Business Insider/Madison Malone Kircher
If you’re looking for more Instagram followers, cheating your way to photo-app fame is not the way to do it.
I should know. I just tried.
Last week, I was persuaded by several friends to register my Instagram handle at a site called “Instaswell.” As someone who often struggles to break into double-digit likes on Instagram, I was excited to give it a try.
For the record, when I first started using Instaswell, I followed 361 people and had 331 followers.
Instaswell, as its clever name suggests, promised to grow my Instagram following significantly.
I knew opening up my account to a site like this could mean acquiring some spam in my feed, but now there’s so much spam that I haven’t seen any of my friends’ actual Instagram updates in days.
I totally regret my decision.
Here’s how it works.
Instaswell
Step 1. Choosing appropriate hashtags to find my target audience.
I added 40 different tags to try to accurately reflect the sort of content I post on the app, like #spring, #friends, and #NYC. Instaswell automatically suggested a dozen hashtags