It can be very frustrating if you’re a small business or social media influencer to see your follower count growing, but interactions with your posts staying stagnant, or your engagement rate continuing to stay the same or even decline. And it’s true that some changes in your level of post interactions might be related to algorithm changes, but, let me let you in on a little dirty secret… The culprit could be bots!! You might think that just because you’ve never bought followers, all the accounts following you must be real - but - unfortunately that isn’t necessarily the case. Before I tell you how to get rid of these pesky fake followers, let me explain to you how bot accounts and bot farms work.
Let’s say Suzy decides to buy a few followers. Well, the bot farm supplying these followers needs these accounts to appear legitimate to Instagram, who has tried their hardest to put a stop to these bot accounts. In order to make the fake account look like a real one, and to avoid having Suzy’s account flagged, instead of having those bot accounts follow just Suzy (the person who paid for them), they’ll instruct the bots to follow many people at a time in order to avoid suspicion and tripping Instagram’s security systems. That means that even someone who has never bought a follower in their life might end up with hundreds or even thousands of these fake followers!
Well, “What’s the big deal?,” you may ask. That’s a great question! If your only interest is to look at first glance like you have a very popular account with a high follower count, then I suppose it doesn’t hurt you to have bots and fakes following you. But, for any influencer who’s trying to grow their brand, or a small business who wants to find and engage with their target audience, these bot followers can really harm your organic growth and reach. Here’s the problem - these fake followers are programmed to do just one thing - follow you. They will never interact with your account. They aren’t real people. They won’t like your photos, leave comments, or buy your products. This can hurt you in the long run, because these followers will lower your engagement rate. And, they just look fishy! If you have thousands of followers, but each of your posts only has a few likes or comments, anyone with a discerning eye can click on your follower list and see tons of suspect-looking followers with strange usernames and no profile photos. This can lead to a loss of trust and confidence in your brand! And just like how every time you post a photo, Instagram’s algorithm tracks how many of your followers who are shown your photo interact with it in order to judge that photos “worthiness” to be shown to a wider audience, your poor overall engagement rate due to bot followers might prevent Instagram from featuring your account to more legitimate users who are your target audience via the explore page!
If you’re an influencer trying to grow your audience, or hoping to work with big brands or get paid collaborations, nothing could be worse than having a following of ghosts who don’t interact with you, because the Social Media Managers and Heads of Influencer Relations at these companies care waaaayyyyyy more about engagement rate than follower count. They want to know that you have built an audience that trusts you. They’re counting on the strong relationship you have with your followers to allow you to easily convey a positive brand message.
So, what to do about these bot followers? Well, here’s where I have to give you some bad news - there’s no quick or easy fix for bot followers. Getting rid of them is going to be time consuming and labor-intensive. And while there are some apps that offer to automatically remove ghost and inactive followers, these apps aren’t foolproof. They might cost money, they may remove real followers, and worst of all - its widely rumored that Instagram will penalize accounts that use these types of apps. IMO - it’s not worth the risk. That means the only real option left for getting rid of these bot accounts is to manually remove them one by one. I KNOW! IT STINKS! IT TAKES SO MUCH TIME! IT’S INCREDIBLY BORING! Trust me, I know from firsthand experience. I’ve been working on it myself the past few months, manually removing a hundred or so accounts at a time whenever I think about it and have a few spare minutes.
Here are some easy ways to identify bot followers:
They don’t have a profile picture
They have a name followed by a series of numbers, ie ‘logistic874’
They follow lots of accounts, sometimes just hundreds, but oftentimes thousands*
They have a private account
They have 0 posts, or a small number of posts
They have 0 followers, or a small number of followers
They have a handful of posts of nondescript content, such as text, food, flowers, cars, buildings, or lots of versions of the same selfie photos
They haven’t posted in many months, or, their account is brand new with only one or two photos posted very recently
Now, some of these bot farms have gotten smart, so not all fake followers will fall under the above guidelines (some even post stories now!), but this is a very good place to start. By just scrolling through your followers and identifying and manually removing these types of accounts that look suspect, you will notice the patterns these bot accounts generally follow.
How to remove a follower:
Go to your profile, click ‘Followers’
Identify a profile that looks fishy that you would like to remove
To the right of their name, click ‘Remove’
Click ‘Remove’ again on the pop up
Done!
If you’re not sure that the profile is a fake, follow steps one and two above, and then click on the fishy profile’s username to investigate further whether or not they look like a legitimate user. From there, you can click the three dots in the upper right hand corner, click ‘Remove,’ and then confirm again on the pop up. Once you’ve removed the fake account, you can navigate back to your followers list and repeat the process.
When I first started manually removing followers, I noticed that after a while, I started to feel some resistance. I started to second guess myself, unsure if the person I was removing was indeed a bot. Well, here’s the good news. Even if you accidentally remove a real person, you haven’t blocked them, you’ve simply removed them, so they could always find you again. Also, try to remember that if you don’t recognize this account, if they’re not memorable because they’re not consistently liking and commenting on your posts, why do you care if you remove them, even if they are real?? They’re not bringing any value to your community if they’re not participating or interacting with you! If they’re seeing your content at all (*and remember, anyone who’s following thousands of accounts is going to have a very cluttered feed and probably isn't going to see your posts anyway), why should they be allowed to “ghost” consume your content? If they miss you, they’ll follow you again, and just by simply seeking you out and refollowing you, you may get “reset” in their algorithm and boosted to the top of their feed! By changing your mindset around who ‘deserves’ access to your content, you can curate a more active and authentic circle of followers who truly value you and appreciate your content or product, and isn’t that what we all want?
Once you’ve identified and removed fake followers, remember, it’s an ongoing battle and right require some upkeep. If you’d like to be able to keep an eye on your followers as they come in you may consider setting your profile to private so you easily choose to accept or decline potential followers and avoid any bots slipping through the cracks. As an added bonus, approving your followers one by one allows you to click on a new follower and send them a “Hello!” or welcome message, further establishing a sense of belonging and loyalty in your community.
Good luck! I hope this helps you BEAT THE BOTS and curate a more supportive and engaged community. And if you hear of any other tips for avoiding the plague of ghost followers that I’ve overlooked, please send me a message and share! 👻
XO,
Tasha
