A popular website promised me thousands of new Instagram followers - but it completely backfired

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before instaswell

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. 

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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.

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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.

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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 homepage

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 designed to drive up my following, such as #like4like and #followme. (#Instaswell is an automatic tag.)

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The idea behind choosing hashtags was for Instaswell to find similar users to auto-like and auto-follow for me (and in turn, those same accounts would auto-like and auto-follow me back.)

Instaswell hashtags

Instaswell

This was all free, but Instaswell informed me that for a mere twenty bucks each month, Instaswell could make me somewhat of a "VIP;" exposing my Instagram to over 105,000 users a month.

I opted out. (There's also a $10 and $15 monthly option, for those looking to cheat the system on a budget!) If you don't want to pay for Instaswell, the site will still generate new users and "likes" for you - up to fifty each a day.

Step 2. If you register, they will come (and follow you on Instagram.)

Almost immediately, Instaswell starts showing me the Instagram accounts its following and "liking" on my behalf based on the interests I listed through hashtags. These are mutual, which meant my account started showing up on other Instaswell users' lists.

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instaswell like feed

Business Insider/Madison Malone Kircher

"Simulating human behavior. Swell is coming in 19 hours, and 27 minutes," the site reads after I get my first bump of followers.

"Swells," as they're called, come every 24 hours and can sometimes take the entire day to start populating your Instagram account with new followers.

You press a "play" button to begin each of the "Swells," so while you're an active Instaswell user, you're very much in charge of when the site uses your Instagram account to do its job. So there's a plus.

I was excited to get tons of new followers, but during my first "Swell," I only got eight new followers. In my second, only six new people followed.

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I got a bunch of "likes," too. But numbers were what I wanted. 

Still, fourteen new followers was something, and if they shared the same interests as me, maybe I was opening up my Instagram world to a whole new crop of interesting people who loved #spring and #NYC as much as I do.

Not so much.

As I scrolled through my feed, I noticed a few things. The first thing I figured out was that Instaswell had followed fifty new people on my behalf. I only got fifteen new followers, but now I was following fifty. And to make matters worse? Those accounts were mostly spam.

Take a look. This one was just called ____cash.

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Turns out, the pre-generated Instaswell hashtags connected me with accounts not using Instagram to post interesting content, but rather with accounts only interested in gaining followers. I guess I can understand that (I was trying to get new followers too!) but ugh, too much spam.

Instead of cityscapes and knolled lifestyle pictures, all I can see are dozens of images where Instagram users request followers, simply for the sake of having a high number of followers.

Instead of seeing the photos my friends and other users I had deliberately decided to follow, I was seeing posts like this: 

instaswell follow4follow

Instagram/kmalkyz

 

Lesson learned: Quality over quantity.

Since I started using Instaswell last week, I have only gained 16 new Instagram followers. Two of them are people I know (and they didn't find me through Instaswell.)

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current instagram followers instaswell

Business Insider/Madison Malone Kircher

But I am now following over 100 new users and that number only continues to grow. And unfortunately, the number of spam posts in my feed is growing right along with it. 

I have to change my Instagram password, and I'm no longer actively starting "Swells."

So look, if you want to bump up your Instagram interactions from a purely numbers perspective, Instaswell might work for you.

However, if you're interested in interacting with real people and content, you're going to have to find alternative methods to do so. Unfortunately, that might mean spending some quality time, just you and your Instagram feed, finding interesting people and places to follow.

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Moral of the story? Don't leave it up to a bot to do the work for you (and definitely don't pay for one.)

As for me, before I can even begin to venture into the depths of Instagram, I'll be going through the painstaking process of individually unfollowing all the accounts Instaswell followed on my behalf. 

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