How to get a blue tick on Instagram
- Instagram has recently changed its verification process: you used to just have to upload business documents to prove you’re a real business. There wasn’t much else you could do and you had to sit back and wait, and wait and wait.
- NOW when you go to Settings, Account, and Request Verification, there are sections where you can prove your notoriety as a business or a person.
- As well as uploading the business docs as before, you will need to enter URLs for things like your other social media profiles, any articles written about you or your business, your Wiki page if you have one (for example), anything in high profile newspapers or articles or social media posts, about you/your business.
- If you’re familiar with creating Wiki pages (like me!) the process is straightforward: you choose the webpages with the highest traffic such as online newspapers like the FT, the Guardian, The Telegraph.
- If your article is behind a pay barrier, be a bit more wary – as long as your name appears high up in the article you’re OK. If it’s behind the pay barrier you might want to avoid using that particular article to be on the safe side.
- If you have had a book written about you, that will help too! Link to the place where the book is for sale (ideally somewhere like Amazon where you will have lots of reviews showing too and it’s obvious that your book is popular).
- If you wrote and self published your book, that’s not quite the same thing BUT if it’s had lots of reviews and it’s very clear on eg Amazon, that’s it’s popular, it’s worth adding the link to the verification process.
- If you have had very little exposure elsewhere, other than your own Instagram profile, it’s going to be hard to prove your notoriety. So make an effort to change that..
Improve your notoriety
1. Do some PR! Get published in local and national press with a really ‘hooky’ story. How? Do some charity work, do something out of the ordinary, speak up and act on something you feel strongly about. It doesn’t have to be you as an individual: your company can have opinions from spokespeople and can act to elicit change.
2. Link up with some influencers – get the chat going and some hashtags going. This will help your Instagram profile anyway but paid promotions don’t count when it comes to verification. A general increase in brand awareness helps with your notoriety.
3. Make sure you have at least one other decent social media profile for your business – don’t put all your eggs in the Instagram basket (and Instagram accounts get shut down all the time so PLEASE don’t just rely on one platform)
4. Consider using brand ambassadors with their own notoriety to help your brand. If for instance, the new Love Island winner becomes the face of your brand, this will help your notoriety and is likely to get picked up by the press. When it comes to links for Instagram verification for this, you will need to get articles which are more about your brand than the ambassador… so just bear this in mind. It all helps.
5. If you get more notoriety, you will be able to have a Wiki page too. And you can link to that in your Instagram verification process.
6. Work on your SEO and link building, back links and mentions on other high-ranking websites. Need SEO help? We have got some BRILLIANT SEO experts 
Sneaky tips for Instagram verification
1. I believe that one of the reasons I was finally able to get verification was because my client’s account was impersonated. If your account is doing so well that the fraudsters see an opportunity, then yes you have to go through a massive headache of trying to deal with Instagram/Facebook to get the fake profiles removed, but it also has a silver lining: you can prove that your client’s account deserves verification. (I will write about how to get fraudulent accounts removed in another post!)
2. Do NOT set up fake accounts to fraudulently impersonate your own business or account. We have heard stories of people doing this to get a blue tick. It just isn’t worth it: you will get a ban for life if Facebook/Instagram cotton on.
Happy tick hunting!
Susie 
