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In this video, I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite dating apps, which you probably already have on your phone but may not be using as a dating app, and that is Instagram.
Learn how to effectively DM women on Instagram by building a compelling profile, qualifying your crush, and sending the right message.
Key Takeaways
- Cold DMs without a strong profile rarely work on Instagram.
- A compelling profile is essential and includes bio, photos, captions, and social proof.
- Qualify women as single and compatible before messaging to save time and increase success.
- Real-life connections or shared social circles greatly improve chances of success.
- Engage with a comment before sending a DM to increase visibility and response likelihood.
What the video covers
- Instagram is an underrated dating app with many single users but is often underutilized for dating.
- Most men fail by sending cold DMs without a strong profile or qualifying the woman first.
- Successful men cultivate attractive profiles, qualify women as single and compatible, and have some real-life connection.
- A compelling Instagram profile includes a strong written bio, captivating photos, engaging captions, and social proof.
- Instagram profiles need more social proof than typical dating apps, showing active social life and friends.
- If you struggle on dating apps like Hinge or Bumble, Instagram likely won’t improve your results.
- Qualifying your crush means verifying if she is single and compatible before messaging.
- Most Instagram relationships start with some real-life connection or shared social circle.
- The right DM is personalized, puts the woman at ease, and often follows a comment alerting her to check DMs.
- Avoid buying followers or likes as it appears inauthentic and harms your chances.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Instagram as a dating app
- 01:00Common mistakes with cold DMs
- 02:05Successful approach to DMing women
- 02:57Importance of dating app experience before Instagram
- 04:06Building a compelling Instagram profile
- 06:08Photo strategy for Instagram dating
- 07:22Role of captions and social proof
- 08:26Qualifying your crush and real-life connections
- 12:34Crafting the right message and increasing DM visibility
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Instagram is actually an amazing dating app because there are tons of single men and women. It is easy to connect with people, and couples link up on Instagram all the time. By the way, if we haven't met before, my name is Blaine, and I'm a dating coach for men! Unfortunately,
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most of Instagram's potential as a dating app goes untapped. So if you are curious how to meet women that you're excited about on Instagram, stick around. I am going to be covering the overall strategy, how to build a compelling profile, qualifying your crush, and sending
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the right message. Most guys know they'll need to send a cold direct message or "DM" to a woman they like on Instagram. Most guys don't know the ramifications of sending a cold DM on Instagram, and as a result, won't be successful approaching women. The unsuccessful approach these guys
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take looks like this: stumble upon a cute girl's profile, send her a cold DM asking her on a date, feel surprised when she doesn't respond, so they send another message, then they feel frustrated when she doesn't respond again, and they give up. This unsuccessful approach fails every time
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because she is rarely single and looking, and even if she is, she may not even see the message. If she does see the message, she may not feel like reading the message. If she doesn't actually read the message, she may not want to respond to the message. If she decides she does want to reply,
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she is always going to look at the guy's profile first, and if he doesn't have a great profile, she's not going to respond anyway. In other words, the average cold DM works about as well as screaming across the crowd to a random girl at Coachella, and good luck finding a
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girlfriend like that. On the other hand, some guys consistently meet attractive women on Instagram, and they follow a different approach. They invest in cultivating an attractive Instagram profile,
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they only approach women that they have qualified as single and compatible, and even then it is generally women who they have some real-life connection with, like a shared social circle.
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They send the message in a way that the woman is actually going to see it and want to reply to it. They create an engaging conversation, and finally transition that online chat to a real-life date.
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Stick with the concert analogy: this is like talking to a friend of a friend who you know is single, who is sitting next to you watching an acoustic guitarist play in the backyard of your favorite neighborhood bar. You won't get the date every time, but you have a thousand
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times better chance than shouting across the crowd at Coachella. Before we get into building a compelling profile, I need to share a word of warning. The vast majority of men fail to attract women on Instagram because they do not build a sufficiently compelling profile. Specifically,
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if you don't consistently match with women you're interested in on actual dating apps like Hinge or Bumble, Instagram probably isn't going to serve you any better. And if this is you, don't feel bad. Literally, 95% of guys struggle on dating apps, and it's not your fault. So I'm going to share my
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free guide below on how to improve your dating app, and creating a strong Instagram profile is almost identical to creating a strong dating app profile. It just has two additional considerations. First,
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Instagram lacks guardrails. Hinge and Bumble literally give you instructions for writing prompts and sharing photos. Plus, the majority of women are pre-qualified as single. And second,
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Instagram requires social proof to work as a dating app. That is to say, if you don't look like you have friends who engage with your profile, you're going to strike out every time. Basically,
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if you struggle to meet women on dating apps, I recommend you learn the ropes of those first before branching out to Instagram. If you are ready to create a compelling Instagram profile,
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you are going to need four important pieces, which we will get into next. The reason you need a compelling profile on Instagram is because she is always going to look at your Instagram before she
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decides if she is going to respond to your DM. And if a woman cannot quickly ascertain that you are awesome and trustworthy from your profile, she's going to assume you are just another creepy guy
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sending her a cold DM on Instagram. So let's talk about the four elements of a compelling profile. Your written bio is like a prompt on Bumble or Hinge. You are going to get about a dozen words to communicate something that catches her attention. The key difference on Instagram is
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that your written bio is actually the first thing she is going to see, so it needs to be extra good.
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Specifics on how to write a written bio is a topic for another guide, but high level, remember a few things you need to capture her attention. You want to put your best foot forward. You want to keep it loose, and your goal should be to make her smile. Captivating photos is another topic
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that we don't have time to cover here, but if you struggle to know the difference between a good and a bad photo, Instagram is not going to be the dating app for you. But I do want to call
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out the number one mistake I see guys making in their photos on Instagram, and that is that they don't have enough photos of themselves where she can tell what they look like. Instagram is a great place to just show off your sunset photography skills, or document your cooking journey, or
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highlight the partying you do with your friends, but if you plan to use Instagram as a dating app, your profile needs to be littered with photos of you of dating app quality. This is because a
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woman is not going to scroll through hundreds of photos of a guy she doesn't even know trying to ascertain what he looks like. If cute immediately, it's game over. The good news is that because she
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won't scroll through hundreds of photos of you, you don't need that many photos of yourself or photos generally to make this work. Enough photos to fill four rows on Instagram or approximately 12
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photos is sufficient. Just make sure one-fourth to half of these are dating app quality photos so she can quickly determine that you are cute and she wants to chat. Your photo captions are much less
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important than your photos themselves, but she will absolutely still look at them and take them into consideration before deciding to reply to a DM. Caption copywriting is again outside the scope of
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this video, but if you need inspiration, check out The Rock's Instagram. He is a savant at writing authentic, intriguing, and illuminating captions. Social proof refers to other people's engagement
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with your Instagram. So followers, likes, comments, group photos, and tags. You don't need to be a celebrity with thousands of followers and hundreds of likes. Women rarely care about exact follower
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and like counts, but women do seek out guys who have cool friends and avoid creepy guys with no friends. So if a woman is evaluating your profile, she's probably going to pay attention to: do you
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have friends in your photos? Zero group photos might give off creepy loner vibes, whether your friends seem cool. The same way you'll probably view the profiles of people tagged in her photos,
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she will likely do the same to yours, and whether or not your friends are engaging and liking your photos. This just reinforces that you have an active social life. You really don't need a ton
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of photos with friends here, but just one or two in that top four rows will be helpful. Another thing to note is that if you are thinking about buying followers or likes as a way to get social proof,
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don't do it. It is cringe and usually very obvious and will have the opposite of the intended effect. I just want to highlight here that creating a compelling Instagram profile is a ser
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lead to you incorrectly drawing the conclusion that your profile or message isn't good when the reality is it's just that she's not single and of course you don't want to waste your time on women who aren't interested anyway. So what does qualifying your crush even mean? So to
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qualify your crush, you want to be reasonably sure she's single and looking and confident that you are compatible. I am always shocked how few guys bothered to investigate if a woman is single before shooting their shot, and then these same guys tend to feel frustrated when they find
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out she isn't single. Failing to research her relationship status is lazy and dumb. Only DM women that you have reason to believe are single. This can be looking at the photos that she's posted and also looking at her tagged photos. If you don't see a boyfriend, that's a yellow light.
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If you see a boyfriend, red light don't proceed. For example, I get DMs all the time hitting on me or asking me out in some capacity but I have an About Me section on my Pro Instagram profile and
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if a guy just took two seconds to click through the About Me section, it would be very obvious that I'm married. This is true of many women who are happily in relationships but deliberately aren't sharing pictures of their significant other on their Instagram. This doesn't mean she's trying
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to look single and like in my case, sharing photos of my significant other would just detract from the message and my business, which I am trying to share. In short, you ideally want to have a reason to believe she's single. Like you've heard it through the grapevine from other friends or she's
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mentioned in a story that she's posted recently or maybe you've seen her profile on a dating app once you've established that you have reason to believe she's single you want to determine if there is compatibility. Compatibility is a broad word and it can refer to anything from shared interests,
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like you see that she's a skier and you also like to see ski, or location like you know you live in the same area. If you live across the world or even across the country from her, that disqualifies her because you really aren't that compatible. One last note,
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which I touched on earlier. Most relationships which start on Instagram have some sort of underlying in real life connection so this might mean you travel in the same broader social circle, or you've at least heard of each other in real life in this case. Instagram may just be a
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convenient forum for getting in touch and building a romantic connection. Keep this in mind when you are deciding who to pursue. It is going to be a lot easier if you have an IRL connection and even one or two mutual Instagram followers can do a lot for feeling like you are one degree separated
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versus a creepy stranger from the internet, and truly cold connections are very hard to establish, even if you have a perfect profile and message. Okay, so let's say you are confident, that you have qualified your crush, now it is time to open the conversation. You have two tasks: craft a DM
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she wants to respond to, and make sure she sees that DM. When writing your message, consider this: how enthusiastic are you when a door-to-door salesperson rings your doorbell? Probably not very enthusiastic. Think of yourself as a door-to-door sales person when you are crafting your DM. By
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default the woman you are messaging is probably going to be skeptical and maybe even defensive, so you want to immediately put her at ease that you are somebody that she wants to talk to. The right message is going to be specific to the woman and your connection with her but either
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way you want your message to at least be helpful or entertaining. Can you tell her something she genuinely wants to know? Like you saw she's skiing on her story and you know an amazing secret run at the mountain she's at. Can you make her smile? Maybe you have something clever to say to the
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last photo she posted. Successful DMs tend to have a "why now" element to them. Think about the skiing example. She is physically at the mountain which makes your message immediately relevant.
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Once you've crafted and sent the perfect DM, you want to increase your chances that she is going to see it. Most men are unaware of a potential hazard here. Unless you have a lot of mutual friends or she already follows you, it is highly likely that a cold DM is going to land in her spam or general
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inbox and she may not even see it. The easiest way to mitigate this problem is to leave a comment on her most recent photo, alerting her that you sent a DM. This could just say "hey check your DMs. I
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sent you a tip about Mountain XYZ with the ski emoji." Then cross your fingers that she wants to engage and will continue the conversation. As I've covered here dating on Instagram is not for everybody, but it can be an effective way to meet more women you are attracted to,
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if you are willing to put in the time and the work. If you have more questions about making Instagram an effective dating app, let me know in the comments and most important don't forget to tap that subscribe button so you are first to know when I upload new videos weekly.
Topics:Instagram datingDM a girldating coachdating appsInstagram profile tipscold DMsocial proofqualifying crushonline datingdating advice men
