Choosing the Best Targets for Optimal Growth

Selecting the right targets is fundamental to achieving consistent results with your action dashboard. A thoughtful targeting strategy—based on current platform behavior and proven practices—can significantly improve engagement outcomes while maintaining account stability.

To ensure your targeting aligns with Instagram’s latest standards and optimizes for both safety and performance, we recommend focusing on the following updated best practices.

🧭 How to Choose the Best Targets

✅ Step 1: Diversify Your Target Pool

Add a minimum of 50 distinct target sources to broaden your reach and avoid over-concentration. A diverse pool increases your chances of connecting with various audience segments.

✅ Step 2: Prioritize Stable, Recommended Methods

Focus your efforts on a combination of high-performance targeting types that have shown strong platform compatibility and fewer engagement limits:

Posts by Keyword
Posts by Keyword (Reels)
Hashtags
Places (Note: Place-based targets currently have lower limits)
Explore
Self Timeline

Using a mix of these targeting sources helps distribute engagement evenly and supports a more sustainable strategy.

✅ Step 3: Select High-Quality Targets Based on Content Signals

When choosing targets via hashtags and keywords, focus on those that demonstrate:

Consistent content volume — Frequently used hashtags or trending keywords signal active communities
Topical alignment — Ensure the keyword or hashtag is closely related to your niche or industry
Engagement-rich posts — Prioritize content that consistently generates likes, comments, or shares
Audience fit — Consider whether the content using the keyword/hashtag attracts the type of users you're aiming to reach

This content-driven targeting approach allows you to connect with relevant, active users based on shared interests and behaviors, while avoiding reliance on direct follower or liker-based signals.

👁️‍🗨️ Optimizing Story Viewing & Liking Actions

To maintain consistent engagement while aligning with Instagram’s latest behavioral standards, it's recommended to prioritize content-based targeting methods (such as Hashtags, Explore, Posts by Keyword, and Places) over user-based methods like post likers or followers.

Use content-focused sources for both story viewing and liking actions. These approaches reduce detection risk and have shown more stable performance across campaigns.
The target audience ranges from 10,000 to 300,000 or more and is generally effective when identified via relevant hashtags or keyword trends.
To optimize workflow and avoid duplication, maintain separate target lists for story viewing and for liking actions. This ensures better distribution of engagement and minimizes redundant targeting.

By leveraging content-based signals rather than engagement-based scraping, you create a safer and more strategic engagement funnel that aligns with current platform expectations.

Target Source Explained

✅ Keyword: Engages with posts containing specific keywords in the caption or content.
✅ Keyword (Reels): Targets reels where the description includes selected keywords.
✅ #Hashtags: Finds users who include a specific hashtag in their posts.
✅ Places: Engages with users who check in at a location via a geotag.
✅ Explore: Engages with posts appearing on the Explore page.
✅ Followers: Engages with anyone who follows your selected target.
✅ Following: Targets users followed by your selected target.
✅ Post (Likers): Connects with users who like posts from your target.
✅ Self Timeline: Targets users who engage with posts on your own profile.
⚠️ User ID’s: This is a pro feature and is not recommended for regular users.

Using User IDs – Important Guidelines

If you plan to use User IDs, please note the following:

✅ User IDs are NOT usernames. Never enter a username as a User ID.

✅ User IDs are unique, just like usernames. Your original Instagram profile ID (before choosing a username) is your User ID.

✅ To find a User ID, you can use this tool. (Note: This is a third-party tool, and not affiliated with Wolf Growth.)

Optimizing with the Explore Targeting Method

For better engagement, use the "Default Page" target under the Explore method.

💡 The default Explore feed on Instagram is personalized based on your interests, making it an ideal audience for engagement.

🚀 Choosing Explore as your primary target saves time by automatically selecting and following relevant IG accounts.

🔍 Finding the Right Instagram Influencers – For Advanced Users

💡 AI-Powered Targeting (Pro Feature)

For experienced users looking to streamline influencer targeting, AI-suggested verified targets can offer enhanced performance. These targets have shown to:

Increase story detection speed
Boost engagement rates such as likes and views
Improve targeting efficiency with machine-learned account selection

To use this feature, prefix your target with s: — for example:

s:target_username

⚠️ Note: AI-powered targets are intended for users with advanced experience or those using enhanced account setups (e.g., high trust scores or legacy verified accounts). This method is not recommended for casual or entry-level users.

Saving Your Targets – Prevent Accidental Deletion

To avoid losing your targeting data, always save it in an Excel sheet, Word document, or Notepad.

Steps to Save Your Targets:

1️⃣ Click "View Targets" in your dashboard.

2️⃣ Select all of your targets and copy them.

3️⃣ Paste the copied targets into Notepad (Use Ctrl + V or right-click and select Paste).

Keeping a backup ensures you never lose your optimized target list! 🔒