DiniMedia

It’s no secret that with time Instagram is getting more and more challenging. Even though many users know how to navigate the algorithm, they realise that this is a full-time job. Logically, after this realisation, many seek an Instagram growth service to help them handle the workload. It’s a popular way to grow your account while not being constantly stuck on your phone.

I’ve been an Instagram nut for quite a while now and I adore the platform. I have my own take on each Instagram growth service out there – no wonder I’ve tried them all throughout the years. To get where I am now, I’ve searched high and low for quality services and systems and I explore the algorithm every single day to stay on top of things. Questions like ”Why is my Instagram engagement down?” and ”How to excel in SMM?” are common and I decided to address them.

Instagram growth service – what’s working best in SMM?

It’s only natural for people to look for easy solutions when it comes to work. It’s even more natural for ruling platforms, like Instagram, to give its best to prevent people from finding shortcuts. Instagram’s priority is to make users put their time on the platform. That’s why the most legit way to establish your brand across the platform is simply to spend time on it. Of course, only that won’t get you far. You actually need to have a clear strategy and the heart to follow it. If you haven’t got this by now, let me spill the beans – this is a long-haul journey and the question is, are you ready for it?

Results don’t come fast but to make sure you are on track, you need to see improvement every single day. Progress is a key and staying on one place won’t get you anywhere. That’s where strategy comes.

So the million dollar question is: If you pick the most popular Instagram growth service out there, pay a good amount of money for it, would it work?

An honest talk about an automated Instagram growth service

If we are talking about automatic solutions only, I hate to disappoint you – the answer is ”no”. Automating social media accounts sounds like a great idea, and for some of the social platforms that still works. But let’s face it, this is Instagram – they are no newbies here and their main goal is to make real people spend real time on the platform. Time is money – I know it, you know it and Instagram knows it. They give their best to prevent auto actions, bulk actions and anything that is slightly unnatural. They even go over the top and often real people could get flagged if acting not according to their standard.

Through the years I’ve tried various softwares like Jarvee, FollowAdder, FollowLiker, Likeitall and so many more. Knowing what’s out there is a part of my research and a way to get familiar with different growth methods. Assessing results from automation and manual work played a huge role in defining what works best on Instagram.

So what’s working?

Here’s the answer: A well-thought-out, strategic, person-driven Instagram growth service. The key is knowing the platform and using it in your favour.

To fire up your Instagram account you need a winning combination and I am here to share the basics with you. In Dini, our work is all about transparency and empowering businesses to unfold their potential.

• Content – as a visual platform, Instagram is the place to catch attention with show-stopping graphics and impeccable design. Don’t forget that just design won’t do it. Social Media Design is a real thing and doing it right is crucial
• Strategy – planning long-term is essential as success doesn’t come fast. Having a vision of what you want to achieve and actively working towards it is a key. Here are included a stable hashtag and posting strategies that would be the key to well performing posts = reaching wide audience
• Steady frequency – feeding users with content is what Instagram wants you to do in order to reward you. More posts in even intervals of time means better ranking.
• Engage – another way to keep users on the platform is by engaging with them. Enabling them to invest more time into checking their likes, reading and relying to comments and DM, making them watch stories and live video. When you engage, you also get engagement back to your own posts. It’s a win-win-win (for you, for other users, and most importantly for Instagram)

Best practices for Instagram growth

There are tendencies on social media. Updates are often taking place. The algorithm is treating you differently with time. Therefore, what worked yesterday, might not be working today. That’s why it’s worth mentioning what’s trending now and what makes a difference. I update this post regularly to make sure you are reading something that’s useful now. Let’s get down to business.

Make people spend more time on the platform – that’s what Instagram is interested in. The longer they have users online, the better. As a content creator, your best move is to help Instagram achieve this. If you post content that makes your audience stay online longer, the algorithm would reward you. This way you are beneficial. You help Instagram achieve their goal, so they help your content and account get popular.

How to make people spend more time on Instagram

• Carousel posts – use the carousel option to upload more content. More content helps people spend more time on it. If they’d spend 3 seconds looking at 1 photo, they’d surely spend more time looking at multiple photos
• Video posts – the longer the video, the more content it offers. Potentially this means longer time watching it. Including a video in a carousel post is a great option. It not only makes people stay engaged longer with your content, but it’s a great way to convey a more detailed message about your post. It’s a win-win
• Stories – stories are casual and people love scrolling through them. There are over 500 million users using stories every day on Instagram. Viewers tend to tap on them before the story slide is over. That’s why I recommend creating more and shorter story slides rather than creating less slides that are with longer duration.

The good news – you can do it!

Trying to see things from a different angle, there is an Instagram growth service that works. But it for sure includes manual labour, thoughtful actions that align with a professional social media strategy and an intense content creation process. Let’s face it – if you want to do this right, it’s not a job for one person. Especially if you have a business to run. We know your pain and we know how to take it away from you. And the best part is, we love doing it!

We enjoy working with businesses that know what they want but aren’t sure how to achieve it. Partnering up with inspiring causes, teams and admirable missions is something that makes us shine and get even better at what we do. We learn every single day to help you grow and get the results you deserve. Enrolling in our services is gaining a partner, someone that has your back and looks out for you while you go out there and do what you do best – running your business.

As a part of their omni channel strategy, many businesses put a part of their budget on Influencer marketing. I also made sure to cover this topic in general and help you learn about Instagram web viewer and how it fits in your marketing tools.

Stay updated

The world of social media is dynamic, so is the algorithm. I constantly explore what’s new and my goal is to stay updated and write relevant content. That’s why this blog post is updated often. Addressing the most recent changes is crucial for success. You could bookmark this post and be sure that it provides you the latest information when there’s any.

In today’s world there’re plenty of products, choices, offering. The scarcity of goods is only remembered by baby boomers. For millennials and the Z-generation the offering of innovative gadgets and endless fashion collections is overwhelming. As a result, the time that customers were looking for products is gone. In other words, now it’s a brand’s responsibility to reach out to their audience and present their product. With the staggering competition, the only way to be successful is to stand out. Exclusive brands are the ones that successfully increase their sales in the ever-changing commerce world. They leverage social media to drive business results.

Exclusive brands in the world of social media

Back in the time brands invested tons of money in brick and mortar. Fancy interior, expensive marble floors, carefully designed windows and perfectly polished sales people. In the midst of a pandemic, business owners aren’t even sure what’s the new right product to sell. So everything turned upside down. GymShark and Kylie Cosmetics turned out to be exclusive brands. And they did it without even owning a single physical store. They made no investment in a luxurious showroom. So how do they do it?

Online presence done right

It boils down to being unique and a little too brave. What makes a difference is the risk you are willing to take when it comes to design. People got tired of the same brands. They won’t pay attention to you if you just copied your successful competition. Remember that you need to stand out, not blend in. Omni channel marketing is the go-to strategy for exclusive brands. They ensure a seamless shopping journey that leaves customers delighted and loyal. This retail approach is something that successful brands master and keep expanding over time.

• Instagram – Seeing amazing looking, popping booties in Gym Shark leggings. That’s your feed all day long. Multiple Influencers and customers have them. This will certainly make you think of owning a pair of those.
  
• YouTube – Such a powerful tool. Who even watches TV anymore?! Surely, not your young cool audience. On Youtube you can catch up with your favourite Influencer, while getting some value. -Product reviews are wild. Some youtubers brought back authenticity and gained millions of trusting followers. Wide audiences make purchasing decisions based on Influencers’ reviews. This channel combines entertainment and valuable content. A winning combination for social media.
  
• Social Media Design – here’s where businesses shifted investments. Exclusive brands make sure to impress their audience across social media channels. Instead of investing in brick and mortar, they make sure to put their money on social media design and strategy. This ensures reaching their customers. Branding is crucial and being social media friendly is a key.
  
• Product Quality – Certainly, exclusivity suggests high quality. With an overwhelming amount of competition, what sets you apart is offering value. Quality products are valuable and a reason for consumers to come back. Additionally, you wouldn’t want online reviews that put your reputation in jeopardy.

One of the Exclusive brands worth mentioning

Jeffree Star Cosmetics – N1 example of nailing the market. Breaking the internet. Setting record sales. The design and social media team behind the brand knows how to grab the attention online. Who would have guessed that we’d be buying makeup online without even trying it. The idea is revolutionary. And it totally worked against all odds. That’s not all. On top of that slaying online presence. The quality of the products is praised all over the internet by Influencers and customers. Unseen quality and shades variety with an affordable price. A true exclusive brand that reached new unseen heights.

Do you still think you can do it the old way? If you are an innovative thinker like us in Dini, you’d rather invest in designer content that brings value and reaches your audience. Potential customers are who we need to serve as brands. It’s their interests and needs we need to address. Because they are the driving power behind companies’ success. To sum up, ask yourself if you want to be among the exclusive brands out there. Knowing who you are and what’s your path is critical to successful marketing strategy.

The release of The Social Dilemma on Netflix once more pointed out the negatives of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. For us, it’s important to also recognize the positive effects of social media and use them to our advantage. As professionals, we spend the majority of our day on social media. Hearing from everywhere how bad that is, we can’t help but share with you our own experience and how scrolling through feeds all day long affects us. Everyone is unique and has their own way to cope. After deciding to write this article, we understood that both of us actually have very different approaches, but we both found a way to make social media beneficial.

Di: ”Social Media helped me focus on healthy practices”

I spend the majority of my time scrolling through photos, performing strategic actions – it’s exhausting. I feel the burn at the end of the day. The fast shift of attention that social media requires sometimes makes my brain catch on fire. It’s very stimulating and it feels like I’m constantly in a big noisy crowd. Trying to find balance and peace came naturally. In the search of relaxation, I found myself committed to healthy lifestyle, creative activities and impactful causes.

My ways to cope and experience the positive effects of social media

• Hobbies – To take my focus off social media, I turned to my hobbies. But this time I was actually more determined. If before I was doing simple guided meditations and basic yoga to keep my mind and body in shape, now I go for Tibetan Buddhist meditation and advanced yoga handstands. I pushed myself to excel in controlling my physical and emotional well-being.
  
• Helping others – I’m a big supporter of mental health and I’ve been educating myself for a long time. Eventually, I felt the urge to help people that suffer emotionally. Many of them feel the negative effects of social media. I joined Shout as a Crisis Volunteer. My role is to empower people when they feel overwhelmed. I often have conversations with people thinking about suicide and struggling to cope.
  
• Off the grid – Once the urgent tasks are done, I put away my phone and laptop for 5-6 hours straight to enjoy a conversation with the people I love. The lack of digital distractions surely made my time with others deeper, more meaningful and authentic. I’m more aware of the time I spend online and this makes me put away my devices more often.

I believe that the way to take the best out of social media is to first get fit mentally and build a strong emotional well-being. Once people manage to do so, the negative effects of social media would be gone. Social media came into our lives suddenly and it’s understandable that many of us struggle to find a balance. Pointing people’s attention in the right direction helps them develop coping mechanisms for dealing with the negative side of it all. Building a strong self is essential. Once that’s achieved, it’s easy to see how beneficial social media is.

Nika: ”From a zen person to a social media manager”

All my life I was a creator, designer, a person who takes their time to do things. I was slow! My life consisted of enjoying and prolonging everything. Going to work, taking my time to communicate every idea with my colleagues, then consider their opinions.

COVID-19 turned out to be my wake-up call. I finally realized the close relationship between social media and design. Content creation is so on demand right now that I decided to go for it. The new daily routine surely wasn’t anything I was familiar with.

In the virtual world of social media everything moves incredibly fast. Content must be not only beautiful, but perfect. After all, you have just a fraction of a second to grab the attention of that person scrolling through their feed.

But great design is not all that’s there to a successful social media account. There’s so much to do – gaining likes and comments, generating leads and correct targeting, all at once changed my brain chemistry. The obsession with social media began. Actually, I started developing addiction to my work.

”My brain has changed”

We get addicted, because we like the feeling. It’s a hormone cocktail that makes us feel high. It feels good when results come in quickly and it’s hard to just stop. We get back on the platform again and again. We log in once more, just to see how things have developed – check the popping up notification or a new DM. It gets very intense, very quickly. My brain got used to being highly stimulated in various aspects at the same time. I find myself bored if I do one thing. All of a sudden, I can’t just watch a TV show. Simultaneously, I feel the urge to do something else too. To keep my mind pre-occupied. It’s difficult to slow down my brain. Feeling like a different person, now that the dynamics of my brain has changed.

I was a meditation nut. Reading Osho’s books and exploring all types of meditation practices was in my daily routine. Now I can’t focus enough in order to slow down. I sometimes compare myself to a 9-year-old boy addicted to video games. All my attention goes to the virtual reality.

Coping mechanisms and positive effects of social media

I’m a Libra – we are all about maintaining balance. With time, I found my own way to take advantage of my new fast-paced brain. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t fight it – I gave in to the speed and I started doing everything fast and effectively. It’s actually very useful. I cook fast, I clean fast, my workouts got more speedy. After I do all this, somehow naturally I find myself relaxed and I get back to my normal state of mind
  
• Detach – After I wrap up my daily work, I detach from it emotionally. Knowing that I’ve done the best possible during my designated working hours, helps me feel worry-free. I then focus on my family, friends and activities I love.
  
• ASMR – I discovered relaxation in ASMR – auto sensory meridian response. This youtube channel is a perfect place to explore it and Emma is doing such a great job there

To sum up, I believe that social media could be a good brain exercise that increases potential. It’s a two-edged sword, but finding a healthy way to manage it, makes the whole thing very beneficial.

You’ve probably heard that – content is a king. It’s kinda true. Let’s say everything else is done right – brand identity, marketing strategy, audience segmentation, social media strategy, etc. When you’ve covered those, then, yes, it all boils down to high quality content. And because this is not as simple as it sounds – like anything else (lol), a good content manager is someone that comes to the rescue. Choosing content that’s valuable for your potential audience is crucial. You need to give something that people are interested in. Not only that, you’d need a visual designer to graphically present it in an Instagram-worthy way. A good content manager that knows their job would provide you all you need in one place and assure your account growth. Here are my tips how to recognize the professional you are looking for:

3 things that a content manager should know

1. Copywriting & Design

A content manager needs to be able to produce original written and graphic content. In addition, a deep understanding about copyright law is important. Writing SEO friendly copy is always a plus so look out for those professionals that know what this means and how to do it. When it comes to social media, captions of posts are a big deal. Each platform has its specifications and they need to be respected. Creating visually attractive content is another must-have. It’s no secret that first impression counts and images/videos are they way to attract attentions the fastest. Once you have their attention thanks to your graphics, only then they’s read the copy you’ve written. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Totally true when it comes to social media

2. SMM

A good content manager would know the difference between the various social media platforms out there. Deep understanding about the differences is what brings actual results. It’s not by chance that we have Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Tik Tok, LinkedIn and many others. They are all different, that’s why they all exist at the same time. Essentially, they are very different platforms that should be treated differently. You can’t post the same content on all of them. That just won’t be relevant.

Nowadays, online presence is a must in order to stay relevant and raise brand awareness. That’s way a few social media outlets need to be ran simultaneously. Understanding that you need a specially crafted strategy for each social media platform would get you far.

3. Strategy

A content strategy is important in order to work purposefully. Without a clear strategy, you’d just invest time and work without reaching a goal. This could be demotivating and fatal for your project. A good content manager would put together a strategy that involves a way to attract your targeted audience. A detailed understanding of your audience is essential before developing content strategy.

Bringing value is one of the best ways to make people stay interested. Finding a subtle way to promote your product/service through bringing value to your customers is an art that a professional content manager masters. There’s loads of psychology in social media strategies, use it to attract people.

I like giving examples, so here is comes. Let’s say your product is a candy bar. Depending on the qualities of your candy bar, your audience would differ and the content they’d be interested in is different. If that’s a candy bar for kids or a low calories candy bar, both the audience and the content would be different. That’s why it’s so important to have deep understanding of that and provide only relevant content.

How to choose a Content Manager

To sum up, a content manager needs to possess a set of various skills. If you want to go for the gold here, a correspondence between visual graphics, text, accurate targeting and content strategy is a must. As this is relatively new role in the business world, it’s best to avoid the old fashioned full-time employee that has never had hands-on experience. Social Media Marketing is one of the most dynamic fields. Algorithms change, new platforms pop up and it’s crucial that you work with someone that’s been doing this for a while. Turning to a small agency or a freelancer with a dedicated focus on SMM is the way to go. Here at Dini, we live and breathe social media. We do this every day for the last few years and we love staying on top of things.

Design done right is crucial. It can make or break a business. The role of visual designers got broader with the rise of social media platforms. In this post, my goal is to help you understand better the role of a visual designer when it comes to online presence. What is their job and how exactly are they important for you?

Visual Designer helps you reach the right audience

Designers know the psychology of colors. We study the human subconscious mind extensively in order to know what it responds to. This way we soft sell your product/service. Visual designers study each individual sector and the colors that are appropriate for each type of product. When choosing your brand colors, it’s crucial to have in mind the type of industry you are in. Sounds bizarre, right?! There are thousands of DOs & DON’Ts when it comes to design – all this with one and only purpose – to make products sell.

Let’s take packaging design for example. Did you know that choosing purple for your meat products is a bad idea? Why you ask. Customers would avoid the product, because subconsciously their minds associate the purple color with old, rotten meat.

Here’s another example, this time from interior design. I remember the exam in uni – our interior could look amazing, but we wouldn’t pass the exam if we did a purple wall in the living room. Most people don’t understand why. Purple is a likeable color, we love it. It’s so pretty, especially if you combine a few different shades of it.

The answer hides in people’s psychology. Studies about how our minds get affected by colours were made and published. Those studies conclude that spending long hours in a purple room puts us in depression.

Visual designer sees in perspective – that gives you a long-term strategy

In marketing, perspective is crucial. In its core, that’s actually what sells. It’s again all about people’s psychology. When made right, every photo, video, graphics or a movie, uses multiple tricks. Every single detail is there for a reason – to trigger the desired reaction in people’s minds.

I’ll share a couple of tricks with you.

Want to inspire trust? – a professional visual designer would use a man for your ad and would take a photo while shooting up to the subject. We’d do that because studies show this inspires trust in people.

You need to promote a donation campaign? – If we shoot a video ad, we’d make sure the camera is from a higher perspective. We’d use plenty of light and focus on pink hue. Light pink color provokes a feeling of protection in people.  This type of video subconsciously makes the viewer feel bigger and stronger. If this sounds like a manipulation to you, I’d make it clear for you that in uni we called it psychological effect.AQ

Myths and Fairytales – how to use them in marketing

Yes, you read that well. We study myths and fairytales to get a BA in Arts. But we go about them differently. We actually analyze the brain. Our strongest neural pathways are formed during childhood. Subconsciously we still believe in that happy ending and in Prince Charming. Our brain just clicks when we watch that ad where a pretty lady applies a hydration cream and a few seconds later a handsome man notices her. Just like Cinderella! Poof – here is the magic!

We know we “deserve” the best. Just like in the fairytales that we were raised with. Society forms our brains early on and having control over that is … well, out of the window already.

To sum up, a visual designer is a professional, trained for years to manipulate customers’ choices. To do that, we use colors, images and storylines. Read more about design concepts and use professional tricks to take your branding to the next level.

If you are interested in using social media to sell or raise awareness, read Di’s thoughts on Influencer Marketing.