You’re gaining a steady 1k followers per day on Instagram, then all of a sudden you’re losing 25+ per day, what is the reason for this and how can you avoid it?
There are many reasons why you might be losing Instagram followers, especially after gaining daily followers for a significant amount of time.
If you find yourself losing followers out of nowhere, one thing’s for sure;
You have done something to upset the algorithm.
You may even be shadowbanned which simply means your posts aren’t showing up to your audience anymore.
There are also other reasons that would impact your follower list to decline.
Lets discuss all of the possible reasons below and ways you can fix it.
Reason #1 – You’ve Been Shadowbanned
A shadowban simply means that your posts don’t show up to your audience anymore, nor do they show up in hashtags.
An easy way to know if you’ve been s-banned is to search up a hashtag you’ve used, hit the recent button, and see if your post shows up.
If it doesn’t, you’ve been s-banned.
A shadowban lasts 14 day which is an incredibly long time if you’re an avid social media user.
What you can do during this time is continue creating good quality content, don’t let it get you down and quit.
The Solution
You usually get shadowbanned for mimicking bot-like behavior.
You may be using the same hashtags on each post, following others and then unfollowing them days later, following too many people every day, using bots, spamming DMs, etc.
A shadowban is easily avoidable – simply use Instagram the way it’s suppose to be used.
Creating good quality content, engaging with your audience, the community, and growing your following naturally.
People still use the follow and unfollow approach, but you can easily get shadowbanned as it makes you look like a bot.
I put together 9 ways to get IG followers WITHOUT following everyone.
Reason #2 – You’re Not Posting Enough
If you’re an avid Instagram user and have racked up a loyal following, your audience are use to you posting on a consistent basis.
If you’ve gone from posting every day, to every week, to every month, that’s going to have a huge impact on your follower count.
It’s been proven that the more consistent you are, the more exposure you get to your current audience and new users, and the more followers you will get.
Going from a more frequent posting schedule to only posting every couple of weeks is going to put a dent in your follower count.
The Solution
Try and post more often.
Set a schedule that you can stick to, even if it’s only posting 3 – 5x a week.
Posting once a week is not going to get you a considerable amount of new followers, especially if you don’t have much to begin with.
Personally I post almost every single day, whether that be on my feed or story, I don’t want people to forget about me and unfollowing my account.
Reason #3 – Your Posts Are too Similar or too Different
What are you trying to show off to your audience?
You can take your IG account from a 2 to an 8 just by using a niche and establishing yourself as an authority figure.
Posting anything and everything is not going to get you new followers.
That doesn’t mean you only have to stick to posting one thing, but you need to have that “main point” that you want your Instagram to be about.
For example: I post workout videos and that’s what my IG is known for. However, I sprinkle in pictures of me going out on a hike or other things I think my audience will like.
I enjoy landscape photography, so adding a hiking picture is going to keep things different and make people think “what’s next”.
The Solution
Think about a niche that you want to be known for.
For me it’s throwing around weights in the gym, I’m known for being quite strong and consistent in the gym.
But your audience wants to know you personally, so sprinkle in other posts that make you a human being.
I can’t stand going on a page and seeing only weightlifting posts. I find that really boring and lacks substance.
Switch it up every now and then.
Reason #4 – You’re Being too Educational
It’s okay to educate, because it’s value, but repetitive educational posts is just boring.
The best-performing posts are inspirational or funny.
If you’re only posting informative content, chances are that your audience is getting bored and don’t find any value in your content.
It comes back to #3 again, you should mix it up every now and then.
People get bored easily.
The Solution
There are already enough educators on Instagram.
Even though I’m a weightlifter and post workouts, I don’t try to educate people.
There are enough know-it-alls on the internet. I don’t want to be known for teaching people about building muscle or anything like that.
I want to be known for being that guy that goes hard in the gym.
I get incredible engagement on my posts because I don’t tell people how to do something or why they should do it.
I just post my video with a little caption, and watch the likes come in.
Reason #5 – You’re Selling too Often
You might be too promotional and trying to sell people on your awesome MLM program.
No one likes to be sold to, even if we need the product and know it can benefit our lives, we still don’t want to hand over our money.
Especially to an overly promotional, annoying salesman.
If you’re selling in every post, every other post, or on the regular, chances are you’re not providing enough content and only annoying your followers more than anything.
This will cause them to unfollow you and never look back.
The Solution
Follow the 80/20 rule if you’re trying to promote something, whether it’s free or not.
This rule works well across the board, it’s basic but it works without fail.
The 80/20 rule means 80% of your posts should be educational, inspirational, or funny.
The other 20% can be promotional.
Reason #6 – Many of Your Followers Have Fake Accounts
It’s a popular thing for other accounts to follow you in the hopes that you follow them back.
However, a lot of these accounts are run by bots.
They are fake and their only intentions are to spam everyone they follow with DM messages trying to sell them something.
Why people still do this in 2021 when the average person is tech savvy is beyond me.
People don’t fall for these scams anymore so I think creating bots is a waste of time.
But that’s just me.
The Solution
There really isn’t a solution, unless of course, you bought bots.
Instagram frequently goes on a purge and bans many fake accounts.
If the majority of your followers are bots or fakes, chances are that you will lose a lot of followers as a result.
That’s why you should never purchase followers in the first place.
Not only does it make you look spammy, but very unprofessional and super hard to get legit followers.
Are You Losing Followers After Posting?
If you find that you’re losing followers after you post, chances are that your audience doesn’t really like your content anymore.
Maybe you’re not posting things that your audience followed you for in the first place.
Maybe you were posting workout videos for 10 days in a row, and now your last 10 posts have been about flowers.
That was exaggerated on purpose so you get my point.
Are You Losing More Followers Than You’re Gaining?
It’s 100% okay to lose followers.
In fact the more your account grows, the more people will unfollow you.
It’s just the nature of the game.
But don’t worry, as long as you’re gaining more followers than you are losing, your account is still growing.
Accounts that are in the millions lose over 1000 followers a day, but they gain 5000+, so they’re actually still growing.
Are You Losing Followers Quickly?
Watching your follower-count decline is a demotivating thing.
If you’re losing followers quickly, you probably had a lot of bot accounts following you.
Sometimes Instagram goes on a purge to remove these accounts, thus decreasing your follower number.
Are You Losing Followers Slowly?
If you’re slowly losing more followers over time than you are gaining, chances are your content is lacking or you’re doing something to annoy your followers.
Again, it can be a number of things.
Make sure your using the solutions I outline in #2 to #6.
As long as you read all the reasons and fixed the problem, chances are you can start gaining followers again.
Can You Gain Your Followers Back?
I say ignore the things you can’t control and work on the things you can.
For example: If you’ve been shadowbanned, you can’t stop people from unfollowing you, but you can make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future.
Don’t do things that’ll upset the algorithm.
This includes using autoposting apps, bots, too many hashtags (I recommended 15 – 20), using the same hashtags, spamming DMs, spamming posts, writing generic comments, etc.
How Do I Know If I’ve Been Shadowbanned?
When you’ve been shadowbanned you will not receive any official warning, it’s to stop spammers from knowing that they are banned.
To know if you’ve been hit with the almighty ban hammer, you should create a new post with a hashtag, then check the hashtags posts to see if yours pops up.
Remember to click on the recent tab.
If your post doesn’t show, you have more than likely been s-banned.
And there’s nothing you can do about it for the next 14 days.
Although nobody knows for sure how long a shadowban lasts for, 14 days is what most people agree on.
Provide Your Audience With Good Quality Content and You Can’t Go Wrong
It sucks watching your follower count go down, but that’s inevitable when you start to grow.
As long as you are gaining more followers than you’re losing, you are on the right track and there’s nothing to worry about.
However, if you are losing a significant amount of followers all of a sudden, you should check to see if you are shadowbanned.
If not, go over the other reasons and fix them with the solutions I provided.
And that’s a wrap.
PS: You should check out this article if you want to grow your Instagram account naturally.
Are you losing followers all of a sudden? Do you know why? Tell us in the comments below.
Brandon
My name is Brandon and this is my website. I'm just a normal guy that had dreams, dreams that would keep me up at night because I wanted them so badly. Now I'm living my dreams of being an influencer and making a good living doing so. Broke Influencers is another of my creations where I teach people how to get rich being an online influencer, or die trying. There is no in between.