From a marketer's perspective, a proxy server's job is to hide the IP address of its users from third parties. These are other websites or apps, for example. The simplest way of seeing what proxy servers do is to use them on Google and to check its results from different IP addresses.

For example, a person in California who searches 'best diving gear' on google will get a specific set of results for a user from California. Yet, if the same person who is searching uses a New York-based proxy server (while still located in California) and searches the same term, it will receive a different set of results. These results will be specific to Florida users.

This is what a proxy server room would look like: 

Why social media managers use proxies

The primary purpose of using proxies for marketing is to avoid blocks or direct connections between unrelated accounts. In essence, when a marketer uses a proxy, the accessed web services (social networks) recognise the proxy server's location as his real location, even if the marketer is thousands of miles away from that server.

This feature brings certain benefits to social media managers and entrepreneurs alike, especially because more than 30% of small and medium enterprises outsource digital marketing processes.

Two groups of marketing professionals that use proxies for social media are remote social media managers and social media agencies.

The remote social media manager

Remote managers use proxies with IP addresses from their client's account country of residence. Managers living abroad or in remote locations use proxies to avoid blocks due to their login attempts from these new locations.

For example, a Canadian company can outsource its social media management to a manager from South Africa. To avoid account blocks — because the company's account is accessed from Canada and South Africa at the same time — both the Canadian company and the manager can use one Canadian proxy and tunnel all of their logins through it.

In this way, all login attempts and connections to the social media network pass through the proxy's IP address. And because this IP address doesn't change, Instagram won't block the company's account when it detects 'suspicious' behavior.

The social media agency

At the other end of the spectrum are the social media agencies. These agencies have several accounts under management. They need to 'isolate' each client's account individually to avoid IP-related blocks. These blocks happen when all accounts use a shared IP address, which can have dire consequences.

To do so, they use social media proxies for Instagram and allocate an individual proxy for each one of their clients' accounts. In this way, an agency with 30 clients and 50 accounts under management needs either 50 (to isolate each account) or 30 proxies (to assign a proxy for each client, when a client has two or three accounts).

The risk of using proxies for Instagram

The benefits of using proxies for social media are quickly identified; marketers should understand that there is also a risk that comes with proxy use. The most common issue that marketers face is buying a spammed proxy that has its IP address flagged by Instagram. By using such a flagged IP, the social media manager risks having the account blocked temporarily or even banned permanently.

However, managers can easily avoid this risk by buying so-called Instagram proxies. These are private proxies with clean IP addresses that are exclusively allocated to be used on Instagram.

In other words, when connecting to an account for the first time through such a proxy, no direct links between this account and other accounts can be drawn. Thus, any possible blocks are avoided.

Mistakes to avoid at all costs

Here are two mistakes that any professional social media manager — with multiple accounts under management — should avoid when using Instagram proxies:

1. Assigning multiple unrelated accounts to a proxy
This mistake generates correlations between accounts — a relationship that should not exist. An exmaple of this would be grouping client A's account on the same proxy that client B's is on. If client A erroneously blocks his account, client B's account is at risk as well.

2. Complete account automation (going blackhat)
Some social media managers might consider employing blackhat techniques in managing and growing their accounts by automating specific tasks through bots. They then manage multiple accounts via proxies.

Do not use proxies or other tools against a company's terms and services. These actions can carry serious consequences, that's why automating accounts is considered a mistake. It can be easily detected and the account blocked.

Are proxies safe for Instagram?

Anybody managing social media accounts for a business should have a clear idea of whether using proxies will benefit them or not. But another question to ask is: Are they safe?

The short answer is Yes and No.

Yes, Instagram proxies can be used safely by remote social media managers and media agencies if they are not involved in blackhat or grayhat techniques, and if they use the proxy to only connect remotely and avoid account blocks.

On the other hand, the answer is also No. Proxies are not safe. This is the case when accounts are automated and are used to spam real Instagram users. In this case, these accounts are susceptible to blocks. Because of this, managing social media in this way becomes a very risky business.

For more information, visit www.bestproxyproviders.com. You can also follow BestProxyProviders on Twitter. 

*Image courtesy of Pixabay