Let’s face it. We have all at one time or another thought to ourselves, how did so-and-so get 3,000 likes on that picture? It just doesn’t make sense. We may have even thought, I should have 3,000 likes on my photos. We might have even considered buying some likes just to keep things fair. Here’s an interesting fact for you. Instagram gets 7.2 million unique visitors every single day. As you probably already know the more likes your photo gets in a short period of time the higher chance it has of showing up on the front page. An image that makes it the front page will be seen by no less than 250,000 people, potentially by millions. I think you see where I’m going with this.
I own a few small businesses that have some pretty stellar media, atleast I think it’s stellar. When I realized the potential for getting that media in front of millions of people I started aggressively pursuing Instagram. There was just one problem. I had no idea how to promote myself on Instagram, get Instagram likes, get Instagram followers, or even really how to interact in that secret Instagram photo comment language. So, I did my research. I obsessed over my instagram, reading articles supposedly teaching you how to unlock the secrets of instagram, and watching videos on Instagram promotion. While I certainly got comfortable with the interface and had a lot of fun posting my pictures I still wasn’t get much action. I would watch pictures of a much lower caliber than mine explode with likes in minutes after posting and I would scratch my head.
The only logical conclusion I could draw from this experience was that these people were paying for promotion. They must be buying enough Instagram Likes to get their pics noticed and then hope that they take off from there. Well, I had already invested a significant amount of time and effort so I figured I would just try it out. I took my best 5 images and picked out 5 companies based on online feedback about the sites. I listed them one at a time and let you know what my experience with them was. Here we go. Before you read on though I do want to let you know I did find one site that I have been able to count on without a doubt every single time, it’s the last one listed and the last one I was willing to try. I would definitely recommend it. Also, be sure to checkout the wrap-up.
1) Buzzoid.com – Decent site, mediocre online reviews, claims to deliver in less than 10 minutes. Also, these guys prices are LOW, like doesn’t make any sense low. So, I placed my order and waited 10 minutes. Nothing. Waited another few hours, still nothing. Sent an email, waited 3 days only to get an email asking my when I placed my order, could I send the order #, etc. I did, 2 days later I got the same email again with a promise that they would all be delivered soon. They were never delivered, as far as I can tell this is a scam site that lures you in with low prices and then just keeps your money delivering nothing. Avoid it.
2) idigic.com – If you ask me this one looks an awful like the Buzzoid site, offers the same LOW LOW prices and claims super fast delivery. To their credit, I did get the delivery in about 6 hours. Unfortunately about 4 minutes after it was complete Instagram suspended my account and sent me a pretty nasty Terms of Service violation email letting me know if I kept up this sort of activity my account would be permanently suspended. Fortunately, after I agreed, they restored the account. Also, fortunately, I have 3 Instagram accounts so I decided I would try a different service with another account. Avoid these guys too. Don’t end up like me.
3) socialformula.com – On the surface these guys look top notch, decent website, client portal, they really seem like they have it together. So I signed up for the client portal only to be faced with a myriad of problems logging in. I actually had to download an unsigned plugin to gain access to the client portal only to discover once I was there that it wasn’t actually finished yet and all purchases still had to be made through the front end of the website. Frustrating to say the least. I go back to the front end and fill out the order form to place my order, and while I am doing that I keep getting notifications about popups in my Google Chrome browser. Right towards the end of the form a Pop-UP just jumps up at me and tells me my computer isn’t secure and needs to be cleaned, and it won’t go away. When I finally got out of the page and got the pop-up out of my face all my form data was gone. At that point I was just not interested in going any further. As a side note my computer continued to have problems after that with a similar pop-up and I had to call my older brother, who happens to be a technician to get rid of it for me. Needless to say Avoid this site.
4) gram-ozo.com – After being burned 3 times I was finally ready to just spend some money and stop being cheap. I went over to gramozo, placed my order for what I thought was my best pic and boom. The likes showed up in about 25 minutes, unfortunately they also disappeared about 25 minutes later. I was beginning to think that there was some mass conspiracy against people who buy likes, and that all these companies were created just to discourage it. I did some research on the whole disappearing likes thing and found that it is a common problem with this company specifically. I asked for a refund, even requested one through paypal, and was denied. It was a big waste of my hard earned cash and I was just about ready to call it quits. The jury’s still out on this one. I can’t say my experience was good.
5) http://darkcloudpromotion.com – This site was actually referred to me by a co-worker that had used them for YouTube Promotion. They said they nothing short of the best. Bold words, after what I had already been through I didn’t have the highest of hopes. I thought I would just try one more company and then that’s it. End of line. So I went over to DarkCloudPromotion.com and instantly noticed a major difference. This site was clean, professional, offered services for every major social network, and had a built in shopping cart. Instead of a cheaply built HTML based throw-a-way this was an actual e-Commerce site. It wasn’t overrun with bright colors and flashing dialogue, it just had products. I added 1,000 Instagram Likes to my cart, clicked on CheckOut, put in my URL and paid with Paypal. No less than 20 minutes later I had 1,857 likes on my picture. I have since used this site to send several of my photos to the front page of Instagram, although only for a short time. Competition is fierce. I am happy to report that, after all my searching I found a site I can really count on for deliveries.
There it was, my journey into the Instagram Like Abyss. I hope that you found this to be informative and useful and you will be able to save yourself from dealing with all the things I had to by just skipping to a trusted provider. Buying Social Media Promotion can be a tricky endeavor, as no one wants to admit that they did it so they aren’t likely to give you a referral. Statistics don’t lie though, many companies, politicians, entertainers have all been called on the carport for questionable numbers. If you want my advice, just be smart about your promotion. Propel things forward that are truly worthy of notice.
Thanks for reading!
-Isabel
Buying Instagram Likes - Demystified 