Social media is a tough cookie to decode whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or TikTok.
You’re posting consistently, your posts are visually appealing, you post during optimal time, you’re using the right hashtags, and you’re followers are not growing and you actually end up losing a few.
Randomly losing followers is quite common especially on Instagram.
But why?
Personally, I gain followers every day too but not only is my number not growing, it’s seems to be decreasing.
There’s actually a HUGE benefit in losing followers as the ones you you lose weren’t probably interested in you, your product or your service.
Instagram Algorithm favours accounts with high engagement levels which means when they detect that your followers are engaged by interacting with you through likes, comments and DMs your engagement levels increase.
If you have a bunch of followers lingering around for no reason, this decreases your page engagement. And a decrease in engagement means a decrease in reach and overall page credibility.
And that’s not where you want your social accounts to be. Right?
Anyway, here’s are some reasons why you’re losing followers everyday:
You’re doing the Follow and Unfollow Strategy
Come on, let’s face it, *almost* everyone who is trying to grow their follower count is doing this. Basically, people will follow you in hopes of you following them back so that they then eventually unfollow you. Sounds familiar?
Some like your recent posts and then leave a comment and then they’re gone.
It’s just like going on a first date with someone, then at the end of the night they’ll say they’ll give you a call but never really call you back.
Please don’t be that guy.
So how can you fix this? Use social media responsibly and aim to develop and cultivate genuine relationships in every aspect of your strategy.
Create great content, use niche specific hashtags and stop doing the follow/unfollow strategy.
You think your content is great, but your followers think otherwise
I’ve seen this in a lot of my clients’ accounts. Not to be harsh or a critic but we’re not all blessed with graphic design skills. Background overpowering the text in the front, too many elements in one image, text too small to read, image size isn’t optimised for the specific social media network, these are just some of the common things I’ve seen that most entrepreneurs do.
If you can, hire a graphic designer or a social media manager as this is where they are skilled at. It is a great investment and they *might* do this task faster than you. You can then spend your precious time building the other aspects of your brand or business. This extra time could help you land more customers and in turn you will gain more budget to allocate to your social media marketing strategies.
Woot woot!
You’re not acting like a *REAL* person
Here’s another common mistake that most businesses do on social media. They product great content, schedule the posts in advance and that’s it.
If you’re someone who uses social media apps every day, let me ask, how many hours a day are on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or Pinterest? One? Two? Total it out and you might be shocked.
Some clients want to hire me to be their Social Media Manager for only 5 hours a week to manager ALL of their accounts and then expects to see fast growth.
Content creation takes time. Being socially active in one platform takes time. Scheduling posts still takes time. Responding to comments takes time.
If you’re planning to hire a Social Media Manager, please give them at least 15 hours if you’re on every social platform.
Let’s do some simple addition. 15 minutes twice a day for each social media channel, that’s 30 minutes a day. If you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok, that’s already 2 hours a day for being active only.
And to be honest, 15 minutes is too little time to spend on any app. As someone who is on social media all the time, my daily average on Instagram is 1 hour and 7 minutes and that’s just me using my personal account.
Instagram is deleting fake and dormant accounts
If you’ve bought followers, this is one of the main reason why your followers are decreasing at a faster rate.
Sure a page with 10,000 followers look attractive but when you look at their post, they only have 10-20 likes on average.
This is another task that your Social Media Manager can do for you, delete your fake and dormant followers so your engagement will increase and your posts will appear in your target audience who follows you.
Want to stop losing followers on social media? I help entrepreneurs and companies get the most out of their social media strategy.
I can also help you automate your social media marketing from writing captions, designing graphics and publishing content that your audience would love.
Send me an email at tuanrjlyn@gmail.com and let’s grow your social accounts the right way!