Four Top Secret Instagram Growth Tips from Zach Benson, Celebrity Advisor

Why would I invest in you? Why would I work with you? You don't look legit. You don't have any followers. Well, we buy from people we like, know, and trust. And if you're in the public eye, you're going to be judged by the size of your platform and audience. A platform gives you leverage, positioning, a better book deal, a better publisher, a premium prices, better distribution, more access. So the question is, how do you boost and bump your numbers? Whether you're just starting out or have been in business for 20, 30, or 40 years or even longer, I want to introduce you today to the celebrity influencer's secret weapon. He's worked with Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, Jay Z, Beyonce, Robert Kiyosaki, Russell Brunson, Ritz Carlton, Daniel Wellington with Fashion Nova, Washes, and many, many more. He is the man behind the scenes and he's gonna share the best ways to grow your influence, audience and platform in this incredibly noisy world. So welcome Zach Benson. Nice to have you, my friend.

Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

All right. All right, so let's begin. I think the best way I wanted to introduce you because you gained your own platform and a little bit of fame early on. Dancing. Why don't you tell the story?

Yeah, so I was actually a breakdancer before all of this marketing stuff. I was on this hit TV show, so youo Think youk Can Dance now. They're in the 15th season. So that kind of kickstarted my career and, man, I made it to the round four finalist taught dance all over the world. Towards the end of my career, I was making towards $1,000 an hour just teaching dance workshops. So dance really changed my life and it became something I was super passionate about.

All right. But something happened. And I remember not long ago, I was actually speaking at a sports conference in Florida in front of a bunch of NFL, NBA, nh, NHL and MLB players. And the way I opened up the, the speech, it wouldn't work right now in our world that we work in. But I said, a lot of you guys are standing on a one legged stool with a noose around your neck and it's just a matter of time before someone knocks it out from underneath you. Yeah, and that's what happened to you too. So what brought your dance career to a screeching halt? And then what happened next?

Yeah, so I was living life, right? I was traveling, I was doing something I love. I was making good money. So all was like, good until I, I hurt my back and which ended my Career. So I was in India teaching at a salsa conference, and during warmup, I just landed wrong. And you know, like, breakdance, man, we do extreme stuff. So I was spin on my head, doing flips, all this crazy stuff. And during rehearsals, I just fell and I got hurt. And the organizer was like, okay, well, I know, like, you're hurt right now, but everybody came to see you. Like, you're the main attraction. You gotta dance. And so the whole performance lasted about 30 seconds, and I fell again. I was rushed to the hospital and the doctor came in and was like, zach, I don't think you're ever gonna be able to dance again. And that was the end of my career. And, you know, it was just over. Just. Yeah, yeah, just over. So rock bottom and.

Yeah, yeah. So what happened next? I mean, like, what was. Because. Because there is a. There is a nice. A happily ever after here in a way, right?

So. So I was super depressed and I didn't have a plan B. So the same dude who got me into dancing called me up and was like, zach, you know, I know that you. You're super depressed, like, you're going through some hard times, but listen, like, me and my brother, we're making a ton of money on Instagram. Like, you gotta get in on this. And so with the last $10,000 I had, like, I invested in a Instagram account that was 400,000 followers. And basically we used that account to grow other people's accounts and do advertising and just rinsed and repeated the process. And, you know, fast forward today, Mike, we have 220 million network. We're working with some of the biggest brands in the world, and, you know, life has really changed. So. Very grateful for that friend.

Good, good. Well, and that's big. Part of what we're going to be talking about today is when I asked you to come in, we're going to talk about growth hacking, not just how to build Instagram accounts, but we're going to cover a variety of different topics. And also, I've worked with you, so you actually helped me build my Instagram following to exceed 10,000 followers of real people. So I got the swipe up function, and that's definitely helped me as I built my platform too. So I'm actually a paying customer. For real?

Yes.

And. But I really want to talk about why it matters, besides what we covered in the very beginning, but also how it's done and some of the best practices you have. And then for everyone who sticks around, we've got some goodies to Give away as well.

Yeah. So sounds good to me.

Yeah, let's do it.

Cool.

All right, so I think the first question then I have is let's just talk about growth, hacking and specifically what can you do right now? Because automation gets shut down pretty much immediately in Instagram. It'll get you banned, you can lose your account and then none of this matters. And that's pretty true for all the other platforms. There's always someone who's doing some trickery, but it always makes the most sense. There's. There's an audience to show and then there's audience that buys. And anyone who's ever spent any time in social knows that if you've got a bunch of show, you're not making any money. Just like a lot of influencers these days, we're talking about real business, people with real businesses. So what's your advice? First of all, that the algorithms are smarter? What do you, what do you recommend we do?

Yeah, it's 2020. It's a different ball game, right? You can no longer just post and grow, right? Those days are long gone and over. So really, like the only way to grow, like thousands of followers per month is through shoutouts, right? So you basically reach out to other influencers in your niche in your industry, and you ask them, hey, how much do you charge for a 24 hour post on your wall? And you get a whole army of them to promote you and your content. And when you get enough promoting you in a short window of time, I mean, it just hits. The algorithms boost you to the Explore page. And that's how you can grow thousands of followers per month. There are other ways that we use. So if you don't have money and you, you just want to like, growth, hack it, like organically, you can use what's called a repo strategy. So if you look at my account, Zack Vacay, I spent like just pennies.

Sell that for everyone in case they exactly can.

Zach Vacay. So Zach V a C A Y. Zach Vacay. Usually it's another country, another culture. Every single week. I'm normally traveling, living that life. But how I grew that account from scratch, from zero to now 70,000 followers without spending a penny was with the repost strategy. So essentially what we're doing, Mike, is we're reposting other people's beautiful travel content onto that page, giving them credit, using engagement groups, the right hashtags to boost it to the top. And that's how we've been able to grow that account thousands of followers per month without any ad spend. Okay.

And if you're like, in my case, I don't particularly like spending my time on social. I like to focus on client activities and then messaging and doing what I do. So I actually have someone who's committed to working on my Instagram account. Her name is Nikki and she does all of my social plus my articles as well. So it's like a partnership between she and I and we strategize once or twice a week. So I want to speak to a business owner who wants someone like I have to manage, someone who would hire and work with a team like yours and so an agency to do it and then someone who wants to do it themselves. So kind of walk us through what that looks like. Like how much work is it? What's the general execution strategy that actually works and produces high value followers?

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about that. So like my, my three tips. Okay, so tip number one, you gotta use the right hashtags. So so many people are using like very basic generic hashtags. So let's say that you're like into real estate and you use the hashtag real estate and you know that hashtag has like millions and millions of posts on it, or use hashtag travel or motivation or motivational speaker. Those have like 50 million posts on them.

Okay, is that a good thing or a bad thing to use a generic one?

The bad thing is when you're using these super generic ones, your posts will never be able to get seen because you'll be swallowed up. So many people are using that so many times throughout the day that your content will never be seen. So what you need to do is actually start with a very basic generic hashtag like motivation or entrepreneurship. And you're going to scroll up and down and left and right and you're going to find hashtags that have smaller number of posts on them. And so you want to actually use hashtags that have between 10 to 20,000 posts.

Okay, and are there some tools you recommend for finding good quality hashtags? You don't have to do it all manually and hunt and peck or what's the, what's the best, what's the best practice?

You know, the thing is, is that we don't use any types of tools, no automation, because we don't want to risk like getting banned or, you know, penalized. So we actually just have someone manually research all of these hashtags. So you want to have a range of 10 to 20,000 posts 20 to 50,000 post hashtags. 50 to a hundred thousand posts hashtags. And you want to create multiple sets of hashtags, 20 to 30 hashtags per set, and rotate those throughout the week to see which ones perform the best and give you more growth. So.

Okay. And do you have any reporting tools? Are those legit, or does that potentially get you in trouble as well?

We actually just use Instagram's internal system. So if you have a business profile and you convert to business profile, you can see, like, all the analytics, like your audience, where your followers are coming from, your impressions, your reach, website clicks, profile clicks, everything. So we actually just use Instagram's reporting.

Okay, and is there a upside or a downside? So, for example, on my Facebook account, I've got my personal page. I also have a business page, slash fan page. And right now, like 130,000 or so, maybe I can't even remember the exact numbers on Facebook. And I'm always up against the wall on my personal. But on Instagram, is there an upside or downside to having a business page or having the personal page?

So if you're like, like, let's take like, Russell Brunson, for example. Client. He's been client for two years. So he was like, they're spending a lot of money running ads, so you need to have your business profile. Turn the business profile on to run ads. But then we also switch it from business to private, a private account, because we want to peak interest and we also don't want to allow everybody to follow him. Right. He only wants certain demographics, certain people to follow his account and be in his community. And so then we switch it between private.

In business, you actually alternate periodically.

Yes.

Okay.

During growth phases and during. When he's promoting something and trying to do a launch.

Okay, yeah, that's. That's good to know. All right, let's talk a little bit about your other strategy that you mentioned, which are engagement groups.

Okay.

Okay. What are they? How do they work? How do you get involved in them? How do you get taken seriously? Like, what's the minimum admission to get involved?

Yeah, so think of engagement groups, like, basically like the promote button or the boost button. Right. So first step is to create good content. Second step is get that content seen all over the place. So we use engagement groups to get your content seen everywhere. And when you get enough likes and comments, engagement in a short window of time, several times throughout the day, you hit the algorithms and boost you into the home page that everybody searches for content on and so that's the goal, right? Once you hit that Explore page, you've gone viral. And so how do you get into these groups? Where do you find them? So think of like, so right now I want to talk about direct message groups, DM groups. So basically each DM group can have like you and 14 other people. And basically everybody's liking and commenting on each other's post throughout the day. So when you post up your posts, you drop that URL link into the group and say posted. And then everybody engages and you know that's how they work. So you basically reach out to accounts that have bigger followings than you and pay your way in, or create your own groups. Say, hey, I'm creating a group with accounts that have 20,000 followers plus, you have 30,000 followers plus, like, I'd love for you to be in my group. And by simply taking initiative, reaching out, doing all the work, you'd be surprised. Like, even if you have 500 followers, you'll get some of these accounts that have bigger followings than you. Say yes.

Okay, so it takes a little bit of trial and error just introducing yourself. And is that. And again, that's just going out studying other people who have specific hashtags, people who are influencers. And most likely then is it fair to say that most influencers probably belong to multiple groups of these 14 or less?

Yes.

And what's the limit? That's limit is 14 is 15 total people.

And I mean you can create like we're in like hundreds of these groups. Like we have somebody just that's all they do every single day is just do these engagement groups. So you have to be in a lot in order for it to work. But they're very effective. Right, okay.

All right, so let's talk about the other one, which are your shout out networks. And again, this is something that what's ethical, what isn't ethical, and what are the rules? And are there negative side effects to these? But let's start with what are they?

Yeah, so once you're. So we've talked about hashtag research, right? From the hashtags you'll find these engagement groups, other people that are in your niche and industry. You can either pay your way into these engagement groups, say, hey, I'll give you five bucks for each engagement group you can get me into, or you can create your own. The third step is the shout out network. So as you're in these engagement groups with accounts that have bigger followers than you, there's a couple of ways to do it. You can do what's called a paid shout out. So let's say that you only have 500 followers, but you want to get a shout out from somebody that has 100,000 followers. You can actually, you know, pay them. So you can say, how much do you charge for a 24 hour post? How much do you charge for a permanent post? And basically what happens is you pay them and then they post up your creative, they tag you, they shout you out to their followers, and that's what grows your account. So you just have to simply rinse and repeat the process. It's a numbers game, right? It's a hustle. But if you get enough of these accounts promoting you that are bigger than you, you're going to grow your account.

Okay, and what's a fair price to pay? Like what's. And I guess you're just paying someone for publicity. It's no different than hiring a PR firm, for example, or anyone else for that matter.

Yeah, right. So prices like let's say for a 24 hour post on 100,000 follower page prices range from anywhere from like, you know, $50 to couple hundred dollars. It depends on the engagement, the name of the page, the type of content they post, where their audience is from. Do they have majority US followers or is it worldwide? So we're asking all of those questions and whatever account fits our demographics, we're gonna pay them. So we usually, how it works is we have our own network and then we promote our clients on those pages. So we give them a cut, we grow accounts and that. And that's how it works.

Okay, all right, so you're really brokering conversations and you've got a lot of these going on at once.

So we broker that conversations. We have our own accounts that we own.

But yeah, I mean, just starting out for 100,000 follower accounts, a couple hundred bucks, 50 bucks. If you're trying to get on a 5 million follower page, that could be a few thousand. You know, it just kind of depends. Okay.

And what if you're, if someone's doing a good job and finds a right fit. And again, let's just stay within the niche because I think most of the people who are watching this are going to be legitimate business owners. And I'll say it's B2B. Might be B2C. So I, let's say I paid 200 bucks on someone who's got a 200,000 follower account in my niche. And I don't know if that's reasonable or unreasonable. What would you expect would be Typical, low, high, average in terms of clicks and engagement for someone who's got something valuable. And I'll give you a real life example. I'll use myself, for example. So I've got my two podcasts. One's Capability Amplifier, which is the one behind me. The other one, for example is the big leap with Gay Hendricks. Both are business podcasts and our audience, we want real business owners. For example, people who've got businesses and they're going to be B2B typically. So you know, my goal would be to get podcast subscribers and downloads.

Yeah.

And. Or part two would be a business owner who wants to get people to their website and get opt ins for maybe a free report or give away a free book. Let's just say those are the two options. What do you say?

Yeah. So let's take somebody like John Lee Dumas, who's the founder of, you know, entrepreneur on fire, very big podcast. So I mean what we're able to do with him was basically help not only get him more, more subscribers, more followers, but then also like he partnered up with Dean and I mean Tony promoted their launch. Right. Mastermind.com and because of Instagram and what we did for him, he was able to use that to hit the top seven affiliates. So we have him, we helped Jeremy Slate, who's create your own life, we helped him get more downloads. But the thing is that you have to keep in mind is that anytime that you just put your eggs all in one basket and you pray and you're hoping, you're wishing that it'll just create a bunch of sales for you or pocket. I mean the thing is you have to create your own asset. Right. That's going viral, hitting the top posts and for different keywords and hashtags.

Yep. It can't be a straight on pitch and it can't be just a straight on. Yeah, obviously a predatory offer. You're going to have to build, know like and trust. And that's one of the reasons I asked that question is what do you need to do to get there and what's a reasonable amount of time, investment of energy that you've got to be committed to make this platform work?

It's a grind, it's a hustle. I mean being in 50 to 100 engagement groups every single day, it's very time consuming. Simple rule of thumb is to do a post a day. But a lot of people, like, I think they struggle with this. Right. Will I be rejected? Right. What will people think about my content? Is it dumb? I'm not a content creator. I'm not a graphic designer. I don't want to be on Instagram. I don't want to be on social media. How can you, Zach, just do all the work for me so that I can just do what I love? Because I don't like social media. But the other part of them is like, yeah, I do want to be on social media. I want to be omnipresent. I want to get the gains, but I think those are the pains. Like, how do I even start? Like, I don't know how to do this. So we help a lot of people like that. Take them from not knowing, understanding, holding their hand, walking them through the whole process and doing, doing it all for them so that they don't have to do it right.

Okay. And I think again, through what I've been doing, and I won't say I'm particularly aggressive. Our strategy is, is I do a couple of personal posts, couple of quotes. So I'm always creating content, like this interview we're doing today.

Do two podcasts. So one a week. And there's always sayings or content from that that, you know, something smart comes out of the guests or my mouth at some point in time that we can use and repurpose. And then we also turn every podcast interview into an article which either gets published on Entrepreneur magazine, LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, it's create once, distribute everywhere is the philosophy. And that just takes discipline and habit. And there's no way I could do all that myself without having a content specialist. So you guys are able to specialize further and, like, tell me a little bit about what's working now in terms, because you guys do a lot more than just Instagram, but what are the things that are working best?

Yeah. So, I mean, people come to us when they want to launch something, right? Whether it's a book, become a New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal seller. Like, they want to get on podcasts. So maybe it's like we get them featured on 250 podcasts within six months, and they sell, you know, several thousand books from it, or they want to get seen in Tier 1, Tier 2 media outlets. They want to be Googleable, right? So when people search about them and their company, they can read something. So that equals street cred, social proof. And then they want to dominate a platform, which, I mean, we're known for Instagram. And I mean, Instagram is the fastest growing platform, like now in the world, like over 2 billion active users, 700,000 people using Instagram stories every single day. So Instagram and influencer marketing is a $15 billion industry. A lot of brands are pouring a lot of money in it.

All right, so let's get back to some of the specifics. So excuse me. So let's just pretend for a moment my goal again is we could either launch a book or launch a podcast, because that'd be an easier vehicle than just launching a product. You know, you usually have to spend a lot more time building relationship before you can just do a product launch. But a book is a little bit easier, especially if it's a giveaway or a podcast. So what would be a reasonable timeframe and a reasonable expense? And, like, what could you expect to want to create to get good results right now?

Yeah. So, I mean, the thing is, is I think of Instagram as like, your new book, your new business card, your new, like, people are, like, attracted to you and your lifestyle. So, yes, they can read your book, yes, they can listen to your podcast, but they want to see you in action. Right? They want to see what types of content you post, who you follow, who you are behind the scenes. And that's why Instagram is like, is killing it and crushing it because. And why so many people are on it is because they want to see, like, what are these famous people doing? Like, what is their life really like? Like, what are they passionate about? What causes do they want to promote?

And so that's why, like, yeah, so many people on. On Instagram.

Okay, well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna hammer you one more time. Tell me a little bit about, like, what would you do? Let's say, let's use this as an example, a practical, real life example. So we've got this interview.

And.

We'Re doing it live. It's gonna be converted into a podcast. I'm going to convert it into an article, and I'm going to publish it on Entrepreneur magazine. I may take a derivative part of it to put on Instagram and, or rather Forbes, and then we'll do audio grams to put on all the social networks and then.

You know, do an outbound email. Okay. So lots of different things. How would you take this and put it out there if I hired your agency to do it, like, what would be a great strategy that, you know, would produce some results?

Yeah. So basically it's like a done for you strategy. Right. So think of a systogram as like your own, like, personal virtual assistant that's just grinding on your account, doing hundreds to thousands of Manual actions every single day. So everything from creating the content for your account to finding the right hashtags, doing the engagement groups, optimizing your profile, doing outreach, lead gen, the whole works. Right? So just with those strategies, we're able to grow accounts, several thousand followers a month in the US Every single month, guaranteed. But with that, like once you have 10,000 followers, for example, we can do Instagram swipe ups. Instagram stories. So you unlock a feature and you can basically drive traffic, send people to a landing page, promote your website, promote your offer, all through stories. So we have stories, we have Instagram lives, we have igtv, and then we have your main feed posts. So those four things, I mean, when they're all working together, can create you some amazing results.

Okay, so does that mean that you could take this interview, for example, and slice it up into little chunks? Would that be a good strategy to use?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's all about like creating like evergreen content that people can continue to watch. I mean, anytime, anywhere, any time of day. Right? So that's why we have igtv. That's why when you do an Instagram live, it then goes into your Instagram stories, and people can see that for the next 24 hours. But if right now, what's really hot and trending is the IGTV videos, because that stays on your account forever.

Great, great. And anything else. So I know there's a couple other things that I wanted to ask you, which is.

Let'S say, for example, you want to create a surge to overwhelm bad news that might be going on. We live in a world where a lot of business owners are afraid to market themselves. They're afraid to say and hang online because they're afraid that something might get misinterpreted and they might get canceled for something that they may use the wrong word today. So I'm curious what your perspective is on the evolution of social and also how to protect yourself against the downside. And what's your philosophy on that? What are you recommending to your clients right now?

Yeah, like my. My simple content strategy is to just be open, be vulnerable. Talk the good about the good, the bad, the ugly. Talk about a time when you overcame a sickness. Talk about a time when you overcame an addiction or you lost a big deal or you had a fire employee or got fired yourself. I think that types of content does really, really well because people can see you being open. People can see you like talking about your weaknesses, your wounds, and people resonate with that. And Nobody can really like knock it down if you are like that and genuine and tie it back into business. But you want to drown out the haters, right? Because everybody has haters, everybody has lovers. Right. It's just part of the game. Right. But I say the more people that you can be top of mind for, do good things for sing, have singer praises, you know, is good. So that's why influencer marketing is just, you know, killing it. Like people like the rocker Gary Vee, they sell out in 24 hours, their new shoes or their new tequilas, just having other influencers and micro influencers.

Use their stuff. So I mean that drowns it out. So the more people you can have, the better. Yep.

And it just really comes down to it really sounds like the foundation core of this is you've got to build high quality relationships with people who already have audiences and platforms in the space you want to be in. From that perspective, it's no different than the way business has ever been. And picking high quality partners, making sure your content resonates with their audience and yours, finding your voice, being authentic. And then as you said multiple times, it's just you got to grind. You got to. It's either you or someone's going to be managing high value relationships that are genuine and real and beyond the paid. You're genuinely invested in each other's success.

Yeah, that's right on.

Okay. All right, well, here's what we've got. I know we've got some goodies we're going to give away. So one of them is you put together a couple cool things. One of them is the Instagram growth hacking guide for free. We've also got strategy session and I set up two things for you. So one of them is we've got a place to go which is@paidforlife.com Z that's the letter Z. So paidforlife.com Z or you can text the letter Z to 858-43-45316. What do you have to say about the goodies? The Instagram Growth hacking guide and also the strategy session that you're giving away too.

Yeah. So super awesome guide, right? Basically teaches you guys the do's and don'ts of growth. Hacking your Instagram account the right way. There's little things that we do every single day or don't do that add up to positive or negative results. So you know, simple things like changing your profile too many times, like liking and commenting outside of your niche, searching for content like not related to your page all that stuff adds up. So we break down all of that stuff. We teach you how to create an optimized profile, how to do the hashtags, how to do the engagement groups, everything that we talked about, plus a lot more. So it's basically just setting you up for success and teaching you how to grow, growth, hack your Instagram the right way. And then the strategy session. So either you hop out on a call with me or like one of my. My special team members, and basically we break down everything that you're doing, not doing, teach you how to get free press, teach you how to get on podcasts, teach you how to dominate a platform like Instagram, and I mean, pretty much just launch your personal brand.

All right, very good. Well, I want to thank you, my friend. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, you got it. And for you, next step's easy to take. You can look right into that camera right there. That's where our friends are. I've known Zach for a couple years. Met him online, actually, at an event originally. He's super smart, a lot of fun. He's a guy I've been turning to. He helped me build my Instagram platform as well, and I don't have any problem recommending them to you. So with that, if you've got any questions, comments, make sure you post them below. If you know someone who can benefit from the training and the education that Zach's giving you, or for that matter, just getting in touch with him and his team, definitely follow that link again. It is paid for life.com z or text Z to 858-434-5316. It has all of the links in there, and that's what I got for you. So I hope you enjoyed yourself. Make sure you like this. This, you share it with friends. And if you've been listening to the podcast, make sure you give it some love. Like it? Comment it as as well.

So thanks for watching.