How To Retain Your Instagram Followers (Without Gaming the System)1

How To Retain Your Instagram Followers (Without Gaming the System)1

While this strategy may work for some businesses to grow their audience, those followers probably won’t turn into customers. Image Source: Buffer But don’t waste time feeling offended – a lot of these accounts that unfollow are actually bots (up to 24 million, actually!). Here are a few of the different types of accounts you might find: Follow for follow (‘F4F’) accounts. Rethink your hashtag game If you recognize that your followers are a mix of ‘F4F’ accounts, competitors, or people that you do not feel are a great fit for your business, it’s time to rethink your hashtag strategy. Here are some of the most overused hashtags to avoid using: #photography: 100,000,000+ #business: 20,000,000+ #inspiration: 73,000,000+ #fitness: 19,000,000+ #nofilter: 188,000,000+ Instead, engage with research on hashtag variations that still align with your business and post, but aren’t overused or targeted by bots. Reassess your content strategy If you’re attracting (and losing) ideal customers on Instagram, or if you’re only attracting ‘F4F’ bots, it’s time to rethink the type of content you’re sharing and your overall Instagram strategy. If people don’t see value in your content, they’ll unfollow you. Make sure that everything you post isn’t blatantly promotional. Replan your posting schedule If your posts are all over the place and don’t follow a theme, your followers may feel they’ve been misled. Just focus on creating quality content that turns your followers into leads and customers by posting consistently, using the right hashtags, and monitoring your followers.

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How To Retain Your Instagram Followers (Without Gaming the System)

As much as we may wish our Instagram follower growth showed an upward trend, it’s probably more like a rocky mountain landscape with peaks and valleys.

Fluctuations in your follower count are totally normal and often a result of the ‘follow/unfollow’ game that many accounts foolishly choose to play.

Here’s how it works: an individual follows you, waits until you follow back, then unfollows you. The unfollow can happen seconds, days, and sometimes weeks later.

While this strategy may work for some businesses to grow their audience, those followers probably won’t turn into customers.

Image Source: Buffer

But don’t waste time feeling offended – a lot of these accounts that unfollow are actually bots (up to 24 million, actually!). In other words, they’re fake accounts created in online black markets to interact with other users. They’re often used by businesses to increase their following, and Instagram is actively implementing methods to weed out these annoying accounts.

If you use Instagram to increase brand awareness, build a connection with your audience, get insights into their buying behavior, and ultimately generate leads, here’s how to deal with those annoying accounts that are more interested in playing the ‘follow/unfollow’ game.

1. Use an app to monitor your followers

Get a better understanding of your audience by using an app like Followers. The free version allows you to see your new followers, who has unfollowed you, which accounts you’re not following back, and which aren’t following you back.

Image Source: iTunes

By digging into the types of accounts that are following and unfollowing you, you’ll probably recognize some patterns.

Here are a few of the different types of accounts you might find:

  • Follow for follow (‘F4F’) accounts. These are usually pretty easy to spot. Accounts like this are distinguished by spammy type handles that include words like ‘free’, ‘F4F’ and ‘followers’.
  • Competitors. If the account has a similar product or service offering to you, they may be competitors. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they’re not unfollowing you!
  • Potential customers. You should be able to recognize when someone fits your ideal persona characteristics by browsing through their feed and profile.

2. Rethink your hashtag game

If you recognize that your followers are a mix of ‘F4F’ accounts, competitors, or people that you do not feel are a great fit for your business, it’s time to rethink your hashtag strategy. Your hashtags are what extend your reach beyond your followers and attract new eyes to your posts, so it’s important that they’re strategically researched and selected.

Avoid generic hashtags that are tagged on millions of photos. When people are using those hashtags every second, your post will instantly get lost in the weeds as new ones are published.

Here are some of the most overused hashtags to avoid using:

  • #photography: 100,000,000+
  • #business: 20,000,000+
  • #inspiration: 73,000,000+
  • #fitness: 19,000,000+
  • #nofilter: 188,000,000+

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