How to Get Your Instagram Page Verified (BLUE TICKED)


In a world that seems to be inundated with fake news, spammers and bots, the coveted blue check mark—AKA you’re verified, baby!—has become increasingly important for brands in social media.
The benefits to verification are myriad, but the main purpose is to help followers and prospective followers differentiate between real accounts and those created by impersonators.  From a branding perspective, receiving the blue check mark is a symbol of legitimacy, since verification is generally granted to larger, more established brands first.
As Jason Schlossberg, managing director at Huge, recently told Digiday: “The verification itself becomes an implied endorsement that a brand or celebrity is ‘worthy’ of verification.” In short, it’s all about the idea that you’re impressive enough to be impersonated.
As an added bonus, on most platforms, being verified will help your brand leapfrog to the top of similar search results.
So, how do we do it? Specifically, how do we do it on Instagram—an increasingly critical platform for many brands? As it turns out, it’s a lot more tedious than you might think. Large brands, those with deep pockets and an arsenal of agency resources, will oftentimes take priority order since they will be running sponsored content from their account.
If you’re a smaller brand, without the scale or name recognition of a larger player, you might face challenges getting the attention of platforms like Instagram to make your case for verification. In fact, in 2015 Instagram killed the application process it had been using and now states that “as of right now it is not possible to request or purchase a badge.”
Without a formal process, it’s logical to assume that Instagram reps are manually sifting through the countless queries that come across their desks—and the requests keep piling up. Over the past year, the percentage of U.S. business using Instagram doubled over the past year, according to one report.
Here are some tips and tricks for getting the attention of the Instagram team and getting you closer to that coveted blue check mark:
  1. If you can, build a solid community of real followers. (“Solid,” by the way, can mean tens of thousands.)
  2. Drive quality engagement on your profile/page. 
  3. Forge connections with businesses or individuals that represent brands and/or celebrities. Get an email intro or at least a name.
  4. Reach out to a rep ask about advertising opportunities. While “bribery” isn’t the name of the game here, creating a relationship with a rep and inquiring to learn more about ad products can’t hurt.
  5. Ensure your brand’s social presence spans multiple channels. You will increase your odds on one platform by becoming verified on another.
  6. Be creative and persistent when attempting to reach out to Instagram reps, but empathetic when it comes to the volume of requests they receive and the number of “favors” they can reasonably call upon.
Getting verified can be a lot of work, so if your account doesn’t have a sizable following already, it might be worth putting your grand efforts on the backburner for the time being. After all, while being verified is good for your brand, the badge is designed as a mechanism by which Instagram can help protect brands and public figures from being impersonated. If you don’t have many followers, the risk to you here is fairly low (and therefore you’re not a priority for them).
Of course, if you’re not the kind of person who can take “no” for an answer, our No. 1 piece of advice is to work your way into a relationship with someone with enough clout at the company, you just might stand a chance.

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