How to Start Your Own Instagram Pod

Instagram is a place with more than one billion monthly users, so it’s a place where you want your business to have an active and engaged presence.

This means taking the time to grow your following and build community. To get the followers rolling, you can buy instant delivery Instagram followers, but that’s not enough. You must also build engagement with comments and likes, too.

One of the ways you can do this is by participating in an Instagram Pod. These are exclusive, invite-only groups of users, brands, or businesses that have a similar following.

Members of the pod work together to like and comment on posts shared by users in the pod – so everyone helps everyone else out. The problem with this is not only are these pods not exactly easy to find, but because they’re invite-only it can take a while to find one that you’re actually able to participate in.

So what do you do in this case? Start your on
Instagram Pod. Here’s how.

1.
Choose a Small Group of Like-Minded Instagram Users

To build an active and helpful pod, you must choose Instagrammers who post creatively, post consistently, post about the same topics as you do, and have a similar follower count as you do. For best results, you should keep the pod fairly small, with no more than 15 users.

Because you may want to allow pod members to be able to invite people they know, leave a little room for growth and send invitations to five to eight people.

If you find that they don’t respond, or aren’t interested in the offer, you can go back to the drawing board and find more to invite.

2. Send
a Direct Message to the Instagrammers You Want to Invite

Once you’ve chosen who you want to invite,
send them a direct message. If you’re a little lost on what to say, you can use
this template:

Hey
[NAME],

I’m
looking for a talented group of like-minded entrepreneurs to help and support
one another on Instagram. We can fight back against Instagram’s
popularity-based algorithm through organized and dedicated engagement via an
Instagram Pod.

I
believe that your creative content and similar audience are a perfect fit for
the Pod. I’m inviting you and [X] others to participate. You could also invite
a few people you believe would be a good fit to help us out, if you wish.

Would
you be interested in joining our group of creatives? Let me know.

I look
forward to hearing from you! 

[Your
name]

3.
Create a Group and Name Your Pod

Whatever name you choose, make it something
related to your niche, and something that will excite the group about
supporting each other.

4. Send
a Welcome Message

Once you’ve named the group and gotten enough response from the people you’ve invited, you’ll want to send a welcome message, which can be done as another direct message.

Many people manage their pods with direct messages inside Instagram, but others prefer to keep the pod activity off on Instagram and use another service like Skype or Telegram to handle the pod.

Whatever you choose, you should send a welcome
message that welcomes everyone, thanks them for their participation, and
establishes group rules. You can use this template as inspiration for your
message, tailoring to your pod as needed.

Hey,
Friends!

I want
to welcome you to the [TITLE] Instagram Pod!

I want
you to think of the Pod as a collective group of badass engagement boosters who
want to help you succeed.

How the
Pod is going to work:

1. We will use this group to notify one another when we upload a post to Instagram (for maximum engagement, we should notify each other right away after a post).
2. Everyone must like and comment on each member’s post shortly after the member has notified us.
3. Comments must be more than four words long to boost engagement.
4. Comments should be unique to the post. Avoid generic phrases like “Very cool” and “Love it!” since those look spammy and can easily be automated.
5. Tag the Pod member in your comment to make it even more personal.

You can
also turn on post notifications for everyone in the pod, to make easier to see
when someone has posted content for engagement. This only works if everyone
puts forth the effort, so if you’re not engaging with posts from other pod
members and only trying to get your own posts some love, I will remove you.

Please
let me know if you have any questions.

I’m so
excited to get started and can’t wait to see what you awesome people post
next!  

5.
Build Relationships Outside the Pod

Instagram is all about building relationships and community. Connect with the users outside of Instagram so you can get to know them a bit better.

Share your goals with the group and get ideas for how you can help make your account better, and offer your feedback as well. One way you can do this is to schedule a Skype meeting with the group to get to know them.

Pods are only worth it if everyone participates. And it’s good to keep working on engagement outside of the pod because you don’t always want to have the same five to 15 people commenting on all of your posts. If that happens, then it gets to be a little obvious that you’re working together.

Technically the policy is that users can’t participate in engagement exchange (like, share, comment, or follower) programs, including pods. So it’s best to keep things natural and varied, and not rely solely on pods for your engagement.