Are Instagram Pods Worth Your Time?

Are Instagram Pods Worth Your Time?

Instagram Pods...a big topic of debate in the digital world. What are your opinions? Do you love them? Have you used them? I joined a couple of Instagram pods this year and my experiences with them were very interesting. So, let’s discuss the burning question that many budding-Instagrammers have: “Are Instagram Pods Really Worth Your Time?!”

What are Instagram Pods?

If you are part of any blogging groups or a regular social media user, you may have seen the term “Instagram pods” or “Instagram comment pods” appear quite frequently. The question is: what are they? How do they work? And what are their possible advantages/disadvantages?
Instagram pods
An Instagram pod is a secret group of Instagram users, usually bloggers, influencers or business owners who are looking to break the Instagram algorithm by increasing their post engagement to ensure that their posts get seen. A single Instagram pod has on average about 25 members, who come together in an Instagram group message to share their posts so that other members of the group can comment on and like the post. The idea is that every member of the pod engages with each new post sent to the group and in return, those members will engage with all of your posts that you share with them.
There are many unauthorised Instagram tactics out there at the moment. While buying followers is forbidden, it's not illegal to use automated tools and bots to search for relevant hashtags, follow and unfollow other users and post regular content. This is another way in which many people are using external tools to increase their follower numbers. But do these tactics help or hinder your chances of being successful on Instagram?

I Joined 3 Instagram Comment Pods and this is what Happened…

A few months ago I joined 3 Instagram pods to see just how effective they could be. I remained in each of the groups for around 2 weeks as an active participant, commenting and liking the posts of my fellow pod members every day. You can easily find Instagram pods to join on various social media platforms but before you do it is worth considering the possible advantages and disadvantages of being part of relying on an Instagram pod to grow your Instagram!

  1. I networked some lovely new bloggers and was introduced to their wonderful content.
  2. More people followed me on Instagram
  3. My post reach really boomed
  4. It was a good way to get interaction on my posts, some of which was very valuable and I have used the mentioned points since.


  1. Instagram pod rules are forever changing which makes it difficult to keep up.
  2. Even in a pod with very few members, it is very time consuming to go through each post and like and comment on each picture, especially when you consider that each comment must be no shorter than 4-5 words in order to beat the algorithm!
  3. Small pods are good in some ways because they enable you to build connections with the other bloggers but this also means that you have the same old faces always commenting on your posts with similar comments.
  4. In the end I was spending a lot of time commenting and liking each member's posts and this is when I realised that it would be much better and more time-effective to work on building my Instagram organically. This would ensure that I focused on gaining engagement and followers from people who are genuinely interested in my content and therefore give more insightful and useful comments.
  5. Initially, posting your post into your Instagram pod group would require a quick click of the "kite" share symbol before selecting the recipient group/contact. During my short time of using Instagram pods, this rule changed and it became more inconvenient and long-winded to a) post to the groups, and b) to click, comment and like the posts of other members.

Instagram pods
I gave up on using Instagram pods and have since begun to really focus on growing my Instagram following alone. The latter has been working very well recently! People in Instagram pods believe that interaction within a pod can help to get their posts seen because of the boost in post engagement through a pod. Although post engagement is key in your Instagram success, the best way to organically and safely grow your Instagram is to supply your feed with fresh, magnetic content. Like all trends both offline and online, Instagram pods are already losing interest and appear to (ever so) gradually be fading out.
I would love to hear your thoughts...
Back to blog