It's the million dollar question. Looking at my stats, it seems that not a single day passes without people stumbling into my blog because they Googled things like why am I losing followers on Instagram, how to avoid losing followers on Instagram, I keep losing followers on Instagram, and so on...
I think that's a question that almost all Instagram users have asked themselves at some point, so I thought I would share my findings on the matter. So, in case you too are wondering:
Why am I losing followers on Instagram? Here are some possible reasons:
Those follow-me-and-I-follow-back bastards. You'd be surprised to know how many people just go around randomly adding people on the hopes they will add them back, as a way to increase the numbers on their following by sheer brute force. Afterwards, they check who followed back and unfollow those who didn't. Sometimes they will just add you as a way to capture your attention, and then unfollow you briefly afterwards independently of if you followed back or not; websites, shops and associations promoting themselves are particularly guilty of this.
Losing one follower in 3... 2... 1...
People seem to hate selfies. As I pointed out on my own Instagram account, it would seem that every time I post a selfie I lose one follower! I though "what the hell... am I really that antipathetic or unbearable to look at?", until other people told me that they had experienced the same thing. Unless your account is purely selfie-based (in which case people who follow you are probably interested on seeing your face on a regular basis anyway), it seems that some people's perception of selfies ranges from considering them plainly uninteresting, to unbearably irritating and vane. Probably so unbearably irritating, that they decide they don't want to see that anymore, even though most of your content is varied.
One of the most Instagrammable things there are: photogenic yummy breakfast.
Your following is very heterogeneous. By this I mean that people who follow do it you for different reasons, making it difficult to create a balance in your content that would "please" all of your audience most of the time. I see this with my own account. I get an idea of what my followers are interested in based on the photos they "like" and the things they post themselves: some people follow me because they like my urbane Berlin pictures, others follow because they like the travel and nature related stuff, and some others follow me because they like my sense of style and fashion. Therefore, whenever the balance of the content starts to tilt more towards one particular aspect, while leaving the others aside for a long time, there is always the chance that somebody will think that the content they enjoyed seeing is no longer being produced, and therefore will leave.
Others—the most precious ones— follow because they enjoy the whole package: somehow they like to see what life looks like through your own personal window. This is also the case for me regarding the people I follow. Cherish these followers, since they can also become really good long-distance friends!
Relaxing by the sea in the Scottish Highlands.
You changed the focus of your content. Related to the previous point, there might also be a chance that you started slowly—or rather drastically!—departing from your original direction. Your interests might have changed and now you photograph and post different things than you did before. I have unfollowed some people myself because of this. Some examples: I used to follow a guy who used to post cool pics of Los Angeles along with witty comments and captions, but after a while most of the things he posted were racy pics of women in bikinis or underwear, or pics of himself with said women, so I didn't feel there was anything in his feed I connected to anymore. Another girl I followed used to post very arty pictures of Berlin, but then got engaged and married and after that her account became an endless stream of pictures of the couple—which I'm sure would be interesting to their family and friends, but not to me—, peppered with the occasional "I'm showing you this thing and incidentally my massive cleavage was on the way, oops!" kind of selfies (seriously, the picture that made me hit the unfollow button was one were it actually took me a few moments to discern if the thing I was looking at was a top view of her mega-boobs or a shot of her naked bum). No thanks!
You decreased the quality of your posts or post the same thing over and over. The best Instagrammers don't post pictures of just about anything they capture on camera; they create a carefully selected gallery of their photographic gems to put on display. Constant high quality content is what keeps people coming back, after all. However, some of us can feel the need to post something so our Instagram doesn't grow cobwebs and therefore can end up pictures that are not our best, just for the sake of updating. In my experience, most of the time is better to wait to post something really worthy of being seen rather to post crap, especially on Instagram where every post will bring you back into the attention of your followers, who might decide to unfollow you if they don't like what they see anymore.
Beautiful sunrise at Rosemarkie Beach.
Instagram's periodic cleanses. Instagram has started to periodically delete ghost accounts. You know the ones, "Get 10,000 followers instantly". Since most of us have been involuntarily—and sometimes, unwillingly—followed by several of these, they tend to accumulate over time. Therefore, when Instagram performs this culling, there's a sudden drop in the follower count.
Overcrowding and general apathy. I don't know if this is just a personal feeling or an actual phenomenon, but I have noticed that people in general engage less with the content nowadays, compared to the earlier days of Instagram. I think this is mostly true for us who have a smaller amount of followers. Also, the community has grown so much that getting some exposure by tagging your pictures gains you very little visibility, since there is so much content being generated all the time. I also have the theory that many of us have become somehow spoiled, too used to see a constant stream of amazing pictures everyday, therefore not appreciating them in the same way or not giving them enough attention—if you doubt this, next time that you look at your Instagram feed, take note of how much time you spend seeing each picture, you might be surprised!
Summer day at the park.
Those are my observations based on my Instagram experience. What are your thoughts on the matter? Have you experienced something similar?
Do you have any other "tips" on how to avoid losing followers on Instagram? Let us know in the comment section!
Thanks for reading!
