Pro Tip: While growth services are a great investment for social media marketers to get the ball rolling on followers and engagement, supporting a sustainable following requires your content be up to par. Use an all-in-one creative toolkit like Instasize (available on both Android and iOS) to edit and upload the high quality visuals that dominate Instagram. 

If you really want to build an audience on the platform, you should look into an Instagram growth service. The right one can quickly turn any dribble into a mighty, surging stream. To give you a head start in your search, here’s a list of some of the very best Instagram growth services around at the moment:

1. SocialMeep

SocialMeep is the best Instagram growth service around. They use AI-powered automation to bring you thousands of engaged followers every month. Their service only interacts with the accounts relevant to you. In addition, their sleek dashboard allows you to track growth and analytics with the ease of a click.

With over 55,000 happy users counting on SocialMeep for their Instagram growth, you can’t go wrong.

2. Growthoid

Growthoid is a manual Instagram growth service that brings you real followers the organic way. Once you’ve signed up and got started, there will be a short survey and their agent will be in touch who will manage your account for you.

This service doesn’t run on bots, all engagement is done manually by their agents – so there’s no need to worry about being shadow-banned or banned at all. Safety is their top priority.

They offer two plans, the first being $49 to get you started. The other plan is $99 which is for serious growth.

3. Ektora

Ektora is a feature-rich Instagram growth tool launched by a French start-up in 2021. It is definitely worth a try as it’s free to sign up. Ektora automatically interacts with thousands of Instagram profiles every day, so you gain hundreds of real followers.

We love the company’s transparency, the ‘Customer is King’ philosophy and the simple onboarding. Don’t worry about getting blocked or banned – the tool adheres fully to the Instagram Platform Policy.

Ektora comes with a scalable pricing, decent analytics, above average targeting filters and a unique technology that generates fast results.

4. BigBangram

BigBangram advertises itself as being six services in one. Their offerings include automated likes, follows, unfollows, direct messages, posts, and comments. So not only does they cover interactions with other users, but there’s also options for scheduling and publishing your content.

There are a variety of plans to pick from, so you can build your own customized package. This helps cut down on the cost by allowing you to tailor it to your own needs and trim away any unnecessary features. There’s also extra services like their Posting Module—which allows you to edit photos and write out the captions in advance—and Comment Tracker.

5. ViralRace

If you need to expand your Instagram presence in a short amount of time, then ViralRace will get you past that finish line. Their speed is unparallelled. The set up only takes a few minutes, and within an hour you’ll receive your batch of likes, views, or follows. You can even dictate whether it gets delivered instantly or spread out over a longer period.

Best of all is the fact that none of their methods are artificial. ViralRace connects you to actual Instagrammers who will interact with your posts. So not only is it authentic, but it’s also totally reliable and secure as well. That means your engagement rates with skyrocket in no time. ViralRace will give you the boost you need to land a sponsorship deal, or get your brand featured on the Discover page.

6. Kicksta

If you’re working on a tight budget, then you should definitely check out at Kicksta. Their plans are remarkably cheap for the sheer amount of features that you get, one of which of course is being able to buy real instagram followers, and you can cancel at any time if you’re not happy with their service.

You get to select between three different price packages with Kicksta. First there’s Standard, which has automated activities, post scheduling, and advanced targeting filters. Next there’s Premium, for those who want faster growth speeds and the ability to add up to three Instagram accounts. Finally there’s Agency, a plan meant for larger businesses that can handle up to 10 accounts at once, with a dedicated account manager on hand for assistance.

7. Combin

Combin is a growth tool that’s totally confident in the quality of their service. To prove how well it works, they have made their Starter plan absolutely free of charge. Not even a credit card number is required. While the number of daily actions is limited, it should still give you a good idea of Combin’s full potential.

After you’ve tried that out, you can upgrade to Brand24 Personal or Business plan, depending on how many accounts you need managed. With both you get an unlimited amount of actions, as well as more search results and a statistics tab.

8. Krootez

Krootez is a growth service completely focused on Instagram for a few years and they bring everything you need to power up your posts or account. It’s promised that followers, likes, and views ordered from them come from real users. Their own algorithms acting with the platform’s guidelines make the process safe, and the free refill guarantee mentioned on their terms of service can make you leave the dirty work to them and focus on your content.

Krootez serves small orders starting from only $1.99 and to the largest ones, even the ones not available on their public listing. You can get in touch with their support officer to discuss a custom service or to target your improvement before you made your purchase. They have packages for influencers, businesses, and brands alike. As they work around the clock for you, they will solve or answer any question quickly.

9. Upleap

If the account manager route is preferred, then Upleap is another service that’s worth looking into. Their set-up process is fairly similar to the previous entry in this list, except for one major element: you begin with a free 3-day trial. So you get a chance to test drive it before being asked whether you want to continue with it.

Upleap offers Lite, Standard, and Premium plans. This covers everything from small accounts still getting their footing, to influencers wanting to take it to the next level, and businesses that want to go full speed ahead.

10. Instazood

Instazood follows the “only pay for what you need” philosophy of pricing plans. Their service is broken down to four individual models. They have a Bot for automated Instagram followers, likes, unfollows, and comments. Then there’s a Comment Tracker for organizing and responding to comments on your post, and a Direct Messenger that can send out welcome messages and mass DMs to followers.

Recently they’ve added a new Post Manager service. It’s capable of storing an unlimited amount scheduled posts to be published at a future date. Furthermore, it can also save drafts and delete posts automatically.

11. Popamatic

Are all of these services with multi-tiered plans seem a little overwhelming to you? Then you should consider Popamatic instead. They have only have a single plan with an affordable monthly rate. They also have a very generous seven day trial, which is more than enough time to start seeing substantial results.

Popamatic is staffed by a team of talented and knowledgeable assistants who will help find and connect with the right audience for your Instagram account. They do this purely through manual interaction, so everything is achieved through purely organic methods.

The post Top 11 Instagram Growth Services of 2021 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

That’s why we decided to put this list together. It contains 25 of the best Instagram bots on the market that we’ve tested and approved ourselves. All of the bots below are guaranteed to send your follower counts soaring in no time.

1. SocialMeep

With a tool like SocialMeep, you’ll never want to go back to manual interaction. That’s because no person can match up to the results it can deliver. Not only is it quicker, but its precise targeting capabilities that can filter out all of the fake spam accounts that you’re better off ignoring anyway. So you can always trust this captain to guide your ship in the right direction.

One element that sets SocialMeep apart from the competition is its SmartGrowth module. Using machine-learning algorithms, its artificial intelligence systems are able to learn and become more efficient over time. This module can be found in the service’s Turbo plan, which operates at 10 times the speed of its regular plans. All of the plans available also feature real-time analytics and growth reports built right into its easy-to-navigate dashboard.

2. Growthoid

Unlike other services on this list, Growthoid is a manual service which means safety is paramount with zero risk of being banned by Instagram. Growthoid is the next generation of growth services.

Simply get started and connect your account. Then you instruct your manager how to target and they will do the rest and grow your account for you.

3. Firing Table

If Instagram is a launch pad for your marketing campaign, then Firing Table is the vessel that will take you to new heights. It takes charge of engaging your audience and attracting new followers for you, so you focus on making and improving your content.

Firing Table is some of the most affordable services around, as their prices are almost 20% cheaper than the average. They currently have three plans: Personal, Professional, and Business. The first is a basic automation package, while the second raises the speed and gives you priority support. Finally, the third option comes with automated DMs and comments. You’ll find that Firing Table goes above and beyond to assist their customers.

4. GoViral

GoViral is a service that should catch everybody’s attention. Their clients include many big-name influencers and brands across various industries. What attracts all of them is GoViral’s dedication to high-quality engagement. Not only do you get follows, likes, and views, but they come from real Instagram users whose interests align with your content.

GoViral’s ordering system is a simple two-click process that takes only seconds to complete. All you need to do is give them your username, select the package you prefer, and enter your payment details. If you want further customization, you can also have the interactions sent immediately or at a rate of your choice. There’s also a recurring package option that will send you likes and views within 60 seconds of any new post you make.

5. Ektora

As you may know, most Instagram bots violate Instagram Platform Policy, due to how they retrieve data and interact with Instagram (via APIs or SDKs). These bots can harm your Instagram profile.

Ektora directly performs actions within the official Instagram mobile app on your behalf. Don’t be afraid to receive an “action blocked” or “account compromised” notification; you won’t. You can start a free trial today and get a full access to the botting features. The pricing is quite simple: the first subscription costs $99/month, the second and following ones are only $29/mo each.

6. ViralRace

ViralRace delivers on every front when it comes to Instagram growth. They have a variety of packages available for buying likes, views, and followers. The key to their effectiveness is that they match you with real, active users who are already inclined to enjoy your content. So that means all interactions you receive will be organic and safe.

You can set the order to be dispensed all at once or gradually over time with this Instagram bot, depending upon your preference. There’s also the ability to split likes and views between any number of posts. Their multitude of options makes them ideal for customers of any size, whether they’re aspiring influencers or established businesses. They provide the social proof necessary to get on Instagram’s Discover page and reach a wider audience than ever before.

7. Gold Nitro

Gold Nitro is worth its weight in… well, you can already guess where we’re going with this one. Saying it would hardly be an exaggeration, though. There are few other Instagram bots that can match its value. The 14-day free trial alone is an astounding deal given the amount of free growth you get within that time.

With their Standard package, you get the usual staple of automated actions (likes, followers, and unfollowers), hashtag targeting, analytics, and filters for avoiding ghost and bot users. Meanwhile, if you go with Pro, you get all of that plus location targeting, competitor follower targeting, automatic welcome messages, personalized hashtag suggestions, and turbo speeds.

8. MegaFollow

It’s difficult to top MegaFollow in terms of speed. Their bot sends out likes and follows at the maximum rate that Instagram will allow. That’s why they also built in a pause function, so you can use your Instagram account normally whenever you feel like.

MegaFollow is remarkably flexible when it comes to its plans. You can get them for several different lengths of time, including 3, 10, 30, 90, 180, and 360 days. That means there’s no pressure to commit for any longer than you’re comfortable with. Every plan has the exact same set of features too, so there’s no worrying about missing out on anything.

9. Combin

Combin is very unique compared to the rest on this list. It’s the only one included with a plan that’s completely free of charge. Although it’s not enough to really get a whole lot of growth (you only get 250 daily actions), it’s acts as a great introductory demonstration of the tool.

If you liked your experience with the Starter plan, then you could move onto one of the other two plans. There’s a Personal plan, which gets you an unlimited amount of actions and an advanced Instagram user search. However, if you’re running a larger operation with two to five accounts, then you’d probably want to go with their Business offering instead.

10. CheapIGFollowers

Now here’s a bot that’s worth getting excited over. You’ll be surprised with just how much control and customization you get with CheapIGFollowers. You can choose the speed it runs, the time that it’s active, the level of engagement, and much more. It also comes with a post scheduler that can add watermarks to your content.

Their Standard plan is geared for users with only one account to manage. The next step up is Premium, which allows for up to three accounts. If that’s still not enough, then there’s always their Agency plan. That can handle 10 accounts, and it includes a dedicated account manager who can create personalized campaigns for your brand.

11. Instamber

Instamber is another service that splits their bots into smaller, separate plans. This is ideal for saving money, as it lets you cut out the stuff that you don’t want. Their selection is divided into four packages: an Instagram bot for likes and follows; a direct messenger that can send to followers and non-followers alike; a comment manager that collects and sorts all of your comments in one area; and a post manager for scheduling your photos and videos.

Instamber does not require any downloads whatsoever. Everything is stored via a convenient cloud base that you can access from any device.

12. Popamatic

When you go with Popamatic, you can rest assured that you’re in good hands. Their team of virtual assistants are friendly, informed, and determined to give you the best growth experience possible. They will manage your account to your specifications, and send you monthly growth reports with suggestions for improvement.

Popamatic’s monthly plan only takes five minutes to sign up, input your preferred targeting settings, and get started. Then you can leave the rest to your assigned assistant. You can count on them to treat your account with care, as Popamatic has a spotless track record with zero users suspended so far.

13. Instabow

Instabow is absolutely stacked with features. It can do automatic follows, unfollows, direct messages, reposts, post scheduling, and stories scheduling. Those last two schedulers have full connectivity with Dropbox as well, so you can upload your content on the fly.

However, if you go with their Basic plan, all you get is the scheduling features. That’s why the Pro plan, which has everything in the paragraph above along with Spintax support, is a much better deal overall. Then there’s the Business plan, which can handle up to 15 accounts at the same time.

14. FriendlyLikes

FriendlyLikes is perfect for causing a stir on Instagram. Their account managers know precisely how to increase your visibility and bring in tons of real followers. You’re free to talk to them whenever you like, request changes, discuss goals, and devise campaigns with them.

Contact with your managers can be conducted over the phone or through email. You’re also free to ask for a progress report at any time, and they will deliver it within two business days.

15. SocialMortal

SocialMortal is a service built for the mere mortals among us. It doesn’t require any divine, supernatural knowledge to operate. In fact, it’s so simple that you hardly have to do anything at all. You just sit back and let their team of experts take care of everything for you.

Their Standard plan is a good fit for newcomers, and will net you an estimated 800-1200 followers per month. Premium, meanwhile, comes with more targeting features and will nab you around 1200-1800 followers. Then there’s the Master plan, which ramps it up to 1800-2400+ new followers on a monthly basis. If none of these are quite what you’re looking for, then you could try contacting them about having a tailor-made Business plan.

16. Instajool

For those of you who are always on the go and seek instant accessibility, Instajool should satisfy your needs. You can log into this bot’s dashboard on any device that you can think of. That’s because it operates purely through your browser window, without any apps or extra software.

Furthermore, Instajool is also prime choice for people who own a large multitude of Instagram accounts. Their Basic plan allows for 10 accounts, while their Advance plan can managed up to 100. Both plans will cover your likes, follows, and comments.

17. Instazood

One area that some Instagram bot services tend to neglect is Instagram Stories. People often check who has viewed their stories, so that’s another good way to get people to visit your page. Luckily there’s Instazood, which has the option to automatically view stories.

Instazood is comprised of four modules that you can choose between. There’s an Instagram bot for likes/follows/comments, a comment tracker, a direct messenger, and a post manager.

18. FollowingLike

FollowingLike proclaims that it can help you “dominate social networking.” A quick glimpse through their offerings shows that they’re not kidding around about that. They have bots for almost every major network, including: Instagram, Facebook,Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr.

The list of activities their Instagram bot can perform is enormous. It can follow/unfollow, like/unlike, comment, send DMs, schedule posts, search users, search photos, search followers, create black/white lists of users, and more. Best of all, you can get everything for a one-time fee and never have to pay again.

19. Influuu

Influuu is thorough when it comes to doing the groundwork. The first thing that they want is a list of similar accounts in your niche. Next, they give you a form to fill out about yourself or your brand. Then, after you submit this data, they conduct extensive research in order to synthesize a powerful strategy to insure your success.

Influuu has three plans: Growth, Influence, and Viral. Growth is meant for beginners who are content with getting about 500 new followers each month. Influence takes it a step further with monthly competition research, keyword/hashtag optimization, and a monthly goal of 1600 followers. Finally, for the advanced users out there, there’s Viral: that comes with a live chat function with your own dedicated account manager, who will aid you in reaching 2000 or more new followers each month.

20. Upleap

If you want to vault over your Instagram rivals, then Upleap should do the trick. All you need to do is give your account manager the right information to get the job done. This includes hashtags and a profile of your audience, so your manager will can the smart targeting system to interact with the right users.

Upleap is available in Lite, Standard, and Premium versions. The higher tiered plans add the ability to automate your viewing of Instagram stories, as well as location targeted and premium support options.

21. Instant

Instant lives up to its name. Within two minutes, you can connect your Instagram account and already begin a free two-week trial. They give you access to the full service without any features withheld, and let you decide at the end whether the results are encouraging enough to continue with a paid subscription.

You can choose to pay on a fortnightly (two-week) or monthly basis. There’s also a separate plan for anybody who wants to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard.

22. Jarvee

Much like FollowingLike, Jarvee is an “all-in-one” kind of bot. It can be used to automate your Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr accounts. So if you ever want to consolidate all of that into one service, then Jarvee should be at the top of your list.

Their Starter plan allows you to connect 10 accounts across all eight platforms, while the Professional plan can handle 70. If you still need more than that, their Premium plan goes all the up to a jaw-dropping 150 accounts.

23. Social Runner

Feel like you’re falling behind everybody else? Social Runner can give you the boost you need to stay at the head of the pack. It’s totally hands-free too, as the most you have to do is provide them with the usernames of other accounts in your field.

Their Basic plan offers moderate growth with basic targeting. If you want maximum growth and custom targeting, then you should upgrade to the Pro plan. Finally there’s the Business plan, which has advanced targeting, custom growth strategies, and monthly progress reports.

24. Ingramer

Ingramer cuts through all of the confusion with the power of simplicity. They have four distinct modules to select from: Basic (likes, follows and unfollows), Scheduled Posting, Direct Messages, and Comment Tracker. Each of these bots have two-week, one-month, and three-month plans that have the same features.

Ingramer is capable of performing 1250+ interactions per day. It’s carefully calibrated to deliver the highest speeds without violating any of Instagram’s rules, so there’s no need to be afraid of getting blocked.

25. Instavast

Instavast is about as reliable as they come. They’ve earned their spot on this list by being a dependable service with reasonable prices and all of the standard features you could ask for. They have an Instagram bot (likes, comments, and follows), an auto-DM bot, a comment tracker, and a post scheduler.

They also have discount packages where you can save money by creating a credit balance with them, which can be distributed between whichever of their bot services that you’d prefer.

The post 25 Best Instagram Bots Guaranteed to Increase Your Following appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

All this made me want to find out more for myself. So I got in touch with the CHEQ team to take it for a spin.

The company’s central product is called CHEQ for PPC, a solution that brings cybersecurity expertise to the challenges of fake users attacking campaigns and draining ad budgets. Its click fraud solution deploys over 1000 JavaScript challenges to the user’s browser in real-time to catch bots, while using sophisticated client side bot mitigation techniques like fingerprinting, honeypots (bot traps, in common speak) and more.

Gartner Analyst Andrew Frank says this about the company’s technology: “CHEQ blocks scrapers and web-crawlers, botnets, click farms, out-of geography clicks and suspicious human-driven behavior such as competitor clicks and affiliate fraud before they can affect a live campaign. It has also developed advanced bot mitigation technology to reliably distinguish between human and computer-generated activity.”

* Above, The CHEQ for PPC Dashboard

First of all, it’s super easy to setup and use

Setting up CHEQ for PPC was much easier than I had expected. After a quick platform demo with a company representative, I received a JavaScript tag to place on the site’s header, with clear and simple implementation instructions. It took about 10 minutes to complete and my data was already running through the dashboard. There was also the option to implement the tag to Google Tag Manager, for those companies that prefer not to place the tag directly on site, but I was told that the direct implementation is the best in terms of CHEQ’s ability to detect the fraud. Some companies prefer not to place a tag directly on their site for security reasons, although CHEQ is MRC accredited (see below) so that shouldn’t really be a concern. So, with that in mind, I went with the direct implementation, but good to know they have an option for companies who are sensitive to placing tags on the site’s header. Once set up, CHEQ is basically running across all major customer acquisition channels and able to detect and block any incoming invalid users from engaging with campaigns. 

Once set up, the dashboard really provides a clear breakdown of campaign fraud

The first thing that strikes you when you open up the platform and see your campaign data running through the dashboard, is “wow, this is pretty cool”. I could instantly see a high-level breakdown of fake users engaging with campaigns, followed by more detailed breakdowns of fraudulent traffic sources, IP’s, User Agents, Geos and even keywords which are driving fake clicks. Very detailed and yet not overwhelming. There is also a separate analytics tab where you can run far more granular breakdows, which really helps highlight where the bots are coming from and how they engage with the campaigns. Dope stuff.

Next step is to active blocking

CHEQ offers a free trial, which starts out in monitoring mode, showing your click fraud exposure, and then moving to actually block the fraud. What I found super cool was that unlike other click fraud prevention solutions, CHEQ connects to your Google Ads account and excludes fake users from your audiences. Competing solutions rely primarily on IP blocking, but CHEQ goes the extra mile and provides a far more robust solution for blocking. This is a key difference that really catapults CHEQ above the rest of the competition in my mind. Overall, when I started out in monitoring mode, I was seeing campaigns with fraud as high as 25%, while the average fraud rate across the board was around 8%. Not as high as I might have thought, but still very significant, especially for larger advertisers spending millions. However, once blocking was activated, fraud reduced to less than 0.5%, and remained below 1% for the duration of the trial.

Trust, Transparency and compliance baked in 

The question on many people’s mind is, how can I trust a fraud prevention platform to report accurate numbers. What really set CHEQ apart for me in this respect, was that it is the only MRC accredited company operating in the space. This means that CHEQ’s fraud detection technology has been vetted by the MRC (the leading compliance framework ad-fraud prevention) to ensure accuracy and transparency. That’s just an important extra layer of trust, to know that when they say a user is a bot, they know what they’re talking about. Also, there’s a very helpful ‘transparency’ tab which allows you to download raw, log-level data, along with detailed fraud reasons behind every blocked user. It really inspires confidence to know that you’re using a tool which isn’t a black box, so kudos on that.

Customer Success team provides an extra layer of value

While CHEQ can be used in a set-it-and-forget-it kind of way, what I found extremely helpful was the customer success team’s input and analysis. I was provided weekly reports about the fraud levels with insights on how and where the fraud was coming from. This is particularly useful for more sophisticated enterprise teams who want more control over their blocking. Some of the fake users were surprisingly sophisticated and to hear the CHEQ team breakdown the fraudulent activity was actually super cool! Kind of feels like you’re in a covert cybersecurity operation, but one that is made accessible to marketers. 

But accuracy and coverage come at a price, as CHEQ is tailored more to enterprise than small advertisers.

CHEQ isn’t cheap. At the end of the trial, you’ll be quoted based on your annual media spend and it can get a bit pricey. That being said, this is a solution designed more for the needs of mid-market / enterprise companies spending millions of dollars annually across multiple platforms, as opposed to small business advertisers who usually run mostly on Google. If you are spending those amounts however, then CHEQ is a small price to pay, especially considering the revenue uplift, as you replace thousands of fake users with real paying customers. You’re also paying of course for compliance, high security and privacy standards, a customer success team that includes fraud analysts and above all else, accuracy, scale and coverage across all channels. 

To summarize, if you’re spending millions of dollars on customer acquisition, buying CHEQ is a no brainer

The ease of implementation, the granularity of the data, the transparency and reporting, and above all the coverage and accuracy make this offering a must for advertisers. When you think about having 8% of your spend wasted on fake clicks, that’s just painful. CHEQ turns that around and replaces those with authentic human users who can actually convert, so this really is a super ROI-positive play. And yes, it doesn’t come cheap, and might not be suited for small businesses advertisers, but anyone spending in the millions should at least take a look at this, especially since Customer Acquisition Security is quickly becoming the standard for marketing teams everywhere.

Overall rating: 5 / 5

To learn more or book a demo, go to: www.cheq.ai/search-and-ppc

The post CHEQ: Why it Has Proven to be the Most Accurate Solution for Click Fraud appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Not only is Instagram the fastest growing social network, but it’s become one of the central hubs for commerce on the internet. Businesses and influencers from every imaginable industry are on it, all of them trying to reach a greater audience.

Some achieve success over time. The rest find themselves stuck in the never-ending loop of trying to push a metaphorical boulder uphill. Regardless of the outcome, it’s an strenuous endeavor that is far more exhausting than it needs to be. The solution is automation. There are countless tools out there for Instagram that can lighten the load for you. They accomplish this by accessing your account and connecting with others in your place.

Not sure where to start looking for one before 2021 arrives? Here’s a list of the ten best Instagram automation tools around right now:

1. SocialMeep

As it stands, you can’t really top SocialMeep when it comes to Instagram automation. It’s virtually unparalleled when it comes to raising engagement rates and attracting real followers. It offers an excellent set of targeting features, live analytics, and an AI-enhanced boosting module.

Another remarkable thing about SocialMeep is the sheer speed at which it stimulates growth. Its Turbo plan is 10x faster than the average automation service, which is the maximum speed you can safely go on the platform. With it you can get your follower count up and off the ground in a snap without hardly moving a finger.

2. Ingramer

The main feature of the service is a great combination of simplicity and effectiveness. The system uses new automation technologies, that make the service one of the fastest at the market. Right now Ingramer provides to customers the following functions: auto likes, follows/unfollows, free hashtag generator and personal analysis.

Ingramer smart algorithm completely simulates a real person activity and brings to the account only active followers and customers. If you are not familiar with such services, you can ask the technical support team for help. Ingramer can also make an analysis of your account for better promotion on Instagram.

If you’d like to learn how to automate instagram yourself, in a way that isn’t spammy, read this great post by Eduardo Morales.

3. Kicksta

There are some automation services that try to deceive you into thinking that they’re working. A trick that they often use is having bot accounts follow you and pad out your numbers. You can rest assured that’s not the case with Kicksta, though.

Kicksta promises that all of the accounts that it interacts with are real people. The growth that you receive is purely organic, which guarantees that there will be actual engagement with your posts. In turn, this will boost your account’s visibility higher than ever.

4. Instavast

5. Ektora

Automating Instagram is getting really difficult these days – Who the heck would market an Instagram bot in 2021?

Ektora is rated ‘Safest Instagram Automation Tool’ and recommended by the best Instagram Marketing Experts.

This solution is a complete game-changer. No ban, no subscription, great customer support, feature-rich dashboard powered by AI, awesome community, feature submission, frequent updates, and great results.

6. Instamber

7. CheapIGFollowers

You’ve probably heard somebody tell you to “try before you buy instagram followers.” It’s a pretty sound piece of advice all around. With Instant Dash’s generous 14 day free trial, you are given more than enough time to judge whether the service is for you.

While you’re trying it out, feel free to talk to their on-hand account managers. They will happily assist you in understanding the different settings and make sure that you are maximizing the tool to its full potential.

8. Gramflare

With their plans as low as $7 per week and $25 per month, Gramflare is easily one of the most affordable services on this list. Don’t worry about getting a lower quality experience as a result, though. Gramflare should satisfy most users’ needs.

Even with their cheapest plans, you still get full access to all of their features, such as their post scheduler, growth analytics tools, and location targeting settings. This makes them a perfect choice for anybody working on a smaller budget.

9. Instazood

A lot of automation platforms are limited to only liking, following, and unfollowing. A decent chunk of them will also do comments for you. Instazood goes above and beyond by not only covering all of the above, but also handling your DMs and post scheduling as well.

Instazood is ideal for anybody who wants to focus on their content or business concerns without bothering with the social media elements. With such a versatile system, it’s almost like your account is operating itself.

10. EXPLOD Social

XPLOD Social is another service that does consulting as part of its package. In fact, it has just about everything you’d want from an automation tool. You get performance reports, 24/7 support, targeting filters, posting recommendations, and much more.

There’s one additional thing that XPLOD Social certainly has in its favor: big name endorsements. The service is has been used and approved by brands such as Toyota, Audi, and CORE Nutrition. If it meets their standards, then it surely should fulfill most everybody else’s.

BONUS TOOLS:

InstaHero

Getting real Instagram followers can be a daunting task, one that takes significant time and effort. InstaHero24 is designed to give a kickstart to your Insta marketing campaign as it helps you get real and instagram followers. InstaHero has a community of over 120,000 real Instagram users, which means that the followers you’ll gain will be real people and not fake ones or bots. Plus, you’ll not just get followers, but real engagement too in the form of likes, views, and comments. InstaHero offers flexible packages and has a reasonably effortless signup process.

Upleap

Upleap is fairly unique in its approach to automation. After you sign up, you are immediately partnered with one of their account managers. This person is assigned to oversee your account and assist you with customizing it to your specifications.

Upleap has three tiers of plans, with both monthly and yearly options. Their Lite plan is geared for influencers getting started. Meanwhile, their Standard and Premium plans are more intended for intermediates and businesses looking to kick it up a notch.

Droplitt

The core idea behind Droplitt is simplicity. It aims to make using Instagram as uncomplicated as possible. This means that if you wanted, you could automate almost all of your actions: reposts, DMs, follows, comments, likes, and everything else.

The only things you absolutely have to do is upload your content, write a caption, and set a date for its publication. Droplitt will take care of the rest for you, once it has been configured and set.

BigBangram

If you are looking for reputable Instagram promotion tool, pay attention to BigBangram. It is a nice  Instagram tool and competent help for promotion to every client.

The service has any and all tools for IG promotion: auto like, follow/unfollow, DM, posting module, comment tracker and hashtag generator. Alternatively to all IG bots, BigBangram provides 24/7 technical support that many services lack. Plus they guarantee great results and refund if the service let a client down.

Kenji

Instatrick

The post Top 10 Instagram Automation Tools of 2021 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

He has built up over 330,000 subscribers and 70 million views on his YouTube channel More Plates More Dates, and has built a large following on his written blog MorePlatesMoreDates.com as well. 

How does one know what will be perceived as valuable by your target demographic?

Derek’s whole brand is geared towards guys just like him. In his own words, Derek says, “Any business I launch either provides a product or service I have paid for myself before, or I deem to be valuable enough that I would pay for it myself.” This seems like a simple and logical concept, but it seems that many entrepreneurs still dig and try to reinvent the wheel, rather than focusing on what their bread and butter is. When Derek releases a product or service, if he would spend his own money on it, it is quite likely that many of his subscribers who resonate with his content would also perceive that product as valuable too. This has been the hallmark of Derek’s business endeavors, and has led to much of his success. 

Unique from other self-improvement channels, Derek also intertwines science-based biology, endocrinology and pharmacology information into his content. This unique twist distinguishes the More Plates More Dates channel on YouTube, and helps viewers get a more thorough understanding of how they can go about optimizing their health, or what kind of diagnostic testing to get from a doctor. This kind of content has transitioned into the launch of his hormone replacement clinic Marek Health.

Whether it be a science-based approach to hair loss prevention, or proactively taking measures to stay as healthy as possible while bodybuilding, Derek creates unique content that is not the norm in the self-improvement niche. This has been a key factor in Derek’s success, again founded by his ability to fill a gap he identified in the market.

A very important factor to becoming successful in any market is actually having a passion for it. Derek has no shortage of that. Derek’s consistency in his research, brand and product promotion, and overall dedication to helping men improve their lives is something that is invaluable in the self-improvement space. Derek is a gimmick-free, honest guy who is deeply enthralled with Men’s Self Improvement and that is clear through his dedication to his businesses. These are not always common attributes of self-improvement spokespersons, and that is typically pretty transparent in their presentation. Derek recognizes the need for transparent, evidence-based, passionate influencers in the Men’s Self Improvement Space and leads by example. This results in a loyal and growing fan base who support his brand, leading both parties to great success. A win-win! If you aren’t truly enthusiastic about what you are producing content about or are selling and you are in it solely for the money, it is unlikely that you will be successful and happy long-term. 

The post Identifying With Your Demographic To Achieve Success: In Conversation With Fitness Expert Derek appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

And I cannot think of a better tool than Semrush when it comes to providing solutions for upping your digital marketing game.

Semrush is an all-in-one platform that includes over 40 tools designed to cover almost every aspect of online marketing – from market research to content creation.

I’ve already written a lot about the benefits Semrush can give to any marketer or business who’s serious about online. Semrush is constantly polishing up its existing tools, improving the algorithms, and adding up new features, as well as keeps adding up tools that cover more and more everyday and high-level digital marketing tasks. 

With this and the recently reworked Semrush packages that come at a slightly increased cost, I’ve decided to revisit some of the key points I used to make and see if the suite is still worth the investment.

To do this, I will focus on each of the five toolkits of the platform – SEO, Advertising, Content Marketing, Competitor Research, and Social Media – and focus on the latest updates and new features introduced within Semrush tools only throughout the past year.

Get Free 14-day Trial of Semrush Pro!

How much will Semrush cost to new users?

Semrush hasn’t changed its pricing model since 2017, however, as mentioned, from year to year, they make significant improvements and additions to their already super powerful platform.

Note that the pricing increase will only concern users who sign up for the suite in 2021, so all of us, old users, will enjoy all the new perks and features at a good old price.

• The new Pro account comes at $119.95/month, 20% up from the old price. Yet Pro users will now benefit from more capabilities – instead of 3 projects, they can create 5, share their PDF templates and projects with “read-only” access. 

• Those who sign up for a Guru account in 2021, will be paying $229.95/month. But the updated Giri pricing also comes with expanded functionality, with access to the Google Data Studio connector, the ability to create 15 projects, monitor 1500 keywords and benefit from historical data access and the most complete Content Marketing Platform on the market.

• The new Business plan is now at $449.95/month. On top of all the perks included in the lower plans, Business users get to set up 40 projects and see estimates of their online share of voice (SoV) within the Position Tracking tool.

So, really, depending on the size and nature of your business, you will be able to find a plan that’s suitable just for you. 

It’s important to mention here that with Semrush, you get a lot of features that normally come at an additional price within other tools, like access to mobile data, hyper-local position tracking and keywords, and extensive reporting, which includes pre-built report templates or customizable options. 

Moreover, with the new packages, the pricing per additional seat even decreased – so, with average pricing per extra users going down by an average of 36%, it’s a nice present for the new year.

But now let’s see what users get in return in more detail!

Semrush: SEO Toolkit Updates 

With over 15 tools making up the platform’s SEO toolkit, you get pretty much full coverage of your SEO efforts: backlink management, rank monitoring, on-page SEO analysis, and a site audit.

On top of those, Semrush has the largest keyword database on the market, which now stands at over 20 billion keywords across 128 countries. Only in 2018, Semrush’s database had a little over 2 billion keywords, so the growth dynamics of its keyword tools is simply impressive!

Only in 2020, Semrush has added an immense number of new features to its SEO tools, however, I will name just a few:

• Probably the most high-level tool within the toolkit is Domain Overview, a report that gives you a helicopter view of any site’s online presence, including search traffic numbers, position trends, and backlink and keyword profiles. 

If previously, you had to enter a specific country to explore the competing site’s key metrics, you can now get a Worldwide view, a global-level overview. 

On top of this, you are no longer limited to a domain-level analysis, as Semrush just recently rolled out a subdomain-, subfolder-, and URL-level analysis, in case you need to only look at the specific section of your rival’s site. 

You will also be able to analyze up to 5 competitors simultaneously with the new Compare mode – this will help you to spot some common patterns across your competitors’ online performance and marketing strategies. 

• The Keyword Overview report is designed to amplify your keyword strategy with actionable data. 

Now, to assess any keyword’s potential, you can make use of the newest global volume metric (an estimate of any keyword’s monthly search volume for all countries within the Semrush database) with a breakdown of countries where your selected keywords are being searched at the most. 

The report also gives a more in-depth analysis of the SERP, showcasing the top 100 search results per keyword, including these URLs’ key metrics: backlinks, referring sites, search traffic, and keywords. Semrush also added SERP Features and Questions insights to each keyword to provide users with more keyword optimization ideas. 

• Semrush also rolled out a polished version of its Keyword Gap, a tool that’s built to help you discover missed or hidden paid and organic keyword opportunities based on competitive insights. 

You can now cross-match your keyword profile against competitors’ not only by the entire domain but also by subfolders and URLs. And the updates tool now also automatically gathers the search volume of each keyword and showcases your top missed opportunities. 

• Many Semrush tools are powered by proprietary algorithms, and Backlink Audit is no exception. 

I’ve always found it incredibly useful to use the tool’s Toxic Score metric that includes 50+ markers that determine backlink’s potential harm level, but in 2020 the algo got updated and the Toxic Score now is even more accurate and advanced. 

Backlink Audit has always been one of my favorite tools I visit on a regular basis, as it keeps watch on my active, broken, new, and lost backlinks. In 2020, however, I’ve also connected my Google Analytics account to get a more accurate overview of my best-performing pages in terms of number of backlinks and referral traffic share, so, having a large site, I can laser-focus my backlink management and link-building efforts to pages that really matter.

• Semrush already had the best-on-the-market tool for keeping an eye on your site positions. Position Tracking is giving you daily updates on your rankings for a range of target keywords, with the option to set precise geolocation (even hyper-local) and device type (the tool includes mobile data). 

I’ve always used the tool’s Competitors Discovery report to see which sites I’m competing against per target keyword, but now Position Tracking also reflects if you are subject to self-competition with the newest Cannibalization report.

In 2020, Semrush also added a new cutting-edge metric – Share of Voice (SoV). This feature builds upon Semrush’s custom Visibility metric (calculated based on your SERP positions + CTR), adding up keyword search volume and traffic estimates into the mix. Thus, with the help of Position Tracking, you can now also understand what share of the audience attention you might expect from having certain SERP positions. 

• One another extremely powerful Semrush tool is Site Audit. It runs your site through over 130 checks, assessing your overall site health in regard to performance, crawlability, international SEO, HTTPS, and internal linking issues.

However, now, with more and more sites adopting structured data, Semrush released a new unique to the market Markups report that detects any markup usage or implementation issues, helping you to get a stronger organic performance and up your chances to get into the SERP features.

Semrush: Competitive Research Toolkit Updates 

Semrush has a comprehensive market and competitor research toolkit that covers everything from market trends and benchmarks to insights on competitors’ traffic, SEO, online advertising, content and PR, and social media strategies.

With this kind of high-level and granular data, you are truly equipped with everything you need to make data-driven marketing decisions and create unbeatable promotion strategies.

While many tools I mentioned before are also a part of this toolkit, here I’ll mention improvements to the two most powerful market and competitive intelligence tools that come at an affordable price.

Traffic Analytics Now Powered With More Audience Insights 

Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool gives you an overview of any site’s performance, including top traffic sources, insights into traffic acquisition tactics, and even user engagement signals.

In 2020, Semrush improved its traffic estimation algorithm, so now you have more accurate info about your rivals’ traffic counts. Moreover, now you can also analyze your competitors’ subdomains if you need data about specific sections of their site. 

But the biggest update came with Audience Insights – a new report that shows the percentage of overlap between your and another domain. With this new data, you can:

• evaluate your audience potential;
• better understand whether you’ve picked the right rival for in-depth analysis; and
• make more data-driven and informed decisions about the potential impact of partnerships and marketing activities with another brand.

More Market Benchmarks With Market Explorer Tool

The Market Explorer tool gives an amazing overview of any market, helping you to pinpoint emerging industry trends, market benchmarks, and audience characteristics, as well as get an idea of key players and their market share.

With a significant geo expansion in 2020, the tool now covers 190 regions and countries in total. 

Market Explorer is probably the most intuitive and user-friendly tool for gathering market intelligence. Especially, with the recent addition of the Growth Quadrant widget that showcases top industry players (each automatically placed into Niche players, Game changers, Leaders, and Established players areas), and reflects their market position changes over time.

Another important recent addition is the Benchmarking Report, which allows you to select up to five competitors in order to compare their traffic counts, sources, and key audience characteristics.

Semrush: Social Media Toolkit Updates 

Although probably not the key feature Semrush is known and loved for, the suite has been building up capabilities across social media management as well. Because you cannot be an all-in-one digital marketing suite without having just enough social media tools.

So, with already long-standing tools like Social Media Tracker and Social Media Poster, which automate your social media scheduling routine and help to track our competitors’ activities and performance across various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest), in 2020, Semrush released two new products:

• For keeping your analytics and reporting in one place, you can now make use of the newest Social Media Analytics tool that reflects your performance metrics (new follows, post reach, engagement, and engagement rate) for Facebook and Instagram.

• To facilitate your social media advertising efforts, another fresh Social Media Ads tool will allow you to create, air, and manage ads across the whole Facebook family, including Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and the Audience Network platforms right from within Semrush. As Semrush promised, no more complex settings, only performance-driven ads that will give you a tangible competitive advantage.  

Semrush: Content Marketing & Advertising Toolkits 

While I’ve mentioned the key 2020 Semrush updates, of course, guys there at Semrush do way more tweaks and minor changes to each tool and product.

So, I will not be going into the nitty-gritty of each update. However, I should mention that I’ve left out two extremely powerful toolkits – Advertising and Content Marketing. 

With a lot of smaller improvements, I believe that the core idea behind each toolkit remains to be unchanged:

• Semrush’s Content Marketing platform is a unique phenomenon among other digital marketing tools, as it covers the entire workflow for crafting highly relevant and top-quality content, that’s meeting both SEO and users’ needs.

With this platform, you can discover trending content ideas, headlines, and questions (for SERP feature optimization); create SEO-friendly copies or briefs that are tuned for SERP success; keep track of content performance; and conduct a thorough audit of existing content assets.

• Semursh’s Advertising toolkit is also designed as a one-stop-shop for creating Google Ads campaigns. From conducting thorough competitive research and exploring your rivals’ campaigns to finding the best and most efficient keywords, the toolkit has tools that can amplify and bring higher CPC and ROI from your PPC, PLA, and Display Advertising campaigns.

Final Words

Given that 2020 was an insane year, full of challenges and obstacles, I believe Semrush has done an incredible job at keeping up with its best-in-class and innovative all-in-one digital marketing platform status. 

In 2020, their tools become even stronger and bring more value, so if you think of it as a suite that covers the functionality of tens of other tools and does it often better than anyone else, the new package redesign and pricing increase comes as no surprise. 

In my turn, I know that guys working there only bring more updates and valuable features and tools each year, so I’m looking forward to seeing which amazing products we’ll be seeing in 2021, so I have my sleeves rolled up to experiment and try out new awesome Semrush features!

 Don’t forget to Get Your Free 14-day Trial of Semrush Pro!

The post An In-Depth Semrush Updates Review: New Pricing and New Powerful Features in 2021 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

But Instagram-growth using methods based on automation has become more prohibitive than successful, with Instagram’s stepping up the fight against such inauthentic activities, making the use of bots for this type of work nearly impossible to deliver any worthwhile results. The use of automated tech to inflate one’s Instagram following could cause accounts to be either suppressed or blocked, neither an ideal scenario for an Instagram user. With such activity no longer permitted on Instagram, the follower growth with these services has declined and the engagement has plummeted. 

When it comes to Instagram growth services, there are basically 3 varying types:

• Automated and Instagram bot services (powerful tools at one point, but are no longer viable)
• Manual, human performed Instagram growth services (In 2020, the only truly usable solution left).
• Acquisition of fake followers and likes from sellers (Total no-no territory).

Emiko recognizes the limitations of the automated approach. This new breed of Instagram growth service leverages a more people-involved approach by comparison to automated services. For that reason, it is one of the only remaining Instagram growth services still capable of driving great results. 

The key reason for their success is the actionable approach that follows Instagram’s guidelines in terms of following, unfollowing, liking, and viewing stories by real people on their phones. There is zero automation or use of bots for your account. This keeps your account safe from being shadowbanned or blocked while growing your Instagram trust score.

There are 5 distinct ways with which Emiiko differentiates itself from other Instagram growth services.

1. Precise Targeting And Consistent Results

90% of Emiiko’s clients are garnering anywhere between 400 and 1500 targeted, new followers monthly. The growth really depends on the quality and frequency of their content, as well as the niche they are in.

Emiiko knows that you need users who follow you because they believe that your content brings them value and because they appreciate your brand, not because they are being forced into it. Purchasing a litany of fake followers will only counteract the rate of engagement, lowering it to produce subpar long term results.

Emiiko has real people who work from your account daily, interacting manually with many other real Instagram users by liking photos and following other Instagram users who fit as your target audience. Due to the organic nature of this approach, it helps to establish natural engagement with new customers on your account as they get introduced to your brand.

When an Emiiko follows another Instagrammer on behalf of their client or likes their photo, the engaged user is likely to be curious about their new follower, and return the favor of checking out that user’s account. As these follows are intentionally chosen, there is a high likelihood of the users already sharing common interests and following the same accounts. This makes it even more likely that the user will follow the client’s account back.

2. Instagram Guidelines & Account Safety

Clients spend a lot of time and energy into building their brands and collecting a following, so it is not something they would ever care to risk. For this reason, account safety and security is more important than ever. Emiiko has helped over 2000 clients since the growth service started in 2016, and has yet to record a blocked or banned account. They have never permitted anything bad to happen to any client account. The Emiiko website assures clients’ data security with full HTTPS encryption.

The reason that Emiiko is such a secure Instagram growth method is that they play by the rules, operating solely within the confines of the Instagram issued guidelines. A real person logs into a client’s Instagram account from their phone, and finds interesting and relevant people to follow, liking their photos, and following their stories. Everything is done by hand, daily, for several hours. In this way, Emiiko will end up interacting with hundreds of users per day on the client’s behalf. By focusing on the right type of Instagram users to follow, the client’s account will experience quality growth. 

Furthermore, Emiiko will not post anything to the client’s feed nor will they reply to DMs. They won’t even leave comments. Emiiko understands that such actions could inadvertently damage the client’s brand, plus those aspects are up to the client anyway. Emiiko’s focus is simply to attract a high volume of quality followers to a brand by following and liking others’ stories.

3. Research And Perpetual Optimization

The quality of gained followers is paramount when it comes to growth on Instagram. For this reason, Emiiko focuses on researching Instagram users before working on acquiring the necessary information from the client. This acquisition comes in the form of an onboarding questionnaire that the client fills out regarding their preferences, their target audience, and goals.

But Emiiko goes a step further by perpetually refining and optimizing the target user in order to always improve results. Using the ‘follow-back ratio’ they can access how many users will follow the clients back for every number of new users followed. By comparing that number to other accounts that the target audience may be following, Emiiko can find which audience resonates with the client the most. By utilizing such optimization tactics, it ensures that the results will steadily improve over time, rather than slowing down and fizzling out like they tend to do with automated Instagram growth services. 

A key reason for this tactic is that just over a year ago Instagram reduced the number of following, unfollows, and likes that a client’s account can acquire in a single hour or day For that reason, it’s not enough to just follow other users, but more importantly, to focus on those are the most likely to convert.

4. Account Management & Reporting.

When a client signs up, they are presented with a questionnaire inquiring about the client’s company, the target audience, company goals, preferences and, most importantly, what other accounts they may be following, or which hashtags they are using. 

Once the questionnaire is filled out, the client is assigned a personal account manager. This person will be in charge of the client’s account going forward, remaining as the primary point of contact, supplying the client with Instagram growth-promoting improvements, and keeping the client updated on the status of their account.

5. Cost-Effectiveness & Money-Back Guarantee

Emiiko has been around for as long as it has and continues to remain strong in an industry where many services can no longer thrive because they do things differently than the others. They are not simply out to make money, they want to do it the right way. That entails satisfying their clients and keeping their accounts secure.

Pros and Cons of Emiiko’s Instagram Growth Service

Pros: 

• Anywhere between 400 and 1500 new followers per month
• Acquisition of quality, valuable, real, engaged, and active followers
• All done for the client
• Getting a personal account manager
• No automation or bots, the service is fully manual
• Weekly reports
• Pay per service, there are no contracts involved, and the client can cancel anytime

Cons:

• The client is handing over account control to another person
• The service is more expensive than an automated Instagram growth service (somewhat)
• There are no free trials available

Emiiko Review’s Final Thoughts

Emiiko uses real people to engage other Instagram users on a client’s behalf. This isn’t an automated growth service that has risen and since fallen in popularity over the last few years. Performing better than other growth software, Emiiko offers a more efficiently targeted system. When a real person that learns about your business and understands what you are looking for works on your account, it can make all of the difference in the world. A real person interacting with the system means that the client’s account will always stay within the parameters of Instagram’s rules and terms of service.

Another reason to trust Emiko with your account is that they generate and send along a progress report every Monday morning featuring an audit of all of the activities and conversions generated during the prior week. 

Finally, the $97 per month charge makes Emiiko the cheapest manual Instagram growth service available. When considering that the client will have an actual person representing them instead of a bot, that is a very appealing and competitive price. It’s easy to get started by visiting the Emiiko checkout page.

The post Reviewing Emiiko As An Instagram Growth Service appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

PRN, a public relations, marketing and branding platform led by entrepreneur Mervik Haums will work with Middle Eastern entrepreneurs and startups. PRN helps young firms fine-tune their professional brands, launch effective marketing campaigns and share important announcements with potential clients and investors. 

PRN will provide a reliable platform for professionals in the Middle East to easily share their brands and messages with a wider online audience – saving small teams valuable time and resources that they can use to improve their business. It will help fill a vital need many new companies face: Developing a professional and consistent online presence to do business in the modern age. The platform even provides a low cost press release distribution service for those wishing to start low.

The platform will help startups develop a solid brand early on and is vital for a brand’s long term success. A clear, unique brand helps people identify and remember a company or person. PRN will help startups shape a memorable and cohesive corporate identity and messaging that sets them apart from their competitors while still accurately representing their unique mission and core values. 

Introducing a new brand to the public or others in the industry requires creativity and proper planning. PRN’s team of professionals will help startup clients identify their target audiences, prioritize goals, and get to work on a straightforward strategy to promote the company’s best products and services. Haums is an experienced digital marketer and has helped brands build their online reputation management from the ground up using SEO strategies, backlinks, paid traffic strategies and social media campaigns.      

Maintaining a positive public image is crucial for establishing trust in the market and building meaningful professional relationships over time. PRN will give startups the tools they need to regularly promote themselves and share exciting news about their successes as they grow.  

Haums is a 33-year-old professional branding specialist and technology enthusiast based in Dubai. In 2018 he founded Startup Fortune, an internet news platform that monitors industry trends and provides training opportunities for entrepreneurs. He regularly writes about developments in the startup industry and offers tips for entrepreneurs looking to grow their brands at startupfortune.com. You can learn more and follow Startup Fortune on Instagram @startupfortune.

The post Startup Fortune Founder Mervik Haums Launches New Branding Platform for SMM Entrepreneurs from the ME appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It’s a way of boosting a company’s brand awareness while developing sales. This is achieved by partnering with partners (also referred to as publishers or affiliates) and engaging in mutually beneficial relationships.

Sofia studied at the prestigious King’s College London, attaining a Business Management BSc. That drove her to forward her education at the Paris Dauphine University, where she earned her master’s qualification.

Since leaving university, her journey through the ranks of the digital marketing industry has provided the wealth of experience she needed to become an expert in her field – performance marketing.

What is Partner marketing?

Many use the terms affiliate marketing and partner marketing interchangeably, however, partner marketing is so much more. Both partner marketing and affiliate marketing are forms of performance marketing.

In fact, it became an industry standard to refer to the more traditional partnerships as affiliate partnerships. Traditional affiliates tend to be last-click contributors—for example, coupon and loyalty sites. While when we speak of partners in the partner marketing model, they can lie anywhere along the funnel. Collaborations based on the Partner marketing model focus on generating quantifiable brand value. The partner marketing model emphasizes the importance of developing meaningful, transparent, quality and lasting relationships between advertisers and partners. Where advertisers will actively listen to partner ideas to grow their business.  

You can have thousands of partners or affiliates, but if they’re not the right fit, or can’t deliver what you need, then they can’t create the ROI your company needs.

That’s where Sofia excels. She has all the experience and tools to be able to source, select and onboard the most suitable partners based on your overall marketing strategy. It’s how she instigates the figures every business wants to see—creating true value and outstanding results.

Why is partner marketing the model of the future?

Partner marketing encourages collaborations based on transparency, communication and consistency. The relationship needs to be mutually beneficial, and this is why she believes the model will continue to thrive in the future. In the parent marketing model, both the advertiser and the brand greatly value the relationship, reinforcing their commitment to each other. 

Moreover, partner marketing increases the brand’s advertising channels without a significant increase in their marketing budget.

Partner marketing, when done right, can be extremely effective, as by collaborating with several partners, the brand receives credibility with several customers and connects the brand with different cultivated audiences.

Partner marketing collaborations also encourage brands and partners to work together in harmony, and this is possible today more than ever, thanks to the recent development in the technology behind SAAS platforms. The technological advancements of SAAS platforms allow advertisers to compensate their partners fairly for each of their marketing efforts.

If you want to see an example of a business that’s thriving on performance partnerships, you only have to look to Amazon. Possibly, the biggest online retailer in the business, Amazon has their own affiliate network, allowing sign-ups to earn generous commissions, providing more sales through their partners’ tills, and in turn, boosting their profits and growing their empire.

Driving new performance partnership opportunities

It all sounds simple, but to apply partner marketing efficiently, to get the most out of this framework, it takes hard work and savoir-faire.

Picking the right partners, creating the right relationships, and providing the right rewards, is a craft that takes time to learn.

Whether you’re a corporation or a start-up looking to hit the ground running, getting your marketing channels right is big business, and requires the right tools—and people—for the job.

“I love marketing and the challenges it brings,” says Sofia. “Putting the right players together is an area where I’ve invested a lot of myself, so I’ve learned to recognise which matches are going to work well, and which won’t.”

She explains to me how she identifies the right relationships for her clients, and where she finds such appropriate partners.

According to her “the most important is to keep an open mind when looking for new partners.” The most successful partnerships are often very unique and unexpected.

For example, the rise of partnerships with online banks and finance providers, such as Revolut, is one of the latest trends. Advertisers are increasingly partnering with online banks like Revolut, where the online bank will feature the advertiser on their rewards pages and offer cashback to the customer every time a purchase is made.

Performance marketing partnerships—knowing your best partners

Sofia is engaging and energetic as she explains the importance of choosing the best partners for each business.

“Choosing the right partners is imperative for any businesses hoping to take advantage of performance marketing. Too many people hold a negative view of partner marketing due to out-dated knowledge based around dated affiliate marketing methods. Yet, partner marketing is more relevant today than ever. It significantly boosts brand awareness and generates a high ROI. That said; it does need to be steered carefully.”

Sofia works within an array of networks, linking businesses to their prime performers. She tells me the ins and outs of working with influencers, product reviewers, loyalty and content partners.

Data, data, data

As every marketer knows, you won’t get anywhere with a hit-and-hope strategy. Data drives results. When it comes to partner marketing, you have access to very specific data, allowing you to measure the performance of every partnership. It shows you where you need to optimise relationships, and which partners are responsible for the best results.

“Each brand needs to see where their traffic is coming from and how much revenue they create. Only with that information can you tweak your systems—boosting the best, and dropping any dead weight. Monitoring your partnerships is a must. Helping underperformers do better is one way to boost performance. The other is to make sure you’ve got all of the fine details covered at your end of the funnel.”

Stay informed on the latest partner marketing trends

If you’re interested in how partner marketing works and the views of a specialist, it’s worth keeping up-to-date with the latest practices and trends; and that’s precisely why she created her blog SOSOLLE.

Her passion for her industry shines through. The information is easy to swallow, providing simple instruction into techniques and programs, and food for thought into areas you might choose to pursue.

If you’re looking into ways to develop your digital marketing means and methods, it’s well worth a click.

The post Effective Performance Marketing – with Sofia Benjelloun appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Instagram changes over the years with updates that are made to restrict automated services. The summer of 2019 saw an update that dwarfed other updates. The updated reduced automated activity by more than 50 percent and certain actions were now considered spam. A service like Combin Growth follows safety rules but it is still important to research the list of best practices when utilizing automation with Instagram.

The importance of following the recommendation doesn’t provide a guarantee of not being banned. Instagram has best practices but doesn’t go into specifics and limitations of users. The list of actions that result in a ban are not explicitly listed by the social media giant. Combin has collected data over time and studied it to create the best automation tool possible. 

Fill Out Your Profile

There are so many fake account that filling out your profile information is paramount. You should pick a profile picture, put a description in, and put up a few photos. Real photos will be more authentic than putting in a stock photo as a placeholder. Automation on accounts without information are huge targets to get banned. 

Confirmation of Email and Phone Number 

Confirming your email and phone number is a way to indicate to Instagram that you are not a bot. Accounts are far larger targets if linked to an email but no phone number. 

Don’t Automate Too Quickly 

If you have created a new account you should not immediately start automating it. You also want to avoid comment spam on account in an attempt to get followers quickly. A slow ramp up in activity will look far more natural than immediately engaging with every post known to man. Your first two months should be approached with care and have the goal of building a reasonable following with a combination of likes and comments. 

Content Matters

Creation of content is the best way to attract followers on any social media platform. You need to make sure that you are hashtagging your photos appropriately so they can be searched. You don’t have to take a photo daily as you can schedule out Instagram posts over the course of time. Your captions can attract a number of likes along with the hashtags you list. The Combin Scheduler can make this as seamless as possible. 

Proxies are Essential When Automating Multiple Accounts

Proxies are going to be essential when automating Instagram accounts. Before 2019, you could run around 5 accounts from one IP which has recently been reduced to 2. You can invest in a virtual private network or VPN in order to change your IP with just a few clicks. Changing this IP regularly can help a user avoid Instagram moderators that look as suspicious logins. 

Combin Growth in addition to other automation tools offers the ability to connect from different IP addresses using an in-app proxy. This tool allows all account associated with you to have IP addresses changed. Finding a proxy to protect your Instagram accounts can be done through Combin Growth or other companies offering similar services.  

Educate Yourself on Activity Limits

Being active as a massive level is the best way to grow your Instagram audience. Counting your activity on a regular day is important as you want your activity that is automated to look natural. You do not want to suddenly spike your activity levels as this is a recipe for disaster. 

Large Amounts of Comments Should be Done with Care

Commenting can lead to a ban quite quickly if it is done on a mass level. Custom comments should be posted even and avoid any generic comments. Even an authentic generic comment can be flagged so keep a variation in your comments. Combin has gathered data over time on safe Instagram mass-commenting which lists best practices for this tactic. 

Do Not Do Anything You Consider Spammy

There are a number of reasons that your Instagram account can be banned. Content being offensive is a common reason if you have already been warned in the past. Hard work can be wasted due to actions that are outside the realm of the automated service. Comments that are considered spam that are distributed across hundreds of profiles can lead to a ban. Make sure that you create a list of actions that can lead to a potential ban and avoid them. You want your account to look as natural as possible so view it in the eyes of an Instagram.

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We’ve thoroughly tested the service and looked into every forum we could to find people discussing SocialMeep, and we’ve put everything into a comprehensive review.

SocialMeep Review

So far, people seem to be super excited about SocialMeep because they are the only service in the space that gets consistent results.

For reference, this is how many followers one brand had before using SocialMeep:

Here’s their account 90 days later:

Not only does SocialMeep deliver outstanding results, but they also have an incredible suite of Instagram analytics tools, insights, and consulting tools to give your account that extra boost.

Now let’s get into the basics of what Instagram Automation is, how it works, and the pros and cons of using SocialMeep for organic Instagram growth.

What is Instagram Automation?

Instagram bots and Instagram automation, the kind we’re talking about, are bots that follow people, like posts, view stories, and comment for you.

You enter your target audience criteria, and the automation tool finds accounts that have a high chance of engaging with you and interact with them in a predefined way that looks natural. Mostly a bot does what you’d do yourself but 24 hours a day at a much higher rate.

Instagram automation tools are not perfect, but with the right service, it works wonders. Further along in this article, I’ll go into detail on how SocialMeep is drastically different than a traditional Instagram bot. It’s a much better alternative to buying followers or spending a lot of money on Instagram Ads of sponsored posts. It is very important to determine and use the best Instagram bot for your account in order to get the best results possible.

What is NOT Instagram Automation?

Tools like post schedulers, analytics tools, and hashtag monitoring tools fall out of the purview of a traditional Instagram automation tool. These tools help you save time by scheduling many posts at once or surface essential data, but they don’t help grow your bottom line metrics.

What is SocialMeep?

According to its website, SocialMeep is an AI-Powered tool that helps you grow your Instagram page organically and automatically. 

Many other services claim to do this as well, so we were a bit suspicious at first.

We got in touch with Bryson Edgar, who manages customer success, and convinced him to offer us a behind the scenes view of SocialMeep.

SocialMeep uses advanced Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Vision to grow customers’ Instagram accounts. SocialMeep is the first of its kind platform to leverage the power of artificial intelligence for Instagram growth.

Unlike other services, SocialMeep doesn’t follow, unfollow, comment, or post for you. Instead, they do discreet micro-interactions, including story views, comment likes, post likes, IGTV engagements, and a proprietary combination of “Organic Actions.”

To identify the age, gender, and location of your audience, SocialMeep utilizes computer vision models. For interest targeting, they use classification algorithms based on a similarity measurement.

This means:

• Your followers are real, active, targeted people
• Your followers will engage with your content/page
• Your growth looks natural and goes undetected

SocialMeep uses very complex technologies, so if you want to learn more about this, please check out their technology page.

SocialMeep Review: Features

SocialMeep is a tool that anyone can use – you don’t need any technical experience, and the whole setup takes less than a minute.

First, you have to connect your Instagram account to their service. They don’t store passwords; the data is encrypted and tokenized for Instagram authentication.

Next, you can specify your targeting settings. You can add criteria like similar Instagram accounts, Hashtags, Gender, Age, Location, and more.

Is SocialMeep Safe?

As we mentioned earlier, SocialMeep doesn’t function like a traditional Instagram bot – they don’t mass-follow accounts, spam comments, or post for you.

They focus on using organic micro-interactions, which are entirely safe for your account.

There are zero risks of getting flagged, blocked, or banned by Instagram.

SocialMeep Pricing Review

SocialMeep is affordable for everyone.

They have two core plans, Basic ($49/mo) and Pro ($99/mo), and an optional add-on called SocialMeep Experts which I’ll go into detail on in the next section.

Compared to Basic, Pro offers access to faster growth, SocialMeep Cloud, and Premium Support. If you want to grow fast with access to proprietary growth insights, then Pro is for you.

Both plans come with a 14-day growth guarantee. If you don’t grow your account in 14-days, they’ll refund your full amount.

SocialMeep Experts

Many features set SocialMeep apart from other services, but one of the most powerful ones is SocialMeep Experts. For $75/mo, you get access to a private Instagram/SocialMeep Expert who can manage your account, schedule calls, and develop content. 

SocialMeep Experts is an excellent option for businesses that want their Instagram growth and marketing fully managed.

SocialMeep vs Instagram Ads

The ultimate test for any Instagram Growth tool is to put it head to head with Instagram Ads. 

With current impression and engagement rates, it costs around $3.25 to acquire a targeted follower in the United States via Instagram Ads. Using SocialMeep for one month, the cost per new follower is $0.01225. 

Unless you are already a very established business with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on Instagram Ads, it makes the most economical sense to use SocialMeep for Instagram growth.

Don’t get me wrong, Instagram Ads should be part of every marketer or business owner’s growth strategy, but it’s inefficient to use money when you’re bootstrapping or just starting.

Final Thoughts

From all the different Instagram growth tools we’ve tested, SocialMeep has the most features and gets you the most growth.

We loved using it, and I’m sure you will as well.

SocialMeep won’t help you get millions of followers overnight, but it’ll allow you to grow organically on Instagram and target your specific audience.

Bonus: Best Practices

As a bonus, Bryson was able to provide some insight into best practices to get the most out of using SocialMeep. Generally, results from SocialMeep vary from account to account, depending on your niche, content, and other factors. However, you’re virtually guaranteed a minimum amount of growth as long as you post content and have a complete profile.

As a general best practice, when using SocialMeep (or a similar service), focus on building the best possible business and product or service for your customers; the growth will come so you should be prepared for the demand.

The post SocialMeep Review – The Best New Instagram Tool? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What is Sustainability Marketing

Sustainability Marketing is the act of promoting a brand, business or enterprise by ‘merchandising’ a socially impactful or environmentally responsible attribute, product or practice and increasingly these efforts align with the SDGs. Larger CPG brands and companies such as Unilever, P&G, Pepsico are seeing the value in ‘twinning and winning’ by encouraging the Chief Sustainability Officer and the Chief

Marketing Officer to work more closely and collaboratively to figure out what should happen at the intersection between what the brand stands for, the consumer wants and the world needs. And when done well it will make people more receptive to buying your products, using your services or frequenting your establishment. Because when consumers know a business is doing right by people and planet, and not just profit, they are more likely to buy and even pay more for the opportunity.

Why is Sustainability Marketing Important?

The desire to shop more consciously and sustainably continues to grow. In fact, Brands for Good research shows that an overwhelming 88% of consumers would like brands to help them lead a more sustainable lifestyle. And a recent study from IRI finds that Sustainably marketed products have grown 7X faster that conventionally marketed products over the past 4 years.

And this is not just a growing fad. Sustainable brands have been showing steady growth year after year for the past 12 years. In fact, 70% of consumers consider climate change as serious a crisis as COVID-19. And 63% expect companies to continue their efforts around social and environmental issues even during the pandemic. (Porter Novelli COVID Tracker- Wave 2: 2020) With 74% of consumers saying that the way a brand conducts itself now will influence whether they buy them in the future (Gfk) it is no longer low risk for Brands to sit on the sidelines.

Sustainability Marketing done right (and gone wrong)

Even with so much upside, Sustainability Marketing can be a slippery slope. Making a misstep or stretching your message too far can be looked at as “green-washing”. Take Nike’s social campaign for example. In response to Black Lives Matter the brand took to Instagram and Twitter, urging followers to be part of the change. But while the company proudly promoted its stance to the black community, consumers became aware that the sneakers are produced in factories that employ forced labor of China’s imprisoned Uighur minority. Thus, undermining their credibility and a backlash through the press. The lesson is clear. Be genuine, authentic, transparent, and traceable and then track your impact and you can’t go far wrong.

But there are brands doing it right. For example, when Patagonia joined the Climate Strike and closed stores so their employees could join in as well — while even helping outfit local communities with signs and stickers to demonstrate their own support. And Adidas, setting out to end plastic waste by launching new product innovations created from recycled materials — all while working to reduce their own company’s carbon footprint. These two brands have risen in popularity and sales and demonstrate the power of successful Sustainability Marketing. It takes time, commitment and hard effort. As Alan Jope the CEO of Unilever said, “A principle isn’t a principle unless it costs you something.”

Getting started in Sustainability Marketing?

With so much at stake and so many brands and companies looking to start their Sustainability Marketing journey, it’s hard to know where to start. To get you grounded, here are a few tips:

1. Take a good look at your business.  

Start with a landscape assessment and then use that data and those insights to map and benchmark your business. We like the Sustainable Brands Brand Transformation Roadmap tool for helping do just that. If you really want to go to town – you could take the B-corp assessment and become a certified B-corporation! (That way you’ll get the kudos and prove that you really mean in it)

2. Ensure the “why” of purpose connects to the “way” of profit.

With your assessment in place make sure your company is financially, operationally and culturally able to make the shift. It is important that everything you do aligns and supports your goals. Make sure you cleary articulate your commitments within a time frame and communicate them internally before you go out there and save the world.

3. Find your community.

There are a lot of groups that can help businesses start and stay on track.  We actively participate with our B-Corp community as well as Sustainable Brands, Kindred and the United Nations so we can leverage learnings from those that have gone before. You can even use social listening tools to help identify key themes, communities, influencers and ambassadors that can help. We like netbase / quid and pulsar.

4. Look for a good Sustainability Marketing Agency Partner

A good marketing partner has the proven experience and credibility in sustainability and brand-purpose to help shepherd you along. Remember, this is not a simple communications brief. To be credible and bullet proof it often demands more of a business transformation underneath. Never underestimate it. As Mark Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&H says “ When it comes to topics like inclusion, equality and sustainability, this is important creative work, it requires experienced marketing and agency teams, it needs a ‘hands on’ leadership style, it should not be delegated.”

Conclusion:

Sustainability is here to stay. And more and more businesses are getting their company and products in line to live up to a more sustainable future. In fact, it is the only way to future proof your business and your brand (and did we mention that people pay up to 35% more for sustainably marketed products?)  But the good news is, when you do you have a great message to share with your consumers, shoppers and stakeholders. And when you do it right you can unlock exponential growth and help save the planet so that everyone can feel good about it.

Author bio: 

Heidi Schoeneck & Phil White

Co-founders of Grounded World

Voted in the top 100 of global impact leaders they are a Creative and Strategic duo who left big agency life to use their talents for good. Their company, Grounded World is a B-corp certified, award-winning Social Impact and Sustainability Marketing Agency that helps brands, businesses and nonprofits articulate their brand purpose, activating their brand and accelerating their positive impact. www.grounded.world

The post Sustainability Marketing: What Every Brand Needs to Know appeared first on Social Media Explorer.