To be honest, I’m expecting Instagram to do another sweep of the cannabis community any time now. Choosing to deactivate many of the same bigger name accounts over and over rather than go after everyone, I think they’re just about fed up with having allowed so many profiles to break the rules.
With so many people in clear violation of the Instagram community posting guidelines, I think now is a great time to brush up on the reason as to why their accounts get shut down, plus learn about three powerful tools that could help grow your profile.
WEEDSTAGRAM 101
“Offering sexual services, buying or selling firearms and illegal or prescription drugs (even if it’s legal in your region) is also not allowed.” – Instagram.com
Any and all mention of prices, deals, specials, or the implication that something cannabis related is for sale is a terrible idea. Think of it this way. Your business can be easily identified as a cannabis company and you’re posts are all about things considered federally illegal. Your goal with posting these photos is to get product selling and encourage people to become more aware of your products and services. According to Instagram, people who encourage the sale of cannabis is no different than someone who is trying to sell guns or other drugs online. Don’t believe me? Send a few DMs to local cannabis shops and ask them how many times they’ve had accounts shut down. Instagram seriously doesn’t play around.
We suggest utilizing descriptions that encourage people to visit your website for more information about specific products, strains, and especially pricing. Stay away from saying where your products are available at and instead focus oneducating people about the world of legal cannabis. You’d be surprised how much your brand would grow if you stopped actually trying to sell weed on social media.
Captivate
This app is currently available in the Apple store and has helped two of our major cannabis clients grow at an incredible pace. I spend about 1 hour a week setting up this app to perform a series of follows and unfollows. In a week or less Captivate has helped our brand create new touch points with over 5000 users. This is more than just an unfollowing app and yes it will let you unfollow people in quanity, but it also lets you follow people in quanity too.
Pay for the pro version and reach out to our team to help guide you in the right direction with this app. We specialize in helping people identify influencers or profiles whom their target demographic is engaging with. Once you tap into these networks, it’s only a matter of time before you start seeing consistent growth.
Gramblr
Every single time I get on my computer, I log into Gramblr. When I first started using it on my Macbook, I only used the app to post a couple times a week so that it could accumulate coins that would be used to gain likes on my photos. I had to develop the habit of liking the Gramblr community’s photos in exchange for more coins because I wasn’t prepared to invest $6 for 10,000 coins or roughly 1000 likes.
Even though I don’t always post photos through Gramblr, I definitely use it to boost posts leveraging the community that comes within. What does this mean? I post photos using the app on my phone, then I copy/paste that link into the add likes section on Gramblr. I spend anywhere from $0-$12 per month (not including my time) to reach 1000+ new people. This doesn’t even include me using the engagement and follow tools that come with Gramblr.
You can easily upload a picture from your computer, edit the captions, slap a filter over the image, and then upload it. Keep in mind that sometimes you will need to resize the picture to see what looks best.
Repost
To be honest, I’m a little slow on utilizing this app because Gramblr has been more effective over the last year. For those who are constantly on the go or who maybe don’t have access to a computer, Repost is often more effective than Gramblr because of it’s success as a functional mobile application.
To best utilize Repost, we suggest developing a partnership or affiliate strategy with specific companies whom you work with frequently. When they post quality content, you could like and comment per normal habits, then use this app to share it on your profile. Make sure to always give credit to whom created the content so that your social media can benefit from that person’s network. The app will already give credit on the photo but you’ll also want to include them in the description as well. You never know who they’re connected to online and every tag or hashtag matters when you’re brand is barely reaching people and getting overcharged for ad space on print publications everywhere.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bcpho9ABZDu/?taken-by=phatdrerapperkush
To help the legal cannabis industry grow, I will continue to write about what I do to successfully leverage social media. If you’d rather not wait for more content, reach out to info@respectmyregion.com for more information.
