Social Tools Suite: Instagress
It seems there’s an App for almost everything nowadays and never more so than on social media.
We get asked all the time if we know the best tools to grow a following or expand a brands reach. Everyone is looking for that smoking gun right? So we thought we’d start a new segment on our blog called the Social Tools Suite. We’ll be reviewing some of the more popular tools out there along with a number of ones you probably didn’t know.
Having said all that, it’s important to remember that tools are exactly that, only tools. True success on social media lies in the social part, it’s in reaching out, supporting and engaging with your audience cross-platform. While some tools can help, they will never be a replacement to the true nature of social – people first.
So, to kick it all off, here is a quick run down on a tool for mega popular Instagram by Gill.
What is Instagress?
Instagress is an online service that mimics activity on your Instagram account. With instagress your IG account is liking and commenting on photos and following and/or unfollowing accounts according to the criteria you set. It’s a great way for people who are unlikely to log into their Instagram account regularly to engage and build a community. However, it should be used with caution and you must not rely on it 100%. Continue to log into your account daily to see how things are going.
Why Would You Use Instagress?
If you are trying to build your brand online, there are few mediums better suited to brand awareness than Instagram. Instagress works best when you work it, as in be an active participant on the platform. Comment on other people’s photos, spread around the double taps and follow accounts to build your own following. You also need to use hashtags liberally in order to get noticed and found.
If, like most small business owners you are wearing enough hats to start a hat store and the thought of building a following on yet another social media platform sounds like too much, take a look at Instagress. You get a three day trial to check it out and see if it’s worth it to you and then after that the plans range from 3 days to 360 days and are very reasonably priced.
How to use Instagress
If I wanted to set up Instagress to work on behalf of my new digital marketing agency I would set it to like photos tagged with relevant tags such #Marketing #OnlineMarketing #SocialMedia etc.
You can add up to 1000 tags here so think outside the box but also include different spellings or add ons to tags.
You can choose the type of media your account interacts with, photos, videos or both along with the age of the media (this is worth paying attention to or else you’ll wind up engaging with a lot of older stuff. Another thing you can control is the amount of likes a photo or video must have before you engage too.
It should be noted that Instagress recommends starting out on the slowest settings and gradually moving up to Normal and Fast. This is because Instagress is bot and Instagram will shut down accounts deemed to be misusing the service. I’ve been shut out of Instagram in the past for being too enthusiastic in my following. Ironically this was me and not a bot service.
Cautions and Warnings
One thing I noticed and I think it bears mentioning here: Be wary of automated commenting. Unless you prewrite comments that are completely benign and only allow Instagress to comment on specific accounts or tags you just can’t be certain that you won’t accidentally comment “Super Cool!” on a picture that is not at all super cool.
While Instagress is running you should actually minimize the amount of manual activity you engage in on Instagram to avoid being penalized by instagram. Try not to like or comment much unless you stop Instagress from running in the background first.
At then end of the day Instagress is a great medium for quickly building a following and a community made of real Instagram users which is still much better than a large following of robots.