It is but obvious that all Instagram content creators, without any exception whatsoever, would love to see their Instagram followers heading northwards at an unabated pace. After all, there is no rocket science as far as social media monetization goes. Your social media revenue and income generation prospect is always directly propionate to your number of active followers. The more active followers you have, greater is the chance of earning good monthly revenue. Therefore, when content creators suddenly see a major drop in their Instagram followers, they have every reason to feel a sense of uneasiness. Many may even panic if the is drop is unduly high.
If you as a budding or promising content creator is currently enduring this misery then this blog post deserves every bit of your attention. While there is certainly no quick fix or remedy to this problem, this article will lend much needed clarity about which factors might have caused this problem. More importantly, you will come to know about the do ‘s and the don’ts that will prevent this problem from reoccurring in the future.
Top reasons for losing Instagram Followers
Let us first run through the factors that are responsible for putting you into this predicament in the first place.
Inconsistent posting:
Inconsistency is a major relationship breakerand social media followers are no exceptions. Your random posting without any cohesive content strategy in place can easily put off your followers, including those followers who genuinely want to engage with your content. It mainly causes many negative perceptions, from your followers not taking you seriously as an industry leader or influencer to low engagement rate. As a result, many might choose to desert you altogether.
Low content quality:
If your content is simply not resonating with your followers due to poor content quality or substandard posts then don’t expect any loyalty from them. More often than not they will unfollow you. Social media is a highly competitive space and unless you are ready to work hard on your content, you’re prospect of succeeding is very minimal.
Fake followers:
You should be least surprised about losing substantial chunk of followers if in the past you had violated Instagram guidelines by accumulating too many fake or bot followers. You can very well choose to act innocent but this is unlikely to stop your account being targeted by Instagram’s clean up drive exercise, which is precisely aimed at getting rid of these bot followers.
However, if you still feel you’re innocent then there is a simple method to file your grievances with Instagram.
Excessive promotional posts:
Excessively promotional posts do not offer any intrinsic value to followers, while it tries to over-promote products and services that they are least interested in. Content creators and brands that are culpable of following this poor practice will end up dismaying their followers, most of whom will leave them for good.
Competition impact:
Many of your Instagram followers may choose to unfollow you and instead follow your competitors. While this is certainly disheartening and demotivating but if your content quality is simply not matching up with your competitors then your followers will be more than happy to leave you.
Solutions for regaining and retaining Instagram followers
As mentioned above, there is no quick fix or solution for this problem. However, over the time if you replace your poor social media practices with good ones then not only your existing followers on Instagram will stay loyal but even new ones will keep joining you.
Below we’ve briefly discussed all these good social media practices.
Make a proper content strategy:
Being a highly competitive landscape, achieving success on Instagram is plausible only if you have a clear and well-organized content strategy. This will partially help in addressing the low content quality problem, ensuring that you churn out content that emotionally resonates with your audience.
What really goes into making a good content strategy is addressing some of the key questions and exploring key areas, which are as follows:
- Exploring the demographics of your target audience (age, gender, interests & behavior)
- What are some of the main pain-points or values you need to offer to your Instagram followers.
- Studying your competitors’ Instagram page.
- How do you want your brand to be perceived?
- The overall visual style and feel of your content (e.g. color palettes, fonts & typography).
- Setting clear goals as to whether you want to increase your engagement (likes, comments & shares) or drive conversion (traffic, leads & sales).
Consistently create high-quality content:
Today if you want to create a buzz on Instagram or any social media platform for that matter then regularly churning high-quality content is absolutely mandatory. Depending on the niche you are targeting and the competition in your niche, you may have to post every alternate day or at least 2-3 posts every week. To achieve this goal, the importance of having a proper content strategy – as has been discussed above – cannot be more overstated.
Above all, it will also help in properly scheduling your content, which we have duly covered in the next point.
Create a proper content schedule:
A proper content schedule helps in streamlining and organizing your entire content, with you and your team having ample clarity on several important things, like what will be posted on which day, exactly how many posts will be posted per week and types of content that is being published. This clarity and discipline are more likely to increase your engagement rate, while helping you to curb and overcome your detrimental habit of random and impulsive posting, which as hinted above could be one of the reasons that may have caused your Instagram account to lose followers.
Popular social media scheduling tools
Use paid tools:
The advantage of using paid tools – be it editing, audio or AI driven tools – is that it helps your content to stand out amid maddening competition. It helps in refining the quality of your content and also provides a professionally attractive layer to it, seizing the attention of Instagram users.
While there are ample of free tools out there, paid tools offer extra features and functionalities. Instagram is a visual platform where these extra features will be more than handy to provide your reels and images the aesthetical impact that will not only help in attracting new followers but also ensure that your Instagram page does not lose substantial followers in the future.
Popular editing tools for Instagram Reels and Videos
Be patient and perseverant:
Once content creators fully realize that winning on Instagram is a long-term game, they might get eventually detached with the idea of instant result or success. This will motivate them to focus on producing high-quality content without worrying too much about results. When you approach any task or goal under the sun with such positive approach, you’re more likely to achieve the desirable result in the long run. This expectedly translates into not only your Instagram page attracting new followers but even turning your once dormant followers into active followers. But what would be the real icing on the cake is that your page is unlikely to ever lose followers, not at least at a scale that will make you lose your sleep.
Don’t violate Instagram guidelines:
One of the surest ways to make sure that your Instagram followers never unfollow your page is to always remain in the good books of Instagram. While there is never guarantee that your followers’ will always remain loyal, but their prospect of remaining loyal is always more if you steadfastly follow all the guidelines. Many may not be aware that Instagram’s penalty can secretly penalize your account, which is often referred as Shadowban and is often imposed due to poor content quality and your account’s spammy activities. Shadowban means that your content’s visibility is reduced significantly without your knowledge. This could not only hurt your page or account’s ability in attracting new follower but even your existing followers might disengage and unfollow due to low engagement.
Therefore, make sure to stay away from spammy as well as unethical activities and diligently follow all the guidelines.
Spammy activities that can cause shadowban or penalty
- Use same and irrelevant hashtags excessively
- Using bots & automation tools
- Buying likes & followers
- Sending mass messages
- Posting offensive content
Conclusion:
Following good social media practices with unwavering commitment is likely to invariably ensure that your Instagram page never loses followers at a mass scale. In the end, choosing good or poor social media practices is all about choice. Some content creators or brands may intentionally choose bad or unethical practices for immediate gains but long-term consequences are more likely to purge these gains. Therefore, staying away from dubious and substandard practices and taking the long arduous road is more likely to make sure that your Instagram followers never turn their back against you.