideas, and her friends agree, because they don’t want to offend her. What happens? Customers see the bad implementation of ideas, and Jane goes out of business.
So, what’s the solution for Jane? She needs to surround herself with people who tell her that she sucks. She needs to find people who will openly reject and confront her about her bad ideas. If you want to be successful, find people who are going to consistently challenge every thought and idea that you have. It may be irritating. It may piss you off, but you will benefit from this tremendously.
What’s that you say? You don’t have anybody to tell you that you suck at Instagram? Well, let me be the first person to do it. Be honest with yourself, read this section, and see if you fall under any of these categories.
General
1. You aren’t look at what the experts are doing.
No. No. No. This does not mean you should be a copy-cat. This means your actions on Instagram should be influenced by people who are at the top. I see this as one of the biggest problems facing Instagram marketers. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen threads on message boards asking:
- “How do I monetize my fitness page with 50,000 followers?”
- “What should I put in my bio picture?”
- “What kind of content should I focus on?”
- “How many times should I post a day?”
To follow up on this point, you absolutely need to do your research. Take out a notebook the next time you are on Instagram, and write down the top 10 accounts in your niche. Write down their current followers, followings, posts, captions, average likes per photo, maximum likes per photo – everything. Follow them all. Look at what they do. Look at the similarities that they all have. Analyze the accounts yourself. Look at the differences between your account and the accounts with 1 million followers. You must study them if you want to be as successful as them.
2. You don’t have any external motivators.
Why do you want to be successful on Instagram? Is it fame? Is it wealth? Is it something else? Whatever it is, you need to be relentless when it comes to Instagram. A lot of people aren’t creating external motivators. An external motivator is something that you create or enforce that’s going to motivate you to become better at Instagram.
When I first started out, I ended up telling a lot of people that I was going to try to make money on Instagram. I even told my roommate to ask me daily how my accounts were doing. I wanted to create an accountability program that kept me striving for greatness. Every day, my roommate would poke his head into my door and ask me, and I would fear the day when I had to look at him in the eyes and say that I didn’t accomplish anything.
I also bought a huge whiteboard for my room, and I wrote down all my goals on Instagram at the time. And every time someone walked into my room (which was often, I lived in a dorm), people would ask me about it. Let me tell you this: There is no better feeling than putting a huge checkmark next to 100,000 followers, 500,000 followers, and 1 million followers.
There are many ways to create external motivators. I would suggest telling people about your ambitions. Track your progress every day, and record your statistics so you can see how far you’ve come. Write down your Instagram goals, and check them off one-by-one.
3. You’re giving up too quickly.
Instagram is a marathon – not a sprint. Instagram takes a tremendous amount of time if you want to be successful. Results do not come overnight – especially at first. Your first 15,000 followers will be the hardest. You’re first 15,000 followers will annoy you like the roommate that never picks up after themselves. It will take the average person more than 3 months to obtain their first 15,000 followers, and the next 35,000 followers they obtain won’t be a walk-in-the-park, either. So you better know what you’re getting yourself into.
I think when it comes to a lot of social networks people think it’ll be fun, profitable, and not that much work. That’s not true. The way you need to approach social network marketing is the exact same as you would need to approach search engine optimization – it takes time before you see results. Building something like an Instagram account takes an awful lot of time. If you can’t handle long-term commitment, then you need to stop now before you waste your time.
Sometimes when people feel like things are moving too slowly, they look to change things. Whether that be the niche, account name, or whatever - stick through the hard times and be relentless.
4. You’re picking the wrong usernames, bios, and profile pictures.
Your username is essentially your brand. Think about it this way, most people would rather follow the username “memes” instead of “funny.ig.posts.daily” because it gives the user more satisfaction. Similarly, most people would rather wear Nike clothing rather than Walmart-brand clothing. It’s because people like associating themselves with a memorable brand that looks good to themselves and others. Take an extra 15 minutes when you pick out your new username. Obviously, the $5,000 usernames are gone, but there are still plenty of memorable names out there that are available.
Don’t know what to put in your bio? Look at what other accounts are doing! Usually clever, unique bios are much better off than generic ones.
Don’t know what to put as your profile picture? Look at what other accounts are doing! If it’s a personal account, people like seeing your face. If it’s a niche account, then get creative!
5. You keep banning your accounts.
Stop using your main accounts to push the limits! Unsure of what works on Instagram and what doesn’t work? Create a separate account and find out! Don’t risk your regular, main account by pushing sketchy CPA offers or doing insane automations. It’s not worth it!
Engagement
6. You don’t know how to engage.
People don’t know how to engage! People believe that they can get away without engaging with others; that’s simply not the case! If you want to be successful on Instagram, you should know that you must engage with everybody in your niche. You should be liking, following, and commenting on just about everything you see if you want to optimize your account.
Don’t focus so much on content! Engagement is equally as important during the initial phases of your Instagram journey!
7. You buy fake followers.
This has always baffled me. I have never understood why people buy fake followers. Let me break this down for you. Fake followers won’t like your photos, comment on them, or buy things from you. This does several things: One, it makes your account look bad. It will effectively lower your engagement rate (the ratio of the likes on your photos to the number of followers you have). Two, they won’t make up for your lack of quality content. From my experience, most people will follow you based on your content more than your account statistics. And finally, they won’t make you money. Fake followers won’t buy a single thing from you.
The only advantage of having fake followers is tricking people into buying shout-outs from you (which you should not do), and even most people will be able to tell that you have fake followers. Stop buying fake followers!
8. You’re using too much Black Hat instead of White Hat.
Automated processes will never be as good as manual processes. Yes, they are faster, but they do not look natural. There are a lot of benefits received from manual actions opposed to Black Hat actions. When you do tasks manually, you are given the opportunity to manually accept or reject accounts to follow. You are also given the opportunity to go beyond automation tasks, such as more personalized comments and more realistic-looking likes.
Content
9. You post too much or too little.
To be successful on Instagram, you should understand that your followers want to see your content a certain number of times. The number of times you should post varies from niche to niche (check out what the best are doing). As much as you think your content rocks, your followers might not want to see it 8 times a day; on the flip side, your followers might want to see your content more than once every 8 days. A healthy, average account is posting about every day. Sometimes twice a day and sometimes once every other day. It depends. Don’t force out bad content, and don’t hold back good content. You should find the happy medium. This is something you might have to test out on your main account and on tester accounts.
When you post content, you also want to be aware of the time of the day when you are posting. In most scenarios, I try to post at around 4-6 p.m. I find that this time is when most people in my time zone are looking at Instagram, and my content usually appears at the top of their newsfeed. You don’t want to get in the habit of posting in the early-morning or late-at-night. A lot of the time, these posts can be buried in their newsfeeds at the end of the day when people are checking their phones.
10. Your content isn’t consistent.
While maintaining a consistent posting schedule is important, it’s also important to keep a consistent styling to your posts. While an outlier every now and then won’t hurt, you need to find a style and stick with it. If you have a fitness account and you get a ton of likes on your selfies, you probably shouldn’t post an unpopular meme every other picture.
You also shouldn’t hurt your brand by posting advertisements that don’t blend in to your normal content. Your advertisements should appear as native as possible. People like to see consistency. Don’t hurt yourself by posting images or videos that aren’t consistent with your normal image. People follow you because of your image. If you start posting weird content, people will unfollow you because it’s not that image they initially followed.
11. You don’t have a vision for your account. You don’t love it.
Let me save you a lot of time right now: If you don’t love your niche, don’t do it. Post content that you have a vision for. Post content that you love and enjoy posting. Post content that you know a lot about. If you don’t know a lot about your niche, you are going to struggle providing quality content for your followers who do know a lot about your niche.
12. You steal all your content. You don’t stand out.
Why should anybody follow you if you’re a clone copy of another account? That doesn’t make much sense… This is something important to think about.
13. Your original content sucks.
Original doesn’t mean good. Just because you created your content doesn’t mean it’s automatically better. While stealing everything isn’t ideal for blowing up on Instagram (small number of people get away with it), posting original content is incredibly important – but it’s has to be good. You need to find out how to turn out quality original content that will satisfy your followers.
Monetizing
14. You monetize too early.
While there is no such thing as a “requirement” to monetize, you don’t want to turn your followers off by monetizing too early! Nobody wants to follow an account with 400 followers that’s spamming their bio link in every post. If you aren’t sure if you are ready to monetize – you’re not.
15. You aren’t even monetizing related to your niche!
You wouldn’t think this is a problem, but it is. Monetize something that your followers would want to buy. Got a comedy account? Great! Don’t sell Kylie Jenner Lip Kits then. Sell comedy books. Sell quirky items. Sell t-shirts related to your account. Don’t sell obscure, random items that are “popular”. This devalues your account.
16. You aren’t building a brand.
Why should people buy from you?
You need to build a brand! Consumers today are very aware of when people are selling something to them, and most people today want to buy things from people they support. You need to find out how to build a brand that people will buy from. If you are just another Instagram account in the niche, why would people buy from you? Why are you worth supporting? Find a way to convince people you are not just another person on Instagram. Build a relationship with your followers.
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