Targeting is the single most important setting in Magnet Pro. The AI grows your account by engaging with people who already follow accounts that look like the customer you actually want - so the better your targeting, the better the followers you get back. This guide walks through exactly how to configure it.

1. What targeting actually is

Magnet Pro's targeting is a description of your ideal follower. Not a list of 30 accounts you have to research and pick yourself - the AI builds the audience for you from the inputs you give it. The dashboard takes:

Niche: a short text description of your industry or audience (e.g. "St. Louis fitness coaches", "Phoenix real estate buyers", "men 25-35 interested in luxury watches").

Target accounts: a handful of competitor or adjacent Instagram handles whose followers match your ideal customer. The AI uses these as seed data, then expands from there - it does NOT only engage with those exact accounts' followers.

Demographics: gender filter, follower-count range (so you do not engage with bots or mega-accounts that won't follow back), language, and location radius if applicable.

Engagement type: which actions (story views, profile visits, follows, welcome DMs) and at what daily volume.

2. Picking your seed accounts

You only need 3-7 good seed accounts - not 30. Quality beats quantity. The right seeds are:

Direct competitors - other businesses or creators selling something similar to what you sell.

Adjacent accounts - accounts whose audience overlaps with yours but isn't identical (e.g. if you sell home gym equipment, account #1 might be a gym influencer, account #2 might be a powerlifting brand, account #3 might be a popular fitness podcast).

Local accounts - if your business is location-based, include 1-2 local accounts so the geo signal is strong.

Avoid: massive accounts with 1M+ followers (their audience is too broad), accounts with bot followers, and accounts in completely unrelated niches (will dilute your targeting).

3. Setting your demographics

The follower-count range matters more than people realize. The default we recommend: 200 to 50,000 followers. Below 200 you hit a lot of brand-new or inactive accounts. Above 50,000 your follow-back rate plummets because those accounts are flooded with notifications.

For gender, only filter if your product is genuinely gender-specific (men's grooming, dating-for-men, women's fashion). For most businesses, leaving it open generates more total leads.

For language, default to your primary language. For multi-language markets, our growth manager will set up separate target lists per language.

4. Engagement type and volume

Magnet Pro runs four action types: story views, profile visits, follows, and welcome DMs. The Pro plan caps daily volume at human-rate-limit levels; Turbo runs at the high end of those limits. You don't need to micro-manage these - the dedicated US-based growth manager assigned to your account will tune them based on what your account responds to in the first 10 days.

5. The 10-day warmup

The first 10 days of any new Magnet Pro account run at reduced volume so Instagram's algorithm sees your activity ramp gradually instead of spike. During warmup, follower growth is slower than steady-state. This is intentional and protects your account.

6. Common targeting mistakes

Too broad: "Instagram users" is not a niche. "Fitness" is barely a niche. "Yoga teachers in Austin" is a niche.

Too narrow: if your seed list has only 2 accounts and they have 5,000 followers each, the AI runs out of relevant people to engage with within a couple of weeks. Aim for seeds whose combined audience is 50,000+.

Targeting your existing audience: don't use your own account or your own followers as seeds - you're trying to reach NEW people, not engage the ones you already have.

Picking competitors who buy followers: if a competitor has 100K followers but only gets 50 likes per post, their audience is fake. Engaging with that audience wastes your daily volume on bot accounts. Check engagement rate before adding any seed.

7. Iterating after launch

By day 14 you'll have enough data to see if the targeting is working. The signal: follow-back rate. Healthy is 8-20%. Below 4% means the targeting is off (audience is too broad, too disinterested, or full of bots). The dashboard shows this in real time.

If follow-back rate is low, adjust: tighten the niche description, swap out underperforming seed accounts, narrow the follower-count range. Your growth manager does this automatically if you don't want to touch settings yourself.

Try Magnet Pro for $1

The fastest way to see how good targeting feels in practice is the 5-day trial. Start the $1 trial here - configure your targeting in 10 minutes and watch the dashboard fill with real, targeted engagement within 24 hours. The first 5 days cost $1; if it's working, Pro is $299/mo and Turbo is $399/mo. If it's not, cancel before day 5 and pay nothing more.