There’s lots of complaining out there in social media land about buying followers. On some level we all kinda resent it, because getting followers used to be kind of automatic or organic. But no more - organic is going away.

So instead of swimming against the tide of the inevitable Darla decided to go surfing - and tried out a 2 day experiment using Instagram’s promotional feature. And she reeled in 70 followers in two days.

How? Glad you asked…(but you should listen to hear all the nuance of how this works)...

• This approach only works from the mobile app, not desktop (no clue why)

• Go to your Instagram profile and click on the “promote post option”

• You’ll see a gathering of your best posts, so pick one to promote and click “next”

• Then you’ll be asked where to send people who see your post - and you have three options - your profile / your website / or a Direct Message (Darla did the profile)

• Next, select your target audience from the two options - automatic / or custom (Darla chose specifics relating to her geography, etc.)

• Then you set a budget and duration (Darla did $5 daily for 2 days)

• Click “next,” wait for approval, then sit back and wait for the follower floodgates to open

Is it worth it?

Darla got 70 followers in two days - so you have to gauge how much each follower is worth to you to know, But besides helping you build your followers this approach enables you to dial in who those follower ARE through targeting the post. That means more of the people seeing your posts are the kind of people who might buy from you.

So you figure it out. And listen. And subscribe. And join our Wingnut Social Media Lab.

• [0:37] The stuff that went down in the Wingnut Social Media Lab (and why you should care)

• The Wingnut Social Media Lab (on Facebook)

• www.WingnutSocial.com

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