There are no tricks to being verified on Instagram

Social media verification is one of the most sought-after icons on the web, the amount of requests we receive asking to make an account verified is more than we’d like to admit. Just about anything else you can obtain through a little bit of tenacity or a bit of trickery. Verification… That little blue tick, though, requires overview from the social network involved, and often requires jumping through hoops to get. That’s if you can get it at all, if you’re reading this.. You probably can’t.

The problem with social media verification is that it doesn’t do a lot for you. Yes, it can make your personal account look cool.. It makes your profile the official profile for your brand, but how much is that really worth? (Psst, not a lot).

There are some perks to being verified on some networks. If you’re verified on Instagram, if you comment on a photo or live story, your comment will generally be shown and seen. If you send a private message to an Instagram account, you won’t land in the dreaded “Requests” folder. Possibly the biggest perks of verification is on Pinterest, which requires you to verify your account before you gain access to analytics. On the other hand, that actually makes Pinterest verification less valuable, because it’s open to anyone. It’s a much less exclusive club, so it’s less unique and valuable to be verified.

See it this way, there’s thousands of coffee and breakfast spots throughout London which are accessible to anyone. Soho House also offers coffee, breakfast and not forgetting Cowshed soap in the loos which is a lovely touch… They have a 20,000+ person waiting list to be accepted. 20,000+ people want to pay monthly to enjoy a coffee at Soho House instead of the coffee shop next door. Why? Not because of the Cowshed soap but because it’s exclusive. This is exactly the same thought process as someone wanting that blue tick. It’s a sign of acceptance and feeling good essentially.

One of the biggest problems with verification is that in order to be under consideration for verification, you typically need to be a very popular account with a lot of followers (not purchased ones) and real engagement. We’re talking 30+ thousand here generally, not “I’ve amassed 10,000 followers” large. By the time you have that many followers, the perks of verification are minimal. An impersonator account is going to be pretty obvious, since it will have half a percent of the number of followers you have. People won’t have a hard time identifying which is the real account. It’s just not that useful.

We work with public figures regularly and we can assure you, we have never had to request verification for any of our big clients. It’s simply granted after Instagram has reached out and asked for evidence of the account belonging to them.

Anyway, you still want to be verified? Here’s what Instagram says:

What are the requirements to apply for a verified badge?

We look at a number of factors when evaluating Instagram accounts to determine if they're in the public interest and meet our verification criteria.

In addition to following Instagram's Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, your account also needs to be:

• Authentic: Your account must represent a real person, registered business or entity.

• Unique: Your account must be the unique presence of the person or business it represents. Only one account per person or business may be verified, with exceptions for language-specific accounts. We don't verify general interest accounts (example: @puppymemes).

• Complete: Your account must be public and have a bio, profile photo and at least one post. Your profile can't contain "add me" links to other social media services.

• Notable: Your account must represent a well-known, highly searched for person, brand or entity. We review accounts that are featured in multiple news sources, and we don't consider paid or promotional content as sources for review.

Keep in mind that if you provide false or misleading information during the verification process, we will remove your verified badge and may take additional action to delete your account.

Still want to try? Ok… Here’s what we suggest you need.

Do you have A following?

The first and most obvious means to getting verified on any social network is to be exceedingly popular. We’ve mentioned before about the number of people required to be verified, and it changes dramatically from platform to platform. We’ve seen verified Facebook accounts with as few as 1,000 followers, and we’ve seen unverified brand pages with over 1 million. It’s really hit or miss and seems to depend on how the admins feel that day.

The thing is, you really can’t go wrong by getting more followers. Your brand will always benefit from more followers just so you can make better use of the site in general, both organically and with your marketing.

In addition to being useful for marketing, a higher follower count puts you higher in search results and makes you easier to differentiate from people who might try to impersonate you, either maliciously or as a troll.

How can you get more followers? We’ve included some basic tips here:

• Tell a story. It’s key to building or growing a brand, story-telling on Instagram is the best way to introduce your brand/self and make your audience feel like they’re apart of your journey.

• Stick to a theme, voice, and personality. For many celebrities this is easy, but brands often try a shotgun approach to see what works. This is fine early, but as you go and grow, you will need to refine your posts to stick with a theme.

• Post on a schedule. Like any social network, the more active you are, the more chances people have to engage with your account and the more you’ll grow.

• Use hashtags properly. This includes using the occasional branded tag, but also mean you should use uncommon hashtags. Using overly common hashtags isn’t going to get you more exposure, it’s going to get you lost in the flood of content in that tag.

• Engage. Social networks are social, and that means you need to be social back. You can’t treat Instagram like an image hosting site, you need to treat each picture as an opening to a conversation.

• Post good content. Instagram is very heavily image-focused, which means you absolutely need good quality images. You can’t just slap something together in a meme generator and hope it works. I’m talking professional photographers and real image editing software here if you want to stand out.

Do you get impersonated?

Okay, so this isn’t really an actionable tip either… Unless you hear some of our requests of brands asking us to create fake accounts pretending to be them… We’re not kidding.

It’s logical, though. Verification is a mechanism that exists solely – according to Instagram – to be a layer of security for people who are impersonated. It’s there so users can tell between two accounts with the same name and profile picture, identifying which one is the real one.

Therefore, it stands to reason that the most surefire way to receive verification is to have someone impersonate you. The problem is, this isn’t really a sure thing. Yes, verification is a preventative measure against the damage that can be caused by an impersonator. However, it’s not the process for solving the issue of impersonators. There’s a process, a form, that you have to go through to prove you are who you say you are and that the impersonator is negatively affecting your business.

When that happens, you don’t receive verification. You just get to keep your account while the impersonator is removed or forced to change. The only benefit you get out of the process is removing the confusion your users might feel when seeing two identical accounts and not knowing which one is yours.

While you won’t get verification out of the deal, we do think it’s quote unquote “beneficial” to be impersonated once, for verification purposes. We figure it probably puts you on a shortlist such that, if you meet the criteria, you might have a higher chance of verification when you apply. That said, it’s mainly speculation on our part and there’s no actual factual basis for that speculation. So, you know, don’t go out and create an impersonator of yourself, you might end up IP banned, and then were will you be? Also, please stop asking us to create fake accounts for you. We’ll always say no.

You need to be more active than your January gym membership

You’ll never be verified if you don’t use the platform. If Instagram admins were to come by looking to see if you’re worth verification, and they see you haven’t posted in a month, they’re going to pass you over. They don’t care if you’ve been impersonated before. They don’t care how active you used to be. They especially don’t care how much you want verification. If you’re not actively using the platform, there’s no reason for them to bother initiating the process for you or accepting your request.

It goes the other way too. Why would you want verification if you aren’t actively using the platform? It does nothing for you just to have it. There’s no reason to get verified if you’re not using the site.

Faking it till you make it will stop your blue tick

Don’t fake popularity of your brand by buying fake followers. Instagram knows… And probably your 30 real followers.. Just don’t do it, read here why.

For one thing, Instagram doesn’t like it. They have been known to purge fake fans, and the results have been devastating for many high profile users. Of course, most of these users were already candidates for verification and may have been verified already. In fact, I would venture to guess that the purge was targeting users they wanted to verify. Something like an audit; if you want verification, we’re going to make sure your audience is actually as large as you say it is.

Fake followers, of course, also hurt your ability to succeed on the platform. They make you look terrible. If two different accounts each have a million followers, and one of them gets 10x the engagement of the other, the one with lower engagement has something up with their audience. Fake followers often account for that.

All that said, we’re sure you’re leaving this post with a bit of a sour expression with zero help on being verified. The title should have been a clue in our defence. There’s simply no process on being verified, yes you can request but chances are minimal in being accepted. The best you can do is grow and get noticed and forget that blue tick in the meantime.

Written by Ben