March 6, 2022

Why You're Losing Instagram Followers (and How to Stop It)

Why You're Losing Instagram Followers (and How to Stop It)

It can be heartbreaking to see people unfollow you on Instagram, especially when you have no idea why. You spend a day creating amazing content, using the right hashtags, and engaging with the audience - only to wake up the next morning with fewer followers than you had the night before.

It feels horrible, right?

If you keep asking yourself why this seems to happen to you all the time, you have come to the right place.

I’m going to share 5 reasons why you’re losing Instagram followers & how to stop it from happening. Let’s get started!

Being too promotional

Real connection is everything when it comes to social media. Followers want to have a strong bond with influencers they choose to follow. 

If you want people to spend time scrolling your account, reading your posts, and engaging in conversations, focus on trust, not promotion.

Think about yourself! If you're following an Instagram influencer and all they ever do is talk about how awesome a certain product is, push one ad after another, wouldn't you consider unfollowing?

I would! Even if influencers focus on product reviews, I want to see honest, unbiased assessments, not repetitive and salesy ones.

So, How to fix that?

You can still have a few promotions on Instagram from time to time. But if each and every piece of your content is centered around promotions, maybe it’s time to think about a new strategy.

Social media, especially Instagram, is a two-way communication platform. Meaning, you should engage people, offer interesting advice or innovative ideas, and listen to what your followers are trying to say.

That's something that is impossible to achieve through promotion-centered content.

Share your honest opinion about products, services, or goods. You can even ask your audience to share their experiences about the product at hand with you!

If you are promoting something, do a disclaimer and let people know that you are paid for that. This way, you will be able to build trust & connection between yourself and your followers.

Your audience has changed. You haven’t

Think about it, most of us start following an Instagram account because we’re eager about their content. But over the years, we either get bored by their monotonous photos and videos, or we find other content creators who produce better content.

This has nothing to do with the quality of your work. It’s just a matter of innovation, fresh ideas, and diversity.

So, How to Fix That?

If you understand the essence of the problem, you are already one step forward to solving it.

The only way to bounce back is to begin testing new types of content, collaborating with other influencers, and offering diversity.

Fortunately, there are amazing tools to help you with that task.

With the help of Mysocial’s Matchmaking feature, you can discover, chat and collaborate with other like-minded influencers like you.

The matchmaking feature is pretty much like Tinder but for influencers only. It is a place where you can find, connect and work with other content creators.

Using the Matchmaking feature, you will be able to know which influencer is trending on Instagram and instantly connect with one swipe.

It is a platform where win-to-win relations are established! Imagine, how much easier it is to grow your community by collaborating with like-minded people?

Mysocial App helps influencers connect with each other and collaborate more!

You Post Inconsistently 

Consistency is key when it comes to success on Instagram.

By posting only a few times a week, you tell Instagram's algorithm not to make your posts (very) visible in your follower’s feed.

Does that seem unfair?

Maybe you only want to post when you are in the right mood; or, you want to share only special thoughts and ideas... Well, you can! But you should know that it will cost you some followers!

So, How to Fix That?

I have an easy answer to this question - just post regularly.

I know that creating high-quality content daily is a difficult job. But, in most cases, you can schedule posts ahead of time.

Prepare content for at least 5 days ahead; make a separate day dedicated to that in your calendar. So, in case you aren’t in the mood for creating content on Monday, per se you already have content prepared and scheduled on Saturday!

Simple, yet effective!

Also, as being busy is another issue, feel free to share Instagram stories talking about how busy you are and what you are busy with. This kind of vlogging stories create a lot of interactions & positively impacts your profile.

You use the same hashtags all the Time

This reason might be a little surprising, but you can be losing followers because of that.

Instagram might put restrictions on your account if it notices that you use the same hashtags over and over again.

But why? The repetitive use of the same hashtags can be seen as spam or an attempt at it.

Obviously, Instagram wants the platform to be as engaging as possible, so they will put restrictions on any suspicious behavior!

So, How to Fix That?

To avoid getting yourself unwanted and annoying restrictions for the repetitive use of hashtags, it goes without saying that you should change your hashtags regularly.

Use hashtags that are relevant to the content that you’re posting, especially as Instagram is getting smarter by the day.

Your Instagram niche is in decline

With social media, trends change constantly.

You might be posting about stuff that people used to be interested in in the past. But the majority of people that were once passionately following the topic are no longer engaged... This results in a slow and incremental mass exodus of content followers!

This is the reason why content creators, even the most successful ones, begin to lose followers.

So, How to Fix That?

The best way to check whether your niche is in a decline or not is to check if the most popular influencers in your niche are also losing followers or their audience is not growing anymore.

Mysocial’s Matchmaking can help you find top influencers in your niche and check their follower dynamics.

If you find out that ‘declining niche’ is the reason why you’re losing followers, then you need to adapt & start diversifying subjects you post about. There is nothing you can do to reverse the process! The only method of action is to shift your account into a niche where you’re more likely to find new audience growth.

However, this doesn’t give you the green light to jump on topics and niches freely! It won’t be smooth to jump, for instance, from Yoga and Meditation niches to tech reviews and tech unboxing… This may drive more followers away!

Instead, see what other similar niches (to yours) are becoming more trendy & popular. That way, you stay on the radar of your existing followers & you’ll be gaining more!

To Sum

If you follow these simple recommendations, you’ll see your community sticking around for more!

You will be surprised by this, but sometimes losing followers can be beneficial. So, don’t panic. It is a great chance to inspect your strategy and reinvent yourself into a better version.

We learn from hard times; the important thing is to be patient enough and work hard to offer quality, engaging content. Best of luck!