Jumper Media Review (Growing on Instagram, Part II)

This post is my second in a series dedicated to my extensive deep-dive into the world of Instagram growth services by signing up for one free trial after another and comparing my experiences in real-time, right here on my blog.

If you’d like to learn more about how I’m learning from free trials, then read my first post, Growing on Instagram (Part I).

Otherwise, read on.
—

---

Obstacles / My Growth Over the Past 16 Months

In the interest of full transparency, I’m going to share some information about my past growth, as well as my current status on Instagram.

I should mention that I’ve been experiencing some serious health issues for the past year-and-a-half, which have increased significantly in recent months, rendering me unable to write or draw for days at a time. It might sometimes take me a week or 2 to create a post for a 3-day trial, for example, but I plan to account for all of my experiences here.

I will also mention that I have already used the growth services of Jumper Media (review below) and Rapid Grow, which I will review in my next post. (Be sure to subscribe to be notified of new posts, so you don’t miss out .)

My First Post

I joined Instagram in late January, 2015. My first post was a blatant advertisement for a shirt I had just made.

After my first post, I basically used Instagram as a place to put my sketchbook pages. (For the handful of you that might be familiar with those early sketchbook pages, you might be interested to know I’ve been making some serious progress on that project and plan to send out a solid rough draft this fall to test readers via the First Readers Club.)

I was slow to join and slow in posting with any sort of regularity, but I started thinking about Instagram differently when I got an unsolicited email in January 2018.

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Jumper Media

Almost 3 years to the day after joining Instagram, I received this message from an employee at some company called Jumper Media.

“Hi Jess Smart Smiley 🐁🐇🐓⚾️,

My name is [NAME WITHHELD] with Jumper Media and I love your Instagram! I noticed @jess.smart.smiley has 1,279 followers and gets about 100 likes on each post. I’d love to share how to boost these metrics significantly and drive 1200-1500 more people to your Instagram page daily 🙂

Jumper Media provides a targeted way to grow your following and business. On average, we’re seeing 750-1k+ organic new followers per month. From testing with over 1,250 clients in all types of industries, I’m confident these results can increase your revenue and engagement.

I’d love to chat about our process in more detail. You can click here to schedule a 15-minute call at your availability.

PS – If you don’t want to hear from me again, please just let me know with a quick reply 🙂 Thanks!


Cheers!

[NAME WITHHELD]
Jumper Media”

This message actually takes me back to a simpler, more innocent time. 2018 Jess was much better at answering emails than 2019 Jess. (Anyone else sick of email?) I replied.

“Hey [NAME WITHHELD],

Thanks for reaching out!

While I am looking to better identify my audience and grow my following on Instagram, I’m super skeptical about any kind of outside entity that offers marketing services–especially when they message me first and when the data is a week or two behind. (Nothing personal against you–there’s just an overload of scammers that ruin it for the rest of you.)

That being said, I checked out the Jumper Media website and it seems like Jumper Media is legit.

Do you offer a free trial of your services before I commit? I’m not interested in a follow/unfollow approach, and I don’t want my account to get shut down for using my profile against Instagram policies and practices, or for abusing DMs, likes, and comments.

If you can address the issues listed here, then I’d be happy to learn more via phone call.

All my best!

Jess Smart Smiley”

Thinking back to the time of this message, I had thought this was my first inkling of trying to muscle up my Instagram game, but seeing this message now sparks memories of checking out a since-changed site called Webstagram, that allowed users to get additional information on their Instagram statistics and learn more about user activity on their page.

---

TAKING A CHANCE ON JUMPER MEDIA

I never heard back from old [NAME WITHHELD], but his form message got the wheels turning and I spent the next couple of weeks reading through Jumper Media’s extensive blog posts. I tried out a few of the growth tactics mentioned in the blog and immediately noticed positive results, so I reached out again and submitted a Demo Request (a phone call with a JM representative who asked me about my goals for my page and talked with me about the services they provide).

While Jumper Media did not offer a free trial, they offered me a discount and a full refund within the first 30 days if I wasn’t satisfied with their service. Although I waffled for a bit, within a couple of weeks I had committed to a 3-month plan for a surprising amount of money. (Even now I am shocked and embarrassed that I agreed to such an expense and I wonder what possessed me—a usually reserved consumer—to go through with something so expensive. Anyway, you’ll see what I spent in my Review.)

GETTING STARTED

I had another phone call with a Customer Success Manager, who asked me to send her my answers to the following “Targeting” requests:

• Usernames for 10 similar Instagram accounts
• 10 hashtags that represented my Instagram posts
• 10 cities that have some significance with my Instagram posts

I remember being a bit stumped about how to respond. The most similar accounts I knew about shared goofy drawings for children’s books, but their drawing style was different enough from mine and their posts were presented in a different way. Other similar accounts illustrated positive statements in a similar way, but that’s all they did. Others shared pages from their sketchbooks, but the subject matter was a pretty far cry from what I was posting.

And hashtags? Was I even using hashtags?

I remember looking up something like “indie-art-loving cities in the US” for locations, and I just sent Jumper Media the first 10 results.

And then something cool happened.

---

RESULTS

Jumper Media used the locations, hashtags, and similar accounts I provided and started looking for potential followers.

In my first 2 weeks with Jumper Media, I had gained a total of 371 followers—an average of 26.5 followers per day. While I don’t think I knew what my growth rate had been before this, it was incredibly helpful for me to see that, 1. My account was growing, and 2. The results were consistent and predictable, day to day.

2 weeks later (or the end of Month 1), I had gained a total of 618 followers since starting, and I had a phone call with Jumper to talk about how the 10 similar accounts I had shared were affecting my account. It was very clear as to which accounts were driving traffic to my account and which were less effective. (Jumper Media is able to visit the 10 similar accounts, and then follow and like posts by users who have commented on one of the similar accounts. The idea is that someone commenting on a similar account is much more likely to follow or engage someone a new user who follows them.)

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Working with Jumper Media, we dropped the lower-performing “similar accounts” from our Targeting, and added some replacements. Even though I was just a month into this new approach, I felt I had a much better understanding of what kinds of accounts might be more effective as “similar accounts”.

Jumper Media were able to provide me with “follow-back rates” for each “similar account”, as well as an overall follow-back rate, and we were able to revise our list every 2 weeks, which really helped to sharpen to results. I learned that the company was able to follow an average of 500 users a day. (This is an approach called “follow/unfollow”, where Jumper Media follow accounts that are likely to appreciate my Instagram posts, in the hopes that the users will notice “I” followed them, and then they’ll follow me back.”

5 Months of Growth

In July, after being laid-off from my job and simultaneously experiencing a severe increase in my still-undiagnosed debilitating pain, I ended my 5 months of Instagram growth service with Jumper Media.

Here are my 5 month results of using Jumper Media’s services:

• I357 (total number of followers I had acquired on my own over a period of 3 years, prior to using Jumper Media)
• 5,074 (total number of followers after using Jumper Media for 5 months)
• 450 (my average growth per year, prior to using Jumper Media)
• 743.4 (average increase in monthly followers with Jumper Media)
• 24.78 (average increase in daily follows with Jumper Media)
• 3,717 (total increase in followers from 5 months of service with Jumper Media)

• 

• 

---

REVIEW

Effectiveness: While I think the service could have better utilized locations (I think we stopped talking about locations after the first week), and the potential follower targeting could have been a bit sharper (maybe I should have checked in every week, rather than every other week?), it was a powerful introduction for me to the world of instagram growth, and it was exciting to know that Jumper Media’s growth system (while not perfect) has great ways of showing what is working and what isn’t working as well, while also having the means for improving the less-effective actions. 4/5

Analytics Provided: Working with Jumper Media allowed me to see information that the Instagram Individual and Business accounts didn’t offer, and it makes we wonder if there are paid or hidden options within the Instagram platform itself for viewing granular data. Hmm… In any case, just having information on which accounts and hashtags were driving traffic toward my account proved powerful in setting goals and plans for future growth, and I’ve even been able to use that information in the months since I had to leave Jumper. I’ll bring up the location dates again; I would loved to have learned more about where (geographically) people were coming from, and which cities, states, and countries brought in the most followers. 4/5

Customer Service: With one exception (and, admittedly, it was a big one for me), the Customer Service at Jumper Media was phenomenal. The single exception happened over a weekend. While my Customer Success Manager was traveling, I received a notification of a suspicious login on my account. Having never received such a notice before, and, after being locked out of my account for 3 days without any replies to my messages to different Jumper Media staff, I panicked about who had hacked into my account and what they were doing with it while I was locked out. I was finally able to resolve the issue through Instagram itself, and have never had a similar issue since. Again: fantastic service overall, with one sizeable exception. 3/5

Ease of Use: Working with Jumper Media was easy on my end. I eagerly asked a lot of questions and really put several employees to work for me, but they genuinely seemed excited to work with someone who was happy with the results and thrilled to learn about the process, which made for a smooth experience for me. 5/5

Financial Expense: I received a generous 15% discount and paid $127 a month for 5 months, totaling a whopping $635, which is absolute madness. (I swear this expense is an anomaly for me, and it’s incredibly embarrassing to share, but I want to be straightforward and honest so that you can learn from my successes as well as my failures, and so that I don’t repeat them). Maaaybe I could justify the expense if I used my account to sell my books and artwork (which I do here and there), or if I represented an e-commerce company with a dozen employees, or if I were able to post the same kinds of things I’m already posting, but gain some sort of sponsorship or become a paid drawing brand ambassador/influencer (these are things, right?). If Jumper Media could find a way to lower their cost to something like $50 a month, I’d have a much easier time recommending their services. 2/5

This makes for a total rating of 18/25, which I’d say is something like good but not great.

---

Final Thoughts

If you are considering looking into any kind of growth strategies (whether on your own or with a service provider), then I highly recommend starting by checking out the Jumper Media blog.

While some posts are much more helpful than others, the articles tend to contain practical information, with research, studies, and other data to support their claims. Where the vast majority of companies I’ve encountered tout their services with broad, vague language (“we use a sophisticated algorithm”, “our services make the most out of hashtags”, “25x better than our competitors”, etc), I love that Jumper Media regularly offer valuable information to anyone who wants it.

Here are some of my favorite posts from the Jumper Media blog:

–2019 Instagram Engagement Rate Benchmarks Report (excellent article for my fellow data hounds out there)

–How to Customize Your Instagram Fonts [The Easy Way] (a simple way to make your IG profile stand out. You can see how I recently customized my profile fonts below.)

–Instagram Hashtag Research – The Only Guide You Need in 2019 (it’s not enough to simply use a hashtag that appears to relate directly to your post—there is a real strategy involved in making the # symbol work for you.)

–33 Jaw-Dropping Instagram Statistics for 2019 (although most aren’t too in-depth, it’s great overview of what’s happening on Instagram right now)

-How to Tell an Instagram Story That People Actually Want to Watch (it’s not unusual for me to share a dozen posts to my Story on any given day, and it’s fun to interact with hundreds—and often thousands of people—in ways that I can’t do with a regular post.)

There are also plenty of articles about finding, contacting, and becoming an “Influencer” and/or “Micro Influencer” on Instagram. (The whole Influencer territory is one I haven’t really pursued, though I have been contacted by a few dozen companies who have offered me products and products that I passed on. Maybe I’d be more excited if I found opportunities to read great books and comics, or to test out new drawing tools and supplies? Do things like this even exist?)

I’ll also mention Jumper Media’s podcast, though I haven’t yet listened to any of the episodes.

• 

• 

Would You Use Jumper Media?

• Was this review helpful to you? How?
• Have you used Jumper Media before? Would you?
• Did you learn anything new about how to grow your Instagram account? What?
• Who would you list as your 10 most similar accounts and which 10 hashtags would you choose to represent you and your profile?
• BONUS: What are your goals for growing on Instagram? What do you want to learn more about? What do you want to do differently in the future?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

If you decide to reach out to Jumper Media, send them a link to this post and let them know that Jess Smart Smiley sent you (how could they forget a name like mine?). My goal here is to help others in my quest to learn more about Instagram growth services and providers available and I want Jumper Media to see what a positive experience I had with them.

Read Growing on Instagram (Part 1),

---

Jess Smart Smiley

Illustration | Comics | Story | Design