Underwritten by Tristan James Jr.

According to Instagram’s official website, verification “is a tool to help people find the real accounts of public figures and brands, and it means we verified this is a notable and authentic Instagram account.”

It was never intended to become a status symbol in society, but the fact that the culture views it as such means that it carries much more weight than letting people know a particular account is authentic.

Not long ago, I asked a friend a question. “When you see a blue check on somebody’s profile, even if you have never heard of them before, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?” Without hesitation, my friend answered that the person “must be famous” or “at least the real deal at whatever they do.” And in this simple response lies the answer to why getting verified on Instagram matters.

I spent a great amount of time building relationships with journalists and today have the contacts of thousands of writers at the world’s biggest publications like Forbes, The New York Times, Success Magazine and more.

Throughout the early months of 2021, I focused heavily on getting myself featured in top publications instead of just focusing on clients. After countless emails, pitch rejections and pitch acceptances, I built a strong line up of news articles for myself to add to my Instagram verification application.

Before submitting, however, I made the decision to do something I don’t see many people talk about when it comes to getting verified on Instagram: I pursued getting verified on other platforms first so that I could show Instagram that I’ve already been recognized as a noteworthy person.

If you have a brand or business, people buy from you and want to work with you when they know you, like you or trust you. A blue verification badge gives you instant credibility with absolute strangers even when they don’t know exactly what you do.

You become looked at as an authority in whatever space you’re in and gain power that needs to be handled responsibly because people tend to take you at your word.

I spent most of the last few years building businesses, traveling as a speaker and making content on social media.

Every once in a while, small publications would reach out and write a story about me. Whenever I applied for verification, however, I always got rejected.

It was around this time that I started my PR agency and in the process of helping others land major news articles, I started doing the same for myself.

After getting verified on Facebook and TikTok, I applied for Instagram verification by submitting these social-media links along with three news articles.

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https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/388750