Instagram 101 for Adult Businesses

While a picture might be worth a thousand words, is it worth risking your business Instagram account? Gaming Adult share their Instagram experience so that you learn how to get the likes and keep the account.

While PornHub is trying to get their hands on Tumblr and restore its previous glory (and traffic), Instagram is being weirdly selective about which accounts to allow and which to take down. Apparently some butts are more equal than others (unlike nipples).

So why even bother with Instagram? According to the latest stats by Hootsuite, the social network has an impressive number of active users – 1 billion people. And more than 500 million use the platform every single day. Not to mention that for the users under the age of 35, the breakdown between women and men is even. And 88% of the users are outside of the U.S. so if you are targeting foreign markets: that’s your platform!

According to the same report, users ‘like’ 4.2 billion posts per day. So how do you make your posts stand out from the 95 million others without showing too much? If you are just creating your Instagram profile and you happen to be in the adult business, prepare for an exciting adventure.

Rules

There are a few simple rules you can use when deciding what to post and what to leave for a DM.

1. 1. Not only you shouldn’t  imply sex and show genitalia on the pics, but comments or captions about sex (especially using words like cum, penis, etc) are also not allowed.
2. 2. Videos can’t be explicit, either.
3. 3. Be careful with the percentage of skin (or skin-colored clothes) visible on camera. And remember – blurring is still considered showing skin.

Hashtags

That’s what we came to read, right? It is arguably the only text that really matters on IG. The only place where hashtags still work better than here is on Twitter. However, hashtags is another reason to get your account deleted. The sad thing is that we don’t know the rules IG uses to take down posts. But wait, there is more! There is no official list of the banned hashtags. Usually when you realize you’ve used a banned hashtags is too late. The good news is that not all lists are definite. Some hashtags “come back to life”.  The list keeps changing but some of the weirdest ones to be banned (at some point or another in time):

Adultlife; Babe; Curvy; Curbygirls; Dadylove; Date; Dating; Dm ; Easter; Eggplant ; Elevator; Girlsonly; Goddess ; Gloves ; Humpday ; Hardworkpaysoff; Happythanksgiving ;Instagood; Like ; Lingerie ; Master; Models ; Mustfollow ; Nasty; NewYears; Pushups; Puppydogmondays; Single; Sopretty; Stranger; Sunbathing; Tanlines ; Teens; Tgif ; Todayimwearing; Tag4like; Valentinesday; Woman ; Womancrushwednesday; Women;  Workflow ; Wtf.

Last hope

Instagram has made it easy for users to report posts that violate its policies, but it wasn’t easy for people to repeal those decisions. Now IG allows you to request a review of the content that was taken down. The appeal is sent to a different reviewer than the one who made the original decision. If IG realizes it has made a mistake, it will restore the account with all of its posts and followers.  If your account gets deleted: appeal! Then appeal again and again and, in general, spam them till you get your account back. Sometimes it works. First they delete, then they apologize.

Gaming Adult’s Hentai Heroes Instagram account got deleted just a couple of weeks after being created despite the fact we were super careful about the posts and the content written. However, after four days of sending requests to review their decision, Instagram sent an email with their apologies and reactivated the account. Yay!

Social media for adult business is simple if you remember one thing: downplay the sex and bring out the sexy. Instead of showing your product to the audience in its raw version, start with the foreplay. Excite their interest, capture their attention, have an intriguing conversation with them. Basically, take your audience on a first date. Start with the social media equivalent of getting to first base and you might score a home run.

And don’t forget: if some day you open the app and don’t see your IG account: don’t panic. Soon PornHub will be the only social media we all use and they are all about sexy nudity!