As disc golf grows there are more, and more promotion accounts looking to cash in on the revenue. I did a little case study to see what would happen if I used a paid promotion service on Instagram, these are the results.

I like to keep things honest here. I used @gearuppromos on Instagram as a way to drive traffic to my Instagram account.

I have never tried anything like this before, and honestly would never even consider it. The only reason I tried it was because other disc golfers were using them, and I wanted to jump off the bridge too.

My investment was $30 for a permanent post and a 24 hour story, “to be published during peak hours.”

I now consider that $30 as my education that I can share with you. Here’s what happened, so that you don’t make the same mistake too.

HOW IT HAPPENED

1. I shared a post on my profile about the Whistler's Bend disc golf course, and I linked it to the blog on my website which was all about traveling to Whistler's Bend with course photos.

It had more likes than many of my posts, and I honestly haven't been on Instagram much lately (I needed a hiatus from it, and that is a story in itself). Someone commented on my post that I should check out @gearuppromos. I had never heard of them before and thought why not?

2. The @gearuppromos Instagram account seemed legit in my 9:00 p.m., after work mindset. They had 998k followers and other disc golfers were using them.

3. I messaged them that night and they immediately sent me their packages and fees. We agreed to the $30 package for a permanent post and 24 hour story, and they agreed to post at a peak time.

4. I paid them through Zelle, and this should have been a red flag not to go through with it at all, but I was too curious at the time, I noticed that the company name that came up when I entered their email address was a car rental company and not in line with their brand! Click send…

5. The next day my promotion got published and here are the 24-hour results I got:

• 6 promo/spam followers

• 2 small business owner followers

• 5 private messages from spam promoters.

It felt like I paid for spam more than anything else. The photo below is a screenshot of the number of likes that my post had on their account = 22,803 (and no comments).

After the 24-hour mark I still continue to get more private messages from these fake ripoff accounts. This has really been more of a headache than anything else.

RED FLAGS AND WHAT TO AVOID IN THE FUTURE

After my post got published I did more research and here's what I noticed that should have been red flags.

It was abundantly clear that their account is mostly followed by spam/fake promoters and people just looking to ripoff people online.

1. If you look at their profile posts you will notice that their profile posts have likes that are in the thousands and no comments on any of them. With 998k followers, that is a lot not to have any comments on these posts, it is obvious these people are not real.

2. Their email account was tied to a car rental company. That’s not right! When I went to pay on Zelle, I entered their email address and the name of the car rental company came up.

Had I done any of this research on this account beforehand I would not have done this promotion post. Really, I just wanted to try it and see what would happen. It was a case study, and really more of an education to see what would actual happen.

It was a ripoff.

I can only imagine most, if not all, of these accounts are like this.

Conclusion

For those of you trying to market yourself, here's what I would do instead:

Make real connections! From an online sense:

1. Own your website and your domain.

2. Grow an email list.

3. Let social platforms be your funnel to your email list.

You don’t own social media, but you can own your website. So OWN it. Paid promotions like this, in my opinion are HORRIBLE for your brand or anything you are trying to grow on social media because it attracts bots (it is better to have 10 real followers than 10,000 fake ones).

Don’t focus on the numbers. It’s not worth your attention. Focus on the things you enjoy, and real connections because you want a real audience.