Case study
An Instagram profile a brand was about to open
Priya's follower count was respectable. The likes under her recent posts were not: a few dozen on posts that a 22,000 follower account should be clearing in the hundreds. A brand opening the profile before a deal reads that gap first. The order left the follower count alone and went on the nine posts a visitor sees before scrolling.
Published
0.4% to 2.3%
engagement on the nine most recent posts, in six days
Priya Nair
@priya.goes · Travel creator, 22k followers · Toronto
The situation
The rate card was due on Monday. The person receiving it would open the profile, see 22,000 followers, then scroll the grid and see posts with forty likes. That ratio is what a brand manager calls a bought audience, whether or not it is one, and Priya's was not: it was an old audience that had gone quiet.
Adding followers here would have made the ratio worse. The number that needed to move was underneath the posts, and it needed to move on the posts a visitor actually reaches: the first nine on the grid, and the stories running that week.
The goal
Bring the visible engagement up to where a 22,000 follower account should sit, on the posts a brand will look at, before Monday.
What was ordered
| Service | Quantity | When | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Likes | 3,600 across 9 posts | Tuesday to Thursday | Four hundred likes per post, split unevenly on purpose: the two strongest posts got more, the rest less, so the grid kept a natural spread. |
| Instagram Story Views | 1,500 per day | Wednesday to Sunday | A brand checking stories sees the view count. Fifteen hundred a day on a 22k account sits inside the range a real audience produces. |
| Instagram Followers | None | Skipped | The count was already the strong number. Growing it would have widened the gap the order existed to close. |
Likes per post, the nine most recent, before and after
How it went
- 1
Tuesday
Likes on the first three posts
The three most recent posts first, since those are what a visitor sees without scrolling. Delivery paced over the day.
- 2
Wednesday
Likes on posts four to nine, stories start
The remaining six posts, weighted so the two best travel shots ended near six hundred and the weaker ones near three hundred. Story views began the same day.
- 3
Thursday
Real engagement picks up
Priya posted a new reel. It reached 1,100 likes on its own inside two days, the first time a post had cleared a thousand in eight months.
- 4
Monday
Rate card sent
The profile a brand opened showed a grid where every recent post sat in the hundreds and stories in the low thousands. The reply asked about a three-post package.
Before and after
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average likes, nine recent posts | 45 | 464 | 10x |
| Engagement rate on those posts | 0.4% | 2.3% | in range for the audience size |
| Daily story views | 180 to 260 | 1,700 to 2,100 | roughly 8x |
| Organic likes on the next reel | under 100 | 1,100 | first four-figure post in 8 months |
What to take from it
- 1When the follower count is already the strong number, the order goes under the posts, not on the header.
- 2Weight the split. Equal likes on nine posts look printed; a spread from three hundred to six hundred looks like an audience.
- 3Stories are read by brands too, and story views are the cheapest counter on the platform to keep in range.
“They asked me for a three-post rate. I had been sending rate cards for a year and nobody had asked me anything back.”
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