Growing on Instagram (Part IV)
This post is my fourth 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 be sure to subscribe and read my first post, Growing on Instagram (Part I).
Otherwise, read on.
24-Hour Free Trial
Most free trials I’ve seen offer 3-day or 1-week trials, so I was surprised to find that SocialCaptain offers a 24-hour free trial.
After reading through their site, it was clear that SocialCaptain (SC) focus is on acquiring genuine followers through organic means. In addition to growth services, SC provide a dashboard, where users can customize information and actions based on their target audience.
The site is clean and current, and SocialCaptain even have a blog, which helps in giving me a glimpse into the company and their relationship with their customers (both of which seemed to be fine).
Last of all, I checked out their Facebook (80+ followers) and Twitter page(200+ followers). The majority of growth service providers I’ve come across tend to have low followings, so I’m really looking for any blatant issues with a cursory glance over their most recent posts, what followers are saying and how SC replies.
It all seemed good to me, so I signed up for the 24-hour free trial.
24-Hour Free Trial
Signing up was quick and easy, and, within minutes, my trial was underway!
Upon signing up, I was logged into a dashboard, where I could toggle on and off actions like “likes”, “comments”, “follows” and “unfollow. Below this information was an Activity Feed that supposedly displayed the actions my account was taking in real-time. I was given options to include similar accounts and specific hashtags, or to let the algorithm run on its own.
At the beginning of my trial I had 8,436 followers and 1635 profile views within the previous 7 days. (I hadn’t been online much during this time, so I hadn’t posted or brought in traffic on my own for the past week or so.) At the end of the trial, my following had increased by 75 followers though SC only took credit for 36 of the new followers. (You might have noticed in the second image below that my profile picture and bio have changed. I thought it was time to freshen things up a bit and took a few minutes to mess around with custom fonts, as well as setting up a Linktree account.)
When I learned I no longer had access to the “action” data that had been provided during my trial, SocialCaptain were kind enough to offer a second 24-hour trial. I gratefully accepted, eager to find out what the Day 1 results would be when compared with Day 2.
Another 24-Hour Trial
While my health and schedule didn’t allow me to check in as often as I would have liked, I was able to get a screenshot of the dashboard in action, which was fascinating to see.
As you can see, the dashboard displays my number of followers in real time, as well as how many actions SC have taken, as well as how and when they applied the actions. New followers are listed in the bottom-left, along with a Quality Score, which has me all kinds of intrigued. I’d like to get more insight into the Top Sources chart (bottom-right), especially about the “other” category, as well as actual numbers for the locations and hashtags used.
At the end of my second day, my total follower count was 8,553 (a 2-day increase of 117 new followers, of which SC were only taking credit for 71).
It’s interesting to note that while only 198 actions were taken by SC over a 2-day period (including likes, comments, follows, and unfollows), they were able to generate an average of 35.5 new followers per day. That’s more followers than Rapid Grow were able to generate, even though they tend to follow 500 accounts per day. It make me think there might be something to SC’s “artificial intelligence-powered boosting module [which] improves with every single execution”.
My Review of SocialCaptain
Effectiveness: SocialCaptain managed to pull in more followers with less than half the actions that Rapid Grow made I can’t help but wonder results a week or a month with SocialCaptain might yield. 5/5
Analytics Provided: The dashboard was helpful, though still a bit vague (e.g. what is that ”Quality Score” rating, and what is the ”other” category shown in the ”Top Sources” section?). While the Customer Service team was unable to answer any questions about dashboard information, I get the impression I would have more information and context for it with a paid account. Bonus points for real time results. 4/5
Customer Service: I As with the analytics, I wasn’t allowed much access outside of a paid account, but the team did offer me an extended trial and I had quick and easy access to Customer Service Reps via their site. 4/5
Ease of Use: Very easy to use. With the addition of quality information and an algorithm that learns from each action, I could see myself potentially hand over growth completely to SocialCaptain. 5/5
Financial Expense: Even at a cost of $100/month for their Turbo plan, the quality of followers, efficiency of the system, and quality of information and data provided are probably well-worth the cost for a small-medium-sized business with a marketing team. My struggle here is in justifying a cost of $100 for my page that’s much less about sales and more about interacting with more people. While I can’t justify paying $100/month to interact with more people on Instagram, I would put my team’s marketing budget to work with SocialCaptain immediately! 4/5
This makes for a total rating of 23/25–our highest score yet!
Would You Use SocialCaptain?
- Was this review helpful to you? How?
- Have you used SocialCaptain before? Would you?
- Did you learn anything new about how to grow your Instagram account?
- 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?
If you decide to reach out to SocialCaptain, be sure to send 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 SocialCaptain to see what a positive experience I had with them.
Read Growing on Instagram (Part 1),
Read Growing on Instagram (Part II) / Jumper Media Review here.
Read Growing on Instagram (Part III) / Rapid Grow Review here.
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