If you are a company focusing on image-based content, perhaps Instagram is your preferred social platform. You have come up with an amazing image and an attention-grabbing, hashtagged caption to post on your account. You share it and wait eagerly for likes and comments to pour in, just like always. You can certainly expect some degree of anxiety because you really don’t know whether it worked or not.
If you see likes and comments coming in after some time, perhaps it has worked. But this is not always the case. You may also witness a drop in your profile’s engagement from what it was a few days back. You have done everything to up your social game– created an appealing post, added a hashtag and tagged key people– but results seem to unfavorable. If this is what is happening, perhaps you only have ghost followers on your profile.
How harmful are ghost followers for your brand?
Ghost followers are Instagram accounts that follow your profile but hardly engage with your content. Neither do they like your posts nor comment on them. These fake profiles are commonly found on Instagram, especially in the accounts using far too many hashtags. While ghost followers may not be a matter of concern for people who simply wish to pump up their follower count, others may be harmed by such fake accounts.
For a few Instagram-savvy marketers, simply getting sky-rocketing fan numbers isn’t enough for meeting the business bottom-line. They also have to focus on the quality of followers they have. Ghost followers don’t really provide concrete results to marketers because these followers don’t engage with content, something that can bring down engagement rate drastically. This creates a vicious cycle called the “ghost followers snowball effect”, which means lesser number of people will see your posts as engagement rate drops.
Ghost followers can severely damage a brand’s online reputation and suck out money from marketers. The results obtained from having ghost followers are not real, and in most cases you don’t get results at all! Marketers pump in whopping sums of money on hiring influencers, only to realize their followers were phonies. That’s why brands should approach the right influencer for generating brand awareness.
These ghost followers need to be removed from your account in order to get the best results from your Instagram campaigns. You can start removing Instagram followers who have:
- No posts
- No followers
- No posts in the last 30-60 days
- No profile image
- Numerical username
You can scan through Instagram account and remove them yourself if you have a small follower number. Blocking them is the best way to filter your followers list on Instagram. There is also a range of applications available that can help you purge your followers list from fake Instagram users. These applications are extremely useful in blocking and unfollowing plenty of Instagram followers in no time.
Fake accounts may sound like a lucrative option to take a brand’s reputation a notch higher, but at what cost? Marketers trying to leverage the power of influencer marketing should understand the importance of having influencers with a genuine bunch of fans. Even if the number isn’t very high, it’s good to have them as long as they are real. A platform like Ifluenz can help you get the best out of your influencer marketing campaigns on Instagram. The platform bridges the gap between brands and influential Instagram users, who can get your target audience to check them out.