OpenMedia LLC has finally launched full version of Combin and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. If you are wondering what the full version looks like and how to start working with Combin in general, keep on reading.
The first thing you see after installing Combin is the above welcome window where you have to login with your Instagram account. For those worried about password being stolen, Combin doesn’t collect any private data, read more about their privacy policy here.
After signing in, you see the profile page of your Instagram account with your publications, daily account limits, and plan of choice — free, personal, or business. Combin doesn’t have any trial period, it’s basically always free, all its functionality is available for everyone to use at any time, but the search results number is limited. I wanted to get the full experience for my vegan food account I just recently started and for my private account, so I got business Combin plan, receiveing up to 500 search results for any query, 5 Instagram accounts management, automatically updating results, and other features you may check on Plans and Pricing page:
I started with a small audience of 165 accounts and wanted to see if I can grow this number organically by working with Combin. The tool is aimed to save time of Instagram brands managers from manual work of finding targeted audience, searching for relevant accounts, performing monotonous liking, commenting, and following. Combin automates these tasks, all you have to do is specify.
Search tab is the place for defining what posts and accounts you want to find and how to engage with the results.
Search is conveniently divided to posts and users. While finding posts, you can perform searches by either hashtag, location, or a combination of both. Specify the posts date (anytime, last 2 weeks, last week, last day) and search results limit (50, 100, 250, 500):
Search followers and commenters of particular Instagram accounts in Users, find the most active ones (recommended for engaging with followers of your brand’s competitors!):
I’ve searched for 500 posts tagged with #vegan from any place, selected all of the results and now can automatically schedule all of them for either mass liking, commenting or following of the posts uploaders:
As for mass commenting, I strongly recommend not looking over the preview ability of Combin by checking the selected search results posts before leaving any comments. I’ve seen posts of animals being tagged #veganbowls and including such posts in my mass sending of ‘wow, looks so delicious!’ comment would turn out quite sarcastic, to say the least.
Working with followers and commenters of accounts is the same as with tagged/location posts. All search results may be sorted by followers, likes, date, etc. for engaging with the most relevant content first.
Once you’ve figured how it works and added quite a number of search queries, there may arise a strong need to filter them and find specific one(s). Luckily, Combin provides this ability too. Click on Filter searches at the bottom of search queries list and type in what you need to find:
If you run out of popular hashtags related to your content and have no idea what to search for next, try looking up the hottest posts from old searches and checking out what tags they include, perform searches by those hashtags right away from Combin:
Take a note, you may perform single tasks for separate users and posts too. Click on any post with the right mouse button and pick action from the popped up list:
Users tab provides access to your Instagam following and followers. Here you can select users for (un)following, check who follows you back, like last 3 posts and comment last posts of the accounts. If you have massive amounts of followers/following, you may conveniently search for specific user:
All accounts can be sorted by default order and by number of followers.
History tab is for tracking past and present tasks scheduled for liking, commenting, following and unfollowing. Watch tasks by categories (unfinished, related to likes, comments, users) or all together:
It may seem that tasks take long to process — it’s because Combin works so your regular activity level doesn’t rapidly change, in order to avoid your Instagram account from being banned. However, you may still change task process intensity to your liking (and own risk) in Tools > Preferences:
I’m not following Instagram accounts without the aid of sight, even if we post very similar content, this is just personal preference, so I mostly scheduled tasks for liking and commenting only. I gathered popular vegan food related hashtags, compiled the accounts of influencers and competitors, and started liking and commenting the hottest content and possibly interested accounts. The results were pleasantly surprising — just two days in and my account has grown from 165 followers to 224 followers, received likes, comments, and even replies:
Combin really does seem to be a one of a kind tool for Instagram marketing, operating on principle search > engage >grow. I imagine it being of big favor of active Instagram brand owners: they can find new potential customers and enqueue following, liking and commenting tasks in a few clicks while having their morning coffee, posting a few pictures in the noon, and collecting a bunch of likes and new followers in the evening, just like that.
So far Combin gives an impression of an intuitive, modern-looking and reliable tool that has everything needed for fast, organic Instagram audience growth. User is in complete control of what actions will be performed, what exact content and accounts will be engaged with from his behalf. Automatic scheduling, post preview, tips and warnings prevent Instagram account from looking spammy and being actually banned.
I highly recommend all aspiring brands and niche Instagram blogs checking Combin out — this handy application can save you a lot of time and grant opportunity to grab a fair share of real likes and followers.
Download Combin here. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
UPD:
6/15/17
I continued simultaneously uploading new posts to my vegan recipe blog and using Combin to promote it. Now I have Instagram audience of 336 followers and get a lot of attention from interested users:
UPD:
5/14/18
I had to leave the vegan Instagram account for personal reasons at the end of 2017. I’m taking over the account again and I wanted to make an important note here before I’m back growing it again. With daily liking of 900+ posts, leaving 100+ natural looking comments and active following of dozens of accounts, I managed to grow my account up to 1200+ followers.
Today I got the account access back, noticed some followers unsubscribed from me (no wonder, half a year and not a single post!)
Here’s how the account looks at the moment:
I’m going to continue building my audience and add news about account growing here more frequently.