Instagram For Business: Instazood Review
Using instagram for business can have awesome results.
Your account is not "penalized" for being a business instead of a person (unlike Facebook), and you can connect more deeply with others on a personal level.
This is the best way to do business, right?
Instagram for Business: A Real Instazood Review
What I love about Instagram the most is that I can really network and have conversations with my followers and who I follow, (many of whom are the same people).
I've setup numerous Instagram accounts for my clients, and after getting amazing results, it became apparent I should also focus on Instagram for our business.
After attending a business meeting with my business coach, the lovely Kim Jiminez, I decided to check out some Instagram tools such as Instazood and see if it would be any good to recommend to my clients.
The Instazood Experiment Begins...
I started out with slight trepidation—Instazood automatically follows, comments and DM (direct messages).
Sounds spammy? I thought so.
But, dedicated to try it out for the benefit of my clients and readers, and I decided to try it out for 3 weeks as an experiment.
Would this be of any value to myself and my clients—or was just another annoying social media tool I wish I had never bothered to use.
But First, My Insanely Boring Instagram Business Account:
My business Instagram feed was lacklustre.
I hadn't set aside any time to think about my own content strategy, and I struggled to find interesting Instagram accounts to follow.
Basically, I hadn't started on Instagram properly for my business, or put any time into it.
So, I was okay to experiment on there, as I could always start a new account.
Beginning the Instazood Journey
So I started my Instagram plan using Instazood with a clear goal in mind: to connect with other small businesses, get inspiration and finally, to network.
To setup Instazood, I followed the setup instructions roughly from this tutorial from Youtube, tweaking a few things along the way.
During the setup process, you select the hashtags you would like to interact with, or the area/location.
Then you put in your own positive comments that it will use to comment on these accounts.
Lastly, you put a "thank you for your Follow" or introductory message in the Direct Message section, that will be send to your new followers.
So how did it do?
Surprisingly, Instazood really did help me achieve some of my goals, but I had to be very on the ball and constantly check and follow-up with comments and follows. I began to get more followers on my business account, and I found some excellent new accounts to follow.
I also loved how I found so many great Instagram accounts to follow and network with! I even inadvertently got some new sales leads for my services which I hadn't been counting on.
Then I found myself falling in love...with the Direct Message function 💛
I absolutely loved the direct message sent to people when they followed my Instagram account.
You write your own personal little thank you and self introduction that will be sent off to all your new followers, which I loved.
It means if you want to send a little message to your new followers, you don't need to manually remember their username, find them and copy and paste your hello message.
By the way, DM is not the place to do a "hard sell."
This simple introduction was really helped to open up new connections with people and basically just have a more special touch when people follow you.
So what's the catch?
This may not sound bad for some people, Instazood automatically unfollows most of the accounts they follow for you.
For some people, this may be good, but for my purpose this was infuriating.
Not to mention, following then unfollowing people to try and get more followers is so spammy!
Most importantly, it went against my main goal, which was to find other interesting accounts of small businesses to follow and network with.
Falling out of love with the Instagram app....
The automatic comments on pictures seemed okay at first, leaving my positive comments on pictures.
But then...
I woke up one morning to find Instazood had left a positive comment on a picture of somebody's dog that had passed away. :(
The picture had no hashtags.
I apologized profusely for the mistake, and then I had to go back and check why it was leaving comments on posts with no hashtags.
I created a support ticket with Instazood to find out how it could stop commenting on posts with no hashtags, but their response didn't really answer my question at all. Hmm.
So do I recommend the Instazood Instagram Tool?
Overall Instazood was a great tool to use as a research tool to helped me find hashtags that had the highest interest and conversion rate for my business niche that helped me network the most effectively.
I also found some awesome new Instagram users to follow, and gained more of a following myself, of genuine followers who are interested in my services.
More importantly, I discovered some businesses who I wanted to work with in the future, and some businesses in my field who I could connect with.
Instagram Doesn't Like Those Bots!
So, will I be renewing my subscription? Definitely not.
Instagram frowns upon bots, and after checking Instazood out more closely, it most certainly is a bot, (maybe a fairly good one, but nonetheless).
Using the Instagram tool may get you shadow banned, and it's simply not worth it.
There are plenty of other Instagram techniques that will allow you to gain real followers organically.
So long, my beloved Direct Messaging
Now I have a list of the hashtags that work well for me from Instazood, I'm able to manually find related Instagram accounts much more easily than before.
But, I will miss the feature that gives automatic direct messages to my followers to say thank you for your follow.
If you want to network with me through Instagram, feel free to message me via Instagram.
Don't forget, if you have problems getting started and running your Instagram account, drop us a line, and we can provide business Instagram training and setup. 💛
Leave a comment below and let us know your experience with Instazood or any other Instagram tools!