Who is GreyHatNik?
I’m Grey Hat Nik, the founder of Grey Hat Marketing, InstaInfantry and the author of this guide/e-book. I’m a MarTech developer and automation specialist that’s been practicing various forms of black hat marketing since 2015. I’ve been successfully harnessing the power of social media since I was 12 years old, having organically grown an aggregate audience of 400,000 across several accounts. It was in 2015 that I lost it all in a massive IP ban as a result of one bad advert. Tragic, I must say but it ultimately opened the door to less conventional forms of SMM that I utilize to this day. I published the full back story of how I got into black hat marketing in my Origins blog post if you want further details on my descent into the underbelly of marketing.
I call myself a Grey Hat Marketer because unlike a Black Hat one, I don’t operate with any malicious intent towards the audience I’m trying to persuade as the term usually paints it. In most instances, my intention is that of any normal marketer which is to persuade my target audience to execute my desired action.
The only reason I’m labeled as a grey/black hat is because I don’t operate by the rules of the platforms on which I run my activities. All of the tactics that you’re about to read, all of my methodology is heavily frowned upon by social media platforms as a whole. Sure, they claim it's about protecting user experience but what they’re truly scared of is having their one true source of revenue become compromised. You can execute the exact same strategies manually with the use of human labor and Meta won’t blink an eye. However, as soon as automation is introduced into the equation, their perspective suddenly changes.
I transitioned into being a grey hat marketer because I’ve realized that the landscape had changed drastically from when I first accumulated my massive audience. I knew all the tricks, all the gimmicks, everything one would need to know behind amassing a large following. After all, I had already done it once. But because of the ever-increasing reliance on the pay-to-play model, the colossal drops in hashtag reach and the continuous changes construed as “enhancing user experience” (removal of a chronological feed; concealment of likes making it impossible to gauge an account’s true engagement rate, etc.), it was practically impossible for me to reach the same heights again after losing my 400k network.
That’s why I don’t view my form of marketing as being “bad”. I view black hat tactics as being the only true leverage we have left. Are they an ideal form of marketing? Definitely not. But they do bring a considerable amount of leverage back to small business as a whole. Black hat social media tactics have been around for ages but we’re only really seeing it explode on a grander scale now due to the practices of the social platforms who’ve already “made it”. They have captured their market share and are now trying to capitalize on it to the fullest extent, leaving no room for other smaller players in the market.
That is why I’ve dedicated myself to finding the unorthodox means of growth and not being utterly reliant on social media algorithms to generate leads for my clients. It’s not an easy path but I can now rest easier not having to pray to the engagement gods whenever I post something new. I know I’ll get my exposure one way or another. It’s really just a matter of which method to use.
With the introduction finally out of the way, let’s delve into our first section of the documentation: Philosophy and Fundamentals!
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