Top 10 Kicksta Alternatives for Ethical Instagram Growth

Social media marketing isn’t going anywhere, and Instagram is leading the pack. Even if you aren’t looking to market your products specifically (which you should reconsider), having an Instagram presence is vital for any business heading into 2021. 

Instagram is a point of contact that users expect businesses to have; not only that, many consumers use Instagram to discover new products and services that are of their interest, and they also engage with new content all the time. 

With so many willing and active users on the platform, it’s almost silly not to take advantage of such a powerful opportunity to reach new people and grow your brand or business.  The thing is, doing this manually can take quite a bit of time, so it’s a good idea to look for tools that can help you be more productive in this area. 

Kicksta has been a common company for Instagram growth for a while, but going into the new year, there are plenty of other Instagram growth options that can be even more effective for expanding your presence. 

In this article, we’ll get to know some awesome Kicksta alternatives, what Instagram automation means for Instagram these days, and what Instagram strategies you should focus on for even better growth. 

Let’s get moving! 

Best Kicksta Alternatives

1. Growthoid

Growthoid is the best Kicksta alternative for real Instagram follower growth; you won’t find a more successful and effective service on the market right now. They have totally transformed Instagram growth services and offer the best support team and account managers in the business. 

Growthoid uses no automation, fake followers, or bots— everything is done by hand. Your dedicated account manager will be the one in charge of your growth, you’ll provide your targeting options, and they’ll work through manual engagements to generate interest around your profile and grow your follower base. 

This is the top proven method for Instagram growth, and the best thing is that you don’t have to do it by hand, they will! Their account managers and support team are all experts and offer unmatched service to their clients; you can really tell they care. 

With two monthly options and a money-back guarantee, there’s so much to love about Growthoid, and you’ll see the results you need from them. Kicksta still focuses on automation, but Growthoid can take you to the next level of Instagram growth. 

2. Growthsilo 

Like Growthoid, Growthsilo also works through manual engagements to grow your Instagram followers. It’s such a relief to see companies that are stepping up to the plate with transparent Instagram growth services that don’t mess around with automation or fake followers. 

Growthsilo will gain you access to a dedicated account manager that will help to provide you optimized targeted Instagram growth. You can keep focusing on your content and your account manager will be hard at work gaining more interest in your content. 

Manual growth services are best because the targeting instructions you provide can be followed based on real judgement and not simply on automated programming. 

Growthsilo backs up their service with a money-back guarantee and you’ll be able to choose a plan that best works for your needs and your budget. 

3. MoreLikes 

Engagement is a really important element on Instagram, and having more of it boosts your reach, post-performance, as well as social cred. 

A healthy engagement ratio is actually the key indicator of success on Instagram and what will help you to gain more of it. For this reason, MoreLikes is an epic service for Instagram growth. 

MoreLikes auto-detects all of your new posts and funnels real, authentic likes to these posts, which helps fortify your post popularity and get more people looking at your content; Kicksta doesn’t offer any services like this. 

The great thing about the service is that MoreLikes has three monthly options that are very flexible and affordable, so this can be an attainable service for anyone. Not only that, you’ll boost your engagement at the same time as gaining more visibility for your content, so that’s definitely a win-win. 

You can even control the speed at which likes come onto your new content, depending on what you prefer. MoreLikes makes it easy to boost your engagement and generate more reach. 

4. Task Ant 

If you’re not using hashtags, ask yourself why not. If you are using hashtags, ask yourself when was the last time you analyzed your hashtags and made sure to change it up and follow trends. 

These are some of the most common issues with hashtag strategy, and if you’re not sure how to formulate one that can drive real results, Task Ant will be the lifeline that you’ve been waiting for. 

Task Ant is the top hashtag generator for Instagram and will totally revolutionize the way that you organize and use hashtags in your content. You can search hashtags and find out which ones are similar, which ones are best recommended for your content, and which ones are popular for your niche. 

A big problem with most Instagrammer’s hashtag strategies is that people use very general hashtags like #travel or #niceday, among many others, and frankly these are not going to drive any targeted results. Your content will be pushed down the feed so quickly, it’s likely that no one will see it due to the amount of content uploaded by the minute. Not only that, many different niches will be using that hashtag, so users viewing your content may not give two licks about anything you’re posting. 

The best way is to use niche-specific hashtags that can get your content in front of your target audience, and Task Ant will do exactly that through its intuitive and easy-to-use suggestions. You can then categorize your hashtags into hashtag sets that you can easily copy when you’re ready to use the set. So efficient! 

Task Ant is free but offers you more valuable results with their basic monthly plan, which is very affordable and super valuable in terms of results. They have some other features in the work like competitor monitoring and analytics, which we’re really excited about. 

5.  Trusy

Trusy is can help you to build your follower count and shift your Instagram toward profitability; their service offers many different package options that make the service accessible to many budgets, and you can gain not only followers but also engagements. 

Due to the fact that they are a bit more expensive than other options on the list, Trusy may not be the most practical solution for everyone seeking a Kicksta replacement, but they do have great customer service and can help you to do an audit of your Instagram to see how things are going. 

6. Media Mister 

Media Mister is one of the first Instagram service providers in terms of followers and engagements, so they’ve had a lot of time to learn about the market and how to provide users with something valuable. 

You can gain so many different types of engagements from purchasing Media Mister’s service; you can pick and choose and combine a bunch of them together for optimal growth. Since Media Mister sells packages, unlike Kicksta, they probably aren’t an option for long-term growth, but if you want a quick infusion of social cred they could give it to you effectively, affordably, and within a reasonable time frame.

You can also buy packages for other social media platforms, making Media Mister a one-stop-shop for most social media engagements. 

7. Combin 

Combin is a dual Instagram service, offering an option for growth, and an option for scheduling and management. You can sign up for one or both in order to help your Instagram flourish, depending on your needs. 

The growth side of Combin is driven mainly by analytics and Instagram search tools, which can help you to identify your audience and who to engage with, which is invaluable. 

In terms of scheduling, Combin offers an effective Instagram scheduler tool that can save you a lot of time and make sure that your content comes out on a consistent schedule, which will help get you more reach. 

There is a free option for Combin so you can check them out before hiring the service on a monthly or annual basis. Their reputation has remained positive and their Forbes feature sure doesn’t hurt. 

8. Later 

The most effective visual schedule planner out there Later can help you elevate your content strategy by visualizing all of your posts before they go live, schedule them in advance, and even auto-post single photo and video content. Kicksta won’t be able to help you in any of these areas. 

When you use a tool like Later to help visualize your content and get it out consistently, you are perpetuating a very attractive content strategy, which is likely to gain you more reach. Not only that, you will save time by getting everything ready in advance, making it easier to focus on engaging with your users on the platform and creating worthwhile content. 

Later also offers analytics, support for linkin.bio, user-generated content, and more. 

9. Iconosquare 

The top analytics tool for growing your Instagram account is Iconosquare. Iconosquare takes all of your Instagram data and compiles it in easy-to-understand graphs and reports, making all of your data actionable. 

Once you know about your Instagram data and performance, you can turn that information into real strategies and improvements that boosts your Instagram performance and can help your account to be more successful, gaining more followers. 

If you don’t know how your Instagram is performing, you won’t have a very good chance of growing your Instagram followers. 

10. Sprout Social  

If you don’t have a good handle on your target audience, it can be very difficult to gain real, targeted followers that can actually contribute positive results to your account. One great way to find out about your target audience and manage your Instagram platform is through Sprout Social, as they offer valuable listening services so you can learn more about your target audience.

Does Instagram Automation Still Work?

For a while now, Instagram growth services that use automation have been relatively quiet, and for good reason. In terms of Instagram growth, automation is no longer the most effective tool to use when you want to grow real Instagram followers. 

Instagram has very distinct terms of use, and automation services for growing your followers are against those terms of use. For that reason, many of the most successful and reputable companies that use automation have shut down by the force of Instagram or by lack of ability to provide automation services for Instagram growth. 

Kicksta is an automated service, so your results can be limited; for this reason, it’s important to consider some of the other options on this list, which can help you create a viable Instagram strategy that will provide results over the long term. 

If you are still thinking about using automation services for follower growth, check out some of these things to consider: 

• Your account can be flagged: as we said, automation is against the terms of use, so your account can be flagged and even disabled by Instagram. You may also see some problems with your service.

• Your reputation can be diminished: Instagram users know when you are using bots to engage with them, and they can also recognize them in the comments. If your account is tied to a bunch of bot activity, your credibility and reputation will decrease. You may also see a lack of engagement, and when your follower to engagement ratio isn’t balanced, your reputation and overall performance also takes a hit. 

• Targeting isn’t as effective: when you use automation, you provide targeting instructions, but the bot can only follow those so well. You’re bound to see new users contacted that aren’t part of your niche or target audience. 

You can use automation for things like analytics and post scheduling, but for follower growth, it’s a thing of the past. 

Instagram Strategies For Success 

Using one or a combination of the tools on this list is definitely going to help boost your Instagram growth, so that’s awesome. That doesn’t mean, however, that you are going to just sit back and not lift a finger— you still have to fortify your own Instagram growth through awesome content and a variety of strategies that lead you to success. 

Your growth service will only work as good as your Instagram strategy; many people have the misconception that they can hire an Instagram growth service or use an Instagram tool and they don’t need to keep working. This is one of the reasons why people don’t see the level of growth they are looking for and end up getting angry at the service provider.

Don’t be one of those people— know what you need to be working on in order to get the absolute best results possible. Show up for yourself! Here are some of the top strategies you should be implementing to enhance your Instagram growth service results. 

Use Instagram Stories 

Not using Instagram stories these days is a cop out; users expect you to be involved with all types of content on the platform, and Instagram stories is the most popular type of Instagram content. Instagram stories increase the average time spent by a user on the platform by a whopping 28 minutes, which is huge. 

When you use Instagram stories, you can enjoy a variety of benefits: 

• Increased visibility: you’ll pop up more frequently in front of your followers, which helps your profile to gain more views and get checked out more, which boosts engagement. This perpetuates more engagement and can even lead to users sharing your story to their friends. 
• Swipe up: if you meet the criteria, you will have the option to “swipe up,” where you can direct users to buy something or to an outside link. Since you won’t be able to do this anywhere other than your bio, it’s a really valuable way to funnel traffic to other sites and you should take advantage of it if you have the option. 
• Engagement and market research combined: there are so many unique features to Instagram stories, including polls, questions, sliding rater, and quiz, which means you can use these to engage your followers as well as ask questions related to market research; that may be about products and services, what type of content they want to see, what things they like and dislike, etc. That information is super valuable for you and it also helps you to boost your engagement simultaneously. Win! 
• Create Instagram highlights that you can use later: when you post a story, it’s only available for 24 hours, and then it goes to your archives. You can then post these stories to albums on your main profile page called Instagram story highlights, which gives users a bunch more content to check out on your Instagram. 

All in all, you need to be on Instagram stories; when you have an active Instagram story going, you show your followers that you are engaged with your Instagram and they can expect to see content from you regularly. Not only that, if a new user views your profile and sees the active Instagram story color ring around your profile image, you will look more cohesive in your Instagram content, enticing the user to check you out. 

Create Content Based on Performance Data and Market Research

Your content strategy must be directly connected to your target audience; if your content is not valuable to them, you are unlikely to gain any traction, nor will you see any new followers popping up. Content is king, and you have to know what your market wants. 

So, how can you find out what your target audience wants? You’ve got to ask them. Using Instagram stories as we discussed above can be a great way, or you can use a tool like Sprout Social to help you listen, or you can observe for yourself and also check out competitors. 

Run a Giveaway

Giveaways are a great way to gain more followers and get more engagement on your posts. You’ll need to decide what to give away, but once you do, you can promote it on your account and ask your followers to do a few things to gain entry to the contest. 

For giveaways, it’s a best practice to ask your followers to take actions including tagging 1-3 friends in the comments, liking the post and following your account, as well as sharing content (even could be a bonus entry). 

This helps you to generate a lot of engagement on your content and can get your stuff seen by more people. If you do a collaborative giveaway with another account, you can use each other’s audience to gain more followers, as it can be required for entry to follow both participating accounts. A great way to get an infusion of connected followers. 

Look for Collabs

As with the giveaways, collaborating with other accounts in your niche is huge. You can do a collaborative IG live, you could promote each others’ content or products/services, and you can even include content that includes both brands. 

In any case, leveraging partners’ followers is a great way to expand your profile and gain more exposure while making sure that the users who are noticing you are within your target audience. 

Optimize Hashtags 

Our last point is hashtags— these are the lifeblood in getting your content discovered, and if you’re not using them, you should be. Even if you are using them, it’s time to reassess. 

A tool like Task Ant is invaluable in discovering more hashtags and organizing them for easy posting, but even if you do it yourself, make sure that your hashtags are specific and niche-centered so that you gain connected followers that will actually care about your content. 

If you get good engagement, you can even be featured on the “top” section of a hashtag feed. Using the tools on this list with a boosted hashtag strategy can double or triple your exposure. Make sure your account is set to public for the best results. 

Conclusion on Kicksta Alternatives 

While Kicksta made a lot of sense when Instagram automation was popular, it’s on its way out. When you use services that aren’t automated such as Growthoid, you give your Instagram profile a better chance to develop a long-term strategy that is effective. 

All of the services listed above can help you reinvent your Instagram strategy and grow real Instagram followers, which will help you to reach all of your Instagram goals faster and see real business results from Instagram, which is the ultimate payoff. 

Combine one or a few of these services with the strategies above, and you will no doubt be happy with where your Instagram is headed in the new year.