Social media marketing is a tricky business – and one American immigrant to Israel has innovated a solution. 

Boston-area native Zach Kessin first thought of the concept for his new start-up, SquareTarget, several weeks ago.

“Instagram is very seductive when it comes to ‘likes’,” Kessin stated, in an exclusive interview with Arutz Sheva Friday.

“I can get 50-70 likes on a picture almost every day, but what I was unsure about was: what value did those likes have? How many of them were from people who were really interested in what I was doing and how many of them were just randomly liking pictures?”

Kessin, a tech genius who has specialized in code-language Erlang and has launched start-ups before, used his computational skills to look at the problem. 

“I decided that I could solve these problems with math,” he said. “By looking at issues like what else the people who liked my image ‘liked,’ or what hashtags they themselves used, I could start to zoom in on some real numbers.”

The Ariel-based start-up creates a customized report to show users what kind of attention they’re attracting – and if the engagement they receive is real or generated by any number of “social media bots” designed to spam users. 

It could be a boon for public relations workers and business owners alike, he explained, as the tool helps hone marketing strategies so the photos reach the right audience.  

“I think that people who are using Instagram for real marketing and brand building efforts would find this useful,” Kessin said.