Using Instagram ‘Pods’ to Grow Your Engagement

Instagram started banning the use of bots and automated activity which were used to increase your followers by liking and commenting on other people’s images, following and unfollowing accounts, etc. Of course the growth hacking communities found another solution that works and is kinda allowed — Instagram pods. The big dawgs will try and shut it down but the little guys will always work out another method — remember Napster?!

A pod is a collective of users within a chat group, usually via the Telegram app or private Facebook groups, who follow a set number of rules and engage with one another’s posts. There are small niche groups that are harder to find and large pods with 1000+ people participating.

I have been hesitant to try this method of growth hacking as I’ve heard the groups can be super random with all sorts of users from porn stars to gardening companies trying to expand their reach. I strongly believe that the time you spend on social media should be focused on actually engaging with your fans and growing your fanbase organically. Back in the day I tried using the bots before Instagram took control of millions of useless auto generated comments on unrelated pictures. I get it Instagram, I understand! Even though you could hack the growth of a correct segment of Instagram, like which hashtags to engage with or the followers of…