There are a plethora of social media management tools on the market today. It wasn’t long ago that marketers managed their clients’ social media accounts by hand. They can now turn to bots and automated tools for scheduled uploads and day-to-day account maintenance.
Anyone managing their Instagram accounts with automated tools should also invest in an Instagram proxy. These proxies will prevent Instagram from identifying your IP address and banning you, especially if you’re running multiple accounts.
Operate Multiple Accounts with a Proxy
Like other social media networks, Instagram limits the number of accounts tied to a single IP address. The usual account limit for each IP address on Instagram is five; one main account and four additional accounts. If you exceed this limit, Instagram will assume that your account is involved in some nefarious activity and may move to block the associated IP addresses entirely.
For social media managers responsible for overseeing multiple accounts, the IP limit can be overly restrictive. Worse still, going over the limit can lead to account bans, which would have severe ramifications for marketing managers and their clients.
When you connect via a proxy, Instagram sees the proxy server’s IP address, not your device. By using a proxy server, you can enjoy up to five accounts per IP address.
The Benefits of Instagram Proxies
Getting around Instagram’s IP restrictions is just one of the many benefits that proxy services can offer. Social media platforms actively work to dissuade their users from using proxies to access the platform, even when there are legitimate reasons.
For example, most of them will block IP addresses that they know or suspect are part of a proxy network. To get around this, users can turn to residential proxies.
Residential proxies route your connection through a regular person’s internet connection. This will make you indistinguishable from regular, organic traffic.
Some services can also offer you clean IP addresses that no one else has used before. Because the address is fresh, social media companies won’t have had the chance to ban it before.
Similarly, you can use Instagram proxies to enable several individuals to manage the same account using the same IP address. In doing so, you will avoid many of the usual issues created by trying to have a single account managed from multiple different locations.
While some businesses have an in-house team dedicated to managing their social media accounts, many use freelance social media managers who work remotely. Multiple logins to the same account from IP addresses around the world will trigger Instagram’s security systems. Instagram will likely lock the account as a security measure until the user verifies the login. If this happens repeatedly, it can make people’s jobs difficult.
Proxies and Bots
While social media companies have generally been hostile to bots on their platform, marketers have found these automated tools invaluable in efficiently running their accounts.
Using social media bots gives marketing managers the ability to schedule the uploading of new content, automatically like, follow, and share other users and content, and alert the manager to the use of specific hashtags, to name just some.
Unfortunately, if Instagram detects that you are using bots to manage your account, their response is often heavy-handed. In many cases, they simply ban the IP address that the artificial activity is coming from. Accessing and using these services with a suitable proxy in place is the only way you can keep your account safe while using bots to automate at least some of their day to day management.
Choosing The Right Provider
There are many proxy providers to choose from, many of whom support Instagram proxies. When you choose proxies for Instagram account management, there are several things that you need to consider.
First and foremost, how reliable is the provider? Before you start paying good money for access to a proxy network, you need to ensure that it is a dependable network you can access as and when you need it.
If the network suffers from regular downtime, this can impact your ability to manage your accounts properly. Any marketer with experience of social media marketing can tell you that timing is everything. There is nothing more frustrating than your automated uploads failing because the proxy server was unavailable.
As well as evaluating the network’s uptime, you also want to be certain that their IP pool is legitimate. Many online services work to block IP addresses that are known to be associated with proxy and VPN networks.
Some services will advertise themselves as being perfect for accessing Netflix or managing social media accounts, even though their IP addresses are already blocked. The only reliable way of telling whether you can rely on your assigned IP addresses is to look at existing users’ experiences.
It is worth paying for access to a reliable Instagram proxy service. No one likes to spend more money than they have to on digital services. But if you try to skimp on the cost of an Instagram proxy, it could cause you numerous headaches in the long run. You don’t want your accounts or IP addresses to be banned. If you use a cheap, low-quality proxy, this is going to be a very real risk. It is better to spend the extra $20 on a reliable premium service that will keep your accounts safe.
Anyone with multiple Instagram accounts to manage should invest in an Instagram proxy. The most important metric when you are choosing an Instagram proxy is quality. If they advertise clean residential IP addresses, don’t accept anything less. Remember, it’s your accounts on the line if the proxy provider doesn’t deliver on their promise.
