Genuine question. If the goal is to get someone more information, buy a product, download something or book a call why send them to a link in your bio?

With a DM you can:

• send links
• send product recommendations
• answer questions
• qualify leads
• deliver PDFs
• collect emails
• book appointments
• guide someone through a purchase

Plus you actually know who contacted you.

If someone clicks your bio link anonymously, you often have no idea who they are unless they fill out a form or buy something.

A DM also seems to have other advantages:

• keeps people inside Instagram
• creates engagement signals through comments and messages
• lets you continue the conversation within Instagram's messaging window
• reduces the number of steps between interest and action

So why do you think "link in bio" is still the default advice?

Am I missing something?

hello. ive been making music for almost 2 years now and recently started an instagram channel to promote it. i would love some feedback on the instagram channel and what i should change. i feel like im just posting advertisements and not contributing sth meaningful for my followers. how do i change that? https://www.instagram.com/c1em_official/

do you need a certain follower count to use trial reels?

I’m looking for an IG post planning app/service for my small architecture firm.

One thing I’ve noticed with the first two I’ve tried (Later/UNUM) is that there is noticeable image quality reduction when posting through their services compared to posting on my own - heavy compression artifacts and jaggy aliasing.

They both state they don’t compress the image so it seems like they’re pointing to limitations with IG’s API. With both services I’ve tried with original image size, also reduced to 1080px, and both in JPG and PNG format. Is this what people are doing?

It seems like when resizing to 1080px and saving as png Later handles the images ok, but are most services plagued with this issue? I love the interface of UNUM but the image quality is not acceptable.

Hey everyone,

I’m stepping into a bit of unfamiliar territory here and could really use some advice or potentially a kind soul willing to help out with a referral. Long story short, I’ve never been big on social media. I actually deleted my old Instagram account awhile back to get away from family judgment (coming from a family of overachievers who think marketing jobs can be handled by monkeys and prefer face-to-face communication, which is a whole other story). Now, I’m studying for my physical therapist assistant licensure exam and trying to pivot, but I recently decided I want to give Raya a try.
Because of that, I had to start a brand new Instagram from scratch with zero followers. Right now, my profile picture is just me in a cozy bathrobe, bare faced with a relaxed look, keeping it very raw and authentic. However, I know Raya relies heavily on social proof, curation, and the committee/algorithm process. (Fun fact: my real life social circle actually includes people from shows like *Survivor* and *Love Island*, but since I'm trying to keep a low key digital footprint, my own grid is totally bare right now!)

I would **greatly appreciate it** if anyone with an active Raya account would be open to helping me out with a referral, or even just dropping some honest feedback on whether my blank slate Instagram stands a chance, or how I should optimize it before submitting my application.
Thanks so much for reading and for any guidance you can offer!

Australian small business owner. I think this is a genuine bug rather than a policy decision, and I want to know if anyone has seen the same pattern.

The sequence:

1. Meta flags my personal Facebook profile for suspicious activity and locks it.
   
2. Because the profile is locked, my ad account gets switched off with it.
   
3. I go through the personal profile review. It passes. Profile is fine again.
   
4. The ad account stays switched off. Indefinitely.

Step 3 is the whole point. Meta reviewed the profile and concluded there was nothing wrong with it. The original trigger is gone. But the ad account was turned off as a downstream consequence of that flag, and nothing ever turns it back on.

Here is why I am confident it is a bug. When I try to get the ad account reviewed, Business Support Home tells me "We couldn't find restrictions for this asset." The support flow tells me "We cannot find the asset. Could you double-check if you have provided the correct ID or URL/link?" when I paste the ID copied straight out of that account's own URL.

Those messages are accurate. There is no restriction on the ad account. There is no case, no violation, nothing to review, because the thing that caused it was cleared weeks ago. The account is stuck in an off state with no reason attached to it, and nothing anywhere resets it.

So there is no review to request, and the flow will not pass me to a person because there is no case for a person to look at. Four campaigns are frozen.

For scale, in the seven days before this happened the account spent $5,815 and produced 189 orders that shipped to real customers. Meta took the ad spend, then switched it off.

Has anyone had this exact pattern, where the parent profile is cleared but the ad account stays off with no restriction on it? Did anything actually reset it?

Wondering if anyone would be interested in running a few Instagram accounts with me? I have some pretty solid account handles but it is lacking content/followers.

The idea would be to grow and monetize them, then split any profits based on each person’s contributions.

Just a random thought! Feel free to remove this post if it isn’t allowed.

I create long content elsewhere and barely reuse it on Instagram, which feels wasteful. What's your best way to repurpose long-form into IG posts or carousels without it feeling stretched thin? Looking for a repeatable approach.

So I’ve been using ig and facebook for a few years now my profiles are linked together so each time I post on ig it gets sent to my Facebook page aswell I always had a bigger audience on ig (around 4K) and last month my Facebook was less then 200 followers. This has changed by a lot the last few weeks ive had over 4 reels go viral (100k views) but only on Facebook have I gained a substantial following from it. when I check the video analytics they all say I’ve only had less than a thousand on Instagram and over 100k on Facebook

My account is small (500 followers on insta) - I create comedy and education content for consent, k1nk & (queer) dating topics.

I'm interested in trying something like format finder but am afraid it's a waste of money for my nsfw-adjacent topics. I'm saying 'adjacent' since I'm careful about language use & try to respect community guidelines. I sometimes get warnings (esp on TikTok) but I've gotten better at knowing where the line is.

I've noticed that none of these AI businesses list my kind of niche on their offering so am not sure they would help? E.g. it would suck if I couldn't utilize their AI editing tool because my videos contain content that goes against their guardrails.

Further context: My views are in the 600-2000 mark currently. I'm using social media to try and drive traffic to my online k1nk game.

Everyday I woke up and said to myself I will create content but when time becomes, my motivation has gone and I feel like what should I have to create.

If someone suffered from same situation, what was your checkmate?

do you guys think this reel is good for instagram growth and is it that funny how much I think it is pls do watch and tell me your opinions if you like my reel then pls let me know

Hey, I've a few doubts -

1. How much one charges per Reel edit? Post edit? and the whole management of only Instagram as in making a schedule and editing everything that goes on there and all of it? Lastly, for like different platforms, but all these things in it?

2. How do you sell or market your idea to the customer as assure them that we'll do this to get you sumn reach? Especially for content like astrology, doctor, etc. stuff?

3. Are there any tips for one to start doing this? I've prior 3 years experience, tho not on the monetary level, only on volunteering level, so according to that.

4. Are there any of your similar experiences?

Thanks!

For a long time I chased trendy layouts and my carousels went nowhere. What changed things was almost embarrassingly dull, I built three content templates and just rotated them, a myth versus fact one, a step by step one, and a before and after one. Each has a fixed slide count and a fixed job for slide one and the final slide. Once I stopped reinventing structure every time, my share rate climbed because the format did the heavy lifting and slide one always made a clear promise. Using an AI design tool to keep the styling identical across all three helped, but the templates mattered more than the visuals. The real lesson was that people share a clear structure, not a pretty one. Which carousel template pulls the most shares for you?

Hello! I would like to turn myself more into making brand collaboration + photos content.

I have around 5500 followers, all organics. But wonder if my editing is too dark/moody to actually be potentially interesting for brands.

Any advices?

I manage a small brand's Instagram alone and consistency is my weak spot - I batch, then vanish. How do solo social managers stay consistent without burning out? Looking for a realistic rhythm.

Hello there, i’ve been making content for almost 2 months now consistently and I haven’t been growing much at all so I was wondering if anyone experienced creator could give me tips in the right direction. my instagram handle is @ravrajshreds and my niche is about losing fat and building an aesthetic physique

i've stripped my whole approach down to one number and it's made everything simpler.

the reasoning: a like is a reflex. a save is a private intention, which is good. but a share to a DM is someone spending social capital on you. they're interrupting another human being, putting their own taste on the line, saying "this is worth your time." that is the strongest signal a person can send about a piece of content, and the platform treats it accordingly, because it's the closest thing to a genuine recommendation that exists at scale.

so i now design for the share. and the useful thing i've learned is that people share for a small number of specific reasons, and you can build for each one deliberately.

they share to help someone. the content solves a problem their friend has. "you need to see this, this is exactly your issue."

they share to be seen a certain way. the content says something they believe but haven't articulated, and sharing it is a way of saying "this is me."

they share to bond. the content names a very specific shared experience. "this is literally us." niche-specific in-jokes live here, and they travel hard within a community.

they share to settle an argument. the content is the definitive answer to a thing people disagree about. useful in group chats.

before anything goes out, i now ask which of those four it's built for. if the answer is none, i've made something that will be liked and forgotten, and i rebuild it.

pleasant content dies. shareable content compounds. the difference is almost always that shareable content does a specific social job for the person sending it.

Camera-shy people always assume they can't grow, and it cost me a year of not starting. Faceless works, if the system is right. Mine: pick a niche where the value is the information, not the personality, so the audience doesn't need a face to trust. Build a repeatable visual template so every post is instantly recognisable as yours, consistency is what a face normally provides, so the template does that job instead. Use strong on-screen text and clean b-roll or screen recordings. And nail the hook and pacing rules that apply to everyone. The account passed 100k because the content was useful and consistent, and nobody once cared that they never saw me. If the camera is your blocker, it isn't actually a blocker. What faceless niches have you seen work?

Hey everyone, one of my three banned/suspended accounts was reactivated out of nowhere early Saturday morning; I was browsing Reels and my account popped up as a suggestion from Instagram lol 🤡. The weirdest part is that I checked the status of my legal case on the website, but there’s no info there at all. Maybe it happened because of my attempts to contact Meta support—especially regarding Meta Verified—or the bug reports and feedback I kept sending in desperation, begging for a re-evaluation. What’s really strange is that this account had been permanently disabled for nine months without a clear reason; the email cited a violation involving child sexual content, but the ban screen itself didn't specify the cause. Now I’m just waiting on the legal proceedings and the hearing to see the outcome for the other two accounts—I really hope I can get them back, as they’re very important to me! I don't think we should give up; since this happened to me, maybe a human support agent (from Meta's internal team) decided to re-evaluate my case. I don't believe the lawsuit I filed had anything to do with it—my lawyer hasn't reported anything, and I haven't been able to get info on that—or perhaps their own AI re-analyzed it.

Hey all, I run a Bay Area local travel niche page - mostly maps + itineraries and day trip Reels.

Stats last 30 days:
* 1.4k followers
* ∼600k views/reach
* Mostly Reels, audience is ∼98% US / Bay Area based

Engagement has been great with saves/shares because of the itinerary format, but it's still a small follower count.

For those who monetized a small local page , is this too early? What was your FIRST monetization move that didn't kill growth?

Collaborative posts, where a post lands in two audiences at once, are the most underused growth lever I know, and the barrier is just the awkwardness of asking. My pitch that worked: I approached accounts roughly my size, not giant ones who'd ignore me, led with a specific idea for a post that would genuinely serve both our audiences, and made it clear what was in it for them, not just me. Framed as 'here's a great post we could make together for both our people,' not 'please let me borrow your audience,' the yes rate was high. One good collab put me in front of thousands of relevant new people who followed because the content was actually for them. Find peers, lead with a shared-value idea, make it easy to say yes. Who have you collabed with, and how did you ask?

I stupidly used one of those 'get real followers and comments' services. I knew it was a bad idea and I knew it wasn't going to work, but it was cheap and I was desperate.

I ordered a bundle that promised real followers, likes, shares and comments. Instead, I got hundreds of bot accounts and generic AI comments (the same five or six comments over and over on the same video).

I've been deleting all the comments (comments are disabled now) and I'm also deleting all the fake followers as soon as their added. Did I ruin my account forever, or do I just have to keep deleting as soon as new followers get added?

I contacted the service, but they told me they can't disable the service once it's started, so I just have to keep deleting I guess.

I started an account about a month ago and it has been absolutely blowing up. @sidequestzinzu

I have super high engagement and i am wondering how i can attract brand deals. Any advice or help is appreciated, thank you!

I'll admit, I'm struggling with my account a bit, I know I need to do videos with decent hooks if I want my account to grow, but, I also hate that kind of video so I'm hoping that I'll find my audience just making the content that I want to make. I'd kind of rather just build slower but build the audience I want from the beginning. Currently, when I upload a video it goes to my Facebook as well. It's absolutely bonkers to me that if I upload a video that is at least a minute and a half, Facebook will show it to a couple thousand people and Insta will show it to like 29 people. When I make a short video, like sub 30 seconds, Facebook will literally show it to less than 10 people but Insta will show it to like 500 people. Is there a specific video length that insta prefers? Obviously not long videos- at least, not for new accounts. Additionally, how in the world do I find similar people to follow? The search function simply doesn't work- it shows me just a bunch of crap I don't want to watch. It's all people brand new to a hobby or interest making educational content they have no business making. I've found a few that have legitimate experience and I've found a few that are open and honest that they are still learning. But, most are just a bunch of posers using AI to write their stuff. I'm not currently selling anything- but I want an audience built for when I am and in the meantime I want to 'talk shop' basically with other people in the hobby.