LOSING FOLLOWERS
One of the Social Media growth questions I receive often is in regards to losing followers and why.
While it may seem counter-productive to your growth strategy, getting unfollowed isn’t always a bad thing.
There are a few reasons why your follower count may take a dip:
Bot Account Deletion: Every now and then, Instagram will do a mass cleanup of Bot/Spam accounts, which will show as a follower loss in your Insights.
Loss of Interest: As you become more clear about your message and consistent with posting content, some of your followers may realize that they're not interested. And you know what? That’s okay! After all, you want those who want what you have to offer; that’s where the engagement is.
The Value isn’t “Value-ing”: This is a hard but necessary truth to face. Sometimes, we aren’t providing the value that our audience expects from us. (i.e. Your bio says “Social Media Coach” but most of your posts are about your cat 😬) With that comes a loss of interest and ultimately a loss in followers. Now if you are posting niche-related content, one of the key ways to measure its effectiveness is by the engagement (likes, comments, shares and saves). If the engagement is good but your follower count is dropping drastically, then you could possibly chalk it up to Reason #2; but if the engagement is low and followers are dropping off, it just might be you and the content you’re producing.
Action Tip: Take some time to research others in your industry and take note of their most popular posts. Write out what you can glean from their content and reconstruct your own.
Offensive or Disagreeable Content: As we go further into this social media age, we’re learning that our individual tastes in humor, philosophy etc. may be offensive to our audience. While we have the freedom to share what we want (within the confines of the terms of conditions), as an influencers, we have to be mindful of how we approach sensitive topics online.
So, the next time you check your analytics and see that you’ve lost some, consider the loss as a “weeding out” of sorts and focus on giving your true followers your best.
Sidenote: Expect to lose more followers than you gain when you start posting more niche-driven content. If you’re consistent, you’ll eventually see more follower gains than losses.
