An Instagram follower is a user who follows your account and is able to see, like, and comment on any photo you post. They play an important role in building your brand identity. The more amazing your posts are the better response you will get from your audience. However, what if you suddenly lose a number of your Instagram followers?
Here’s our top 8 reasons why:
The Unfollow/Follow Process
A common set-up in Instagram, someone follows you hoping that you’ll follow them back. And when you don’t, they will eventually unfollow you. Kinda tricky, but that’s how others are using it. Following and unfollowing is probably the easiest tactic to grow and keep your followers. It can be tedious, but you can always hire a growth company that uses humans to target the followers you want such as Ampfluence to do it for you.
Crack Down on Spam Accounts
There are instances that you are followed by a lot of spam accounts. So when they are cracked down, your followers will also drop down. However, this gives you a better engagement rate. This is not a bad thing really. Think of it as spring cleaning and improving your IG account. Who wants a page full of fake followers? The whole point is to be seen and be out there and it’s not going to happen if your account is full of spam accounts. Let them go so you can have a better idea of your account performance and get accurate data that helps you succeed.
Loss of Interest
You can never predict the mindset of a person. You may like a hair color today then after a few months, you’ll change it to what’s trendy again. There are many possible reasons that your followers might lose interest in your Instagram account. One important thing is to share a better content that captures your audience. There may be some content that shy away your followers such as gory photos, overly sexual photos, scary photos, and others. Just remember that not everyone likes the same kind of content.
Another possible reason that they lose interest is when people see you post random and unexpected posts that is not clearly part of your brand personality. They might think that they have followed a wrong account, which leads to the reason why many businesses loses Instagram followers fast. Our advice, you may be tempted to post your tasty breakfast meal, but think first if this is relevant to the purpose of your Instagram account.
Also, Instagram is a community and it must be nurtured for your followers to grow. If you don’t reply to to people who comment on your content, then they might feel left out and eventually lose interest in your account.
Excess Posting
If you posts too many photos, people might get overwhelmed with the number of photos coming from you. So, as a general rule, you should stick to posting only 1 or 2 photos a day. This keeps people interested in your feed without flooding it. Also make sure that you space out your posts so that you do not upload multiple photos to Instagram at the same time.
Quality Over Quantity
What is the use of having many bad quality Instagram posts, or having a lot of followers though most of them are spam accounts or not your target audience. A good quality Instagram account is attentive to details. Any follower would want a great content from an Instagram account they follows. If they like what they see, they’ll be loyal. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll move on to the next. Here are some ways on how to focus on quality over quantity on your Instagram account:
- Get followers that are targeted towards your content and not those followers that you gained from buying Instagram followers or participating in any follow exchanges or follow for follow hashtags.
- Try mixing up your photos a bit and take them in different locations with different subjects. Make a sufficient variety in your posts.
- Make your post or the photos relevant.
- Use hashtags that are short & simple, relevant, and that makes sense. The more hashtags you have, the less relevant the post seems.
- Keep things fresh and new and limit re-posts.
Not Following Through with Leads
Instagram is a powerful lead-generating tool. That’s why a lot of small businesses use it as a platform. Sad to say, they don’t understand how to turn followers into customers. They think that it will pay off because “social media works”. In the process, they are losing Instagram followers and potential customers too.
You cannot limit these people in following just your account. You can nurture it by turning them into leads through emails or making it more personal. Engaging with your followers or customer as a business, both on and off Instagram which in turn will help you stop losing Instagram followers
Website Link in Bio
Having a website link in your bio will help your followers identify who you are. When people are viewing your content, they want to know more on who’s providing the content. But Instagram prohibits in directly linking your page to your post. So they have to click on your bio to know who you are. They need to go further, so your website is the next logical step.
Low Quality Images / Posts
If you do not post quality images then people may choose to unfollow because they would rather see better Instagram photos in their feed. People on Instagram want to be inspired whether it be a new design or style idea, a travel destination, a cause, or something that would make them laugh. A low quality photo, whatever it may be; blurry, pixelated, poorly lit or a grainy can demonstrate that you don’t care which leads to losing a follower.
Here are some a good quality photo tips:
- Take pictures or videos with a high-quality camera or smartphone
- Pay attention to the lighting direction.
- Take the photo from different angles and choose the best one.
- Pay attention to composition, avoid clutter… less is more.
- Choose a color palette, an Instagram account will stand out more if photos have similar color schemes or theme.
Conclusion
These are the possible reasons that your followers number may be decreasing. As you want to increase your Instagram followers, it still more important to have real and genuine connections with your current followers.
2 Responses
Very informative and useful article. Learned a lot. Thank you.
What an interesting article! I’ve learnt lots of things here.