Please don’t pay for Instagram shout outs

Last updated on July 5th, 2024 at 11:49 am

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There is never a shortage of companies (i use that term loosely) that want to help you promote your business via Instagram. Most are simple repost accounts that share your photo and add a link to your profile.

This is stated to give you “organic growth”. I had a person reach out to me recently to try to help promote my blog photos. I was nice and read what they had to say. I will note this person was nice about it and didn’t try to oversell their services. Yet it’s still a service you can do yourself for free.

Don’t get conned into paying for promotions unless you think it’s worth your while.

the DM

Like most of these encounters/chats, they start out innocent enough. Most of these profiles try to flatter you and this one wasn’t any different. It was a profile claiming to be a marketing agency.

Here’s the thing about most of these profiles. They give the impression they are an agency or company or promotional entity yet half of the profiles never have any real website links or pricing plan links.

So that’s always a big red flag for me. Also if some random company wants to pitch you a service you always have to ask questions.

Here’s a screenshot of the intro to the chat. The profile wanted to flatter me by stating they loved my content or something similar.

hey what’s up … you have an amazing profile💖

intro text from marketing brand

I was nice and replied back asking how I could help them. The person quickly launched into their sales pitch. My favorite part is when the brands try to cram as much text into a text bubble as possible. It’s like they copy it all and paste it into the chat.

Here’s another screenshot of the chat.

This profile claims to have 1500 to 2000 profiles that help promote various Instagram profiles. From what I saw they basically take your photo and share it using a link to your profile in the caption. So for example they would use photos and add some generic text or emojis then direct people to follow me at the IG handle.

They considered that a shout out. They would also promote you in IG stories as well.

more great sales pitching

According to the person who reached out to me they would promote my photos on 18 Instagram profiles. I was also supposed to be impressed by the fact that they had a 10 million follow account that would get me excellent growth.

It gets better

And this was only going to cost me $20 USD. How could I say no to that right? I was polite and declined and the person kept on. According to the DM’er that if I wasn’t satisfied my money would be refunded. I declined again. They even lowered the price to $10.

I will admit

I will admit they did answer my question about Organic Growth (I’ll post their quote below). They also told me why they didn’t have direct links to any website (which I didn’t buy.) They claimed they didn’t have a website because they only promote new businesses. Their Instagram profile had a lot of random photos. One even promoted some lady’s Only Fans. When did Only Fans become a business? Or when did promoting pictures of cats become a business?

Like I said I didn’t buy that answer. I figured they only DM’d people hoping to make sales and probably gain access to an IG account maybe who knows?

Organic growth means that many people will see your content when we upload your content with your tag to all our big accounts and also add story and highlights and swipe up stories. Will visit your profile and connect with you. This will attract most of the people who are interested in your content and are interested in buying your content. This will also give very good growth to your business.

The Dm’ers response to my question asking what organic growth is

don’t do it

All I ask is don’t deal with these types of profiles. if you feel like responding do it. Don’t pay them for promotion. You can promote your images for free. It might sound like a good deal $20 or $10 but is it really worth it?

You don’t know if the followers are real or just curated robot accounts. You also don’t know if the marketing company will want to gain access to your Instagram account. Then if they lock you out you are out of an account.

I was happy the person understood and didn’t get upset when I decline. I also liked that they could at least tell me their take on what Organic Growth is.

Either way I figured I’d share this to let everyone know these marketing ploys are making the rounds again.