I was on my Instagram Story ranting about how certain people will follow you, and then — thinking that you would not know — they will unfollow once you have followed back.
Influencers follow and then unfollow you on social media because they wnt to raise their follower ratio. They want you to follow them, but they don’t care about following you. The purpose of doing this is to raise their follower-to-following ratio in order to make them appear more important than they truly are.
I mean, I know that I used the term you in my headline, but the truth is, sometimes, I do unfollow people on Instagram. As I said, I understand people unfollowing me if they are not interested in my content anymore after a while, but that kind of unfollowing immediately after I have followed back is blatant cheating.
If you are pretty sure a new follower is going to unfollow you a couple of days later, just ignore it. Following is a technique used exclusively to increase an account’s reach, so someone doing the following is likely, not interested in your content, but you will not know that until they are unfollowing you in a couple of days. If you were keeping track of the number of followers, you would have known someone had unfollowed you.
The Reasons for Unfollowing Someone Are Often Obvious
I will grant, that this is an obnoxious reason why someone would unfollow you, but you need to keep in mind that the likes and followers counts have become a vanity measure, something that people cling to like status symbols. Users are constantly trying to keep things balanced, and they are keeping your number of followers low by unfollowing so they can follow more people.
When people hit that level, they need to start unfollowing to continue following more users and eventually grow their Page. The reason why people follow then unfollow on Instagram is that they are trying to grow their accounts, but it can be difficult to do so on a platform that is constantly changing.
No need to worry, once you understand why people are unfollowing you on Instagram, you can figure out what you can fix so that you do not lose followers anymore (as many as possible). If you are looking for a way to grow your Instagram following fast, and do not mind that there is a possibility that you might anger some people along the way, the “following and unfollowing” method might work for you.
The follow/unfollow method has been a 100% unauthentic, inorganic, impractical method of growing an Instagram account. In other words, the Instagram follow unfollow method is where someone follows lots of accounts just looking for one to follow back.
Instagram Doesn’t State Who Unfollows You
Unfortunately, Instagram does not provide any way to see who has unfollowed you, or even whether you have been unfollowed. Another reason people might be unfollowing you on Instagram is that accounts are limited to following 7,500 other accounts at once. The reason the same people can continue to show up in your feed is that it can be hard to keep track of whom you previously followed and then unfollowed, so it is bound to happen multiple times with some of the same accounts. Another perspective on why people will unfollow you after some time is because they hit the limit on Instagram, which is no more than 7,500 followers at once.
Another reason to make the following list as small as possible is that your followers are not that great to have more followers than you do. If you are interested in using the “following” and “unfollowing” methods for growing your Instagram account, you need to know that this can be a laborious process.
Some Instagram accounts will follow someone who they think may be liking their page, and then they will unfollow once they get that follow back. Not only are people who are guilty of this tactic trying to artificially boost their followers, but they are trying to reduce the number of Instagram accounts that follow them themselves.
Reflections on Instagram Behaviors
For instance, if your Instagram account is devoted to posting artistic photos, and an inspirational speaker with 10k followers and 100 followers follows you one day at random, chances are that they are hoping that you will follow back, then they will unfollow you afterward. If you are the lurker, and someone is currently purging their Instagram followers trying to figure out whether or not to unfollow you, chances are high that they are going to do so since you are not engaging with their content.
When an account follows you, that makes you curious to see what their content is, so you will certainly check out their Instagram account, and it may result in you following them, which is what they wanted, and then sometimes after, they would unfollow you with ease since they got what they wanted, which is the follow back. Usually, as the following and unfollowing pattern becomes more popular and people get wiser, they will unfollow after some time just so that they seem sincerely interested to follow you.
On Instagram, if you happen to follow somebody and he or she has not approved your request, you can unfollow by clicking the follow button, a box will pop up asking you if you would like to unfollow this person, simply hit OK. Users are aware of this when it happens now, and they are often annoyed if they followed someone & realize that they were unfollowed.
This is exactly what the following/unfollowing game does for your prospects: It shows them you are not concerned about actually connecting with them, which is truly the point of social media, but rather you are treating them like just another number to be added to your profiles following.
You could analyze the period you started losing followers, and compare it with your Instagram feed, to try to understand what was posted during this period. A good way to assess who is consuming your Instagram feed is to look at who is liking, commenting, and following along with your IG Stories regularly.
