Lost followers on Instagram? Here's why it's a good thing.

Lost followers on Instagram? Don’t panic.

I’ve got mindful strategies for you to stay focused on what's important when growing a powerful digital presence.

Last night I noticed a drop in my followers across most of my accounts. I lost 280 followers on @wokeandwired (a 2.8% drop) and 1,600 followers on @breakfastcriminals (a 1.9% drop). I immediately jumped on Reddit and on Instagram stories to find out that I wasn’t alone: an account with 606K followers lost 40K, another one that reportedly also never bought followers lost 5K out of 150K, and another one lost 500 out of 24K. 

To creatives and entrepreneurs who use instagram as their main platform for business – this could be alarming.

This morning, the press came out confirming that “millions of accounts from around the world appear to have been closed and it's not yet clear why.” Some of the top accounts are reporting losses in the millions of followers – hey, Nike (1.1 million) and Selena Gomez (2 million), and some people can’t even access Instagram as they’re getting a Facebook error message. 

Insta-maggedon much? 

We don’t know what exactly is happening, the only thing we’ve heard so far from Instagram is this tweet: 

It’s safe to assume that Instagram is doing a massive cleanup of bot and ghost accounts. Perhaps they’re gearing up for the integration of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger that The New York Times wrote about last month? 

BOT-STAGRAM

With the ability to buy likes, views and comments to followers, and thousands (if not millions) of follow/unfollow bots running simultaneously around the clock, it’s still possible to track some of these activities – but not on a mass scale. The New York Times covered this subject brilliantly in The Follower Factory article in January 2018, and it’s more relevant than ever. 

If you scroll through someone’s list of followers, you can most likely pinpoint fake accounts. Note that they may or – most likely – may not have even purchased. Bots are like bedbugs, they often come uninvited and announced. Once you’ve seen enough of them, you can identify them by account names, sometimes profile photo and most certainly the feed. Another pro tip on identifying a bot: I’ve never seen one that has active stories or highlights. 

WHAT EXACTLY IS BEING CLEANED?

Here’s the thing: when you’re looking at a following of 85K, like I have on my account about morning rituals, recipes and mindset @breakfastcriminals, it’s near impossible to tell what percentage of the followers are real and what isn't, unless you’re willing to spend a whole week doing FBI-worthy research.

Sure, there are platforms that give you an idea of what it might be – for example, before the cleanup, influencer marketing platform Fohr showed that I had 89.5% active followers, 9.65% lurkers, and 0.82% bots. However, the cleanup resulted in 1.9% followers falling off, so that estimate either wasn’t fully correct, or there’s something about the cleanup that has yet to be revealed. 

Another interesting fact about this Instagram cleanup is that I noticed a change not only in who follows me but also in who I follow. In case of my accounts @wokeandwired where I share about conscious social media and my podcast Woke & Wired, the list of accounts I follow dropped by 51 (0.5%).

I’m rather proactive in going through my feed once in a while to unfollow the accounts I no longer resonate with, so I have no idea who the 51 people in the list were, as I’ve followed all of them manually (I’ve only testes follow/unfollow method on one of my test accounts, which was successful to a certain degree, but that’s a different story).

WHY LOSING FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM IS GOOD

I will dare to suggest that a drop in followers is a good thing. Maybe even worth celebrating. While my strategies below may not convince your follower-obsessed boss (if you have one!) to pop a bottle of champagne (or Dr. Brew kombucha, in my case), they will bring you peace of mind and clarity on what to focus on when growing an Instagram community.

Mindfulness is on the rise, but how about applying it to one of the most addictive spaces that exist, the digital one?

It’s about time we become conscious and intentional in how we spend time consuming and posting content and interacting online. A conscious approach to social media is needed more than ever, and that’s why I’m releasing a Conscious Social Media Program next month where I’ll share my personal tools and practices to build a successful online business using Instagram from a place of alignment. 

This way, whether the numbers will be restored or not, you can focus on high-impact actions instead of obsessing over numbers that mean very little.

LOST INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS? CONSIDER THIS: 

1. REALITY CHECK

If the followers got cleaned, they were most likely not even real people. I’m talking bots and reported accounts. They were sitting there, adding numbers, and not adding anything to the conversation. What’s the value of giving them a free pass in your community?

100 people who really care are more valuable than 1,000 people who aren’t sure why they’re following you. In this case, we can equate people who don’t really care to bots. Say goodbye and create space for real connections with real humans. 

2. ENGAGEMENT OVER FOLLOWERS

Your engagement percentage is about to get slightly higher because of the drop in followers. Yes, it’s true that a high number of followers still lures brands in. I’ve had situations where a brand that I’ve been using and talking about for years (such an organic fit for a partnership!) wouldn’t even discuss working together because they “only work with influencers with 100K+ followers on Instagram” (I have 82K+). But that’s a very shortsighted approach. A lot of brands now look more closely to engagement rates than follower counts, hence the rise of the micro and even the nano-influencer. Smaller and newer accounts tend to have higher engagement.

3. DEPTH OVER GROWTH

How often do you find yourself checking your follower count, updating the posts to see how many comments and likes it got? How productive do you feel when you do that? The truth is, being so focused on your follower growth isn’t productive at all. Yes, I do encourage you about being strategic and smart about the content you create, but while you’re doing it – don’t forget to provide value to your existing community. Ultimately it’s about the depth of connection with your community, and not its width. When you have a spare moment, do something that’s guaranteed to educate or inspire you, instead of obsessively hitting the “refresh” button (I’ve been there). 

4. DIVERSIFY

Do you tend to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to your business, and focus all your efforts on Instagram? My Shorty Award-nominated brand Breakfast Criminals started with Instagram and has been my main platform for 6 years. However, in the past two years, I’ve been actively diversifying my “digital universe”, as Amy Jo Martin would call it, and growing my website traffic, email list and most recently, my podcast about expanded consciousness and digital entrepreneurship.

If your Instagram feed feels like your child, I recommend you rethink it. Stat! Because it’s not. It’s Instagram’s child and Facebook’s grandson or granddaughter (I’ll leave the gender decision up to you). And their values and business plans may not align with your own. I know people who’d been building brands on Instagram for years to wake up one morning and see if wiped off the face of the (digital) earth, once and for all. Pleading to Instagram, despite direct connections with employees, didn’t help. No answers given. 

The only place on the Internet that you can rely on as your own website, hosted by YOU. Own your data!

5. BOUNDARIES

Instagram, social media and the Internet overall are wonderful technologies. But it’s be-all and end-all. It’s vital to remember that technology and any social media network is energetically neutral on its own. We – humans – are the ones who give it meaning with our own inner human technology.

What you bring to the table is up to you. Through your intention, content and actions, you have the power to make a difference. 

And sometimes the best thing you can do is move the Instagram app from the first page on your phone to the third, or maybe even delete it all together for a weekend like my friend Ruby Warrington, founder of @the_numinous. And connect to life as it is, without documenting and consuming. It’s quite refreshing. 

Sounds too extreme? Just try on this one practice, and it will completely change your life: leave your phone outside of your bedroom, and don’t get on social media until you complete your morning routine. Let your consciousness wake up without being bombarded by a million messages from others. 

There’s magic in you that’s just uniquely yours, and it takes being quiet for it to get activated. 

I have yet to pitch the idea of a book on Instagram boundaries to Dr. Henry Cloud, the king of a series of books on establishing boundaries on every area of your life. Dr. Cloud, consider this an invitation to collaborate ;) 

CONCLUSION

While Instagram trends and algorithms come and go, ultimately it’s about the humans behind it. If Instagram helped you kickstart a business you’d never thought you’d start (that’s what happened to me), take a moment to be grateful and keep moving. Stay open for new ways to build relationships with your community. 

While we all have our own thoughts on how Instagram should work (“bring back the chronological home page!” "kill the bots!"), it’s not up to us.

Instead of getting confused and frustrated by things out of our control, I encourage you to focus on this:

1. Connect to WHY you do what you do and why it’s important for you to connect with people online.

2. Get clear on what VALUE you offer by sharing content online. 

3. Remember to focus on human connection instead of numbers. You could be more successful at converting and monetizing a community of 1000 than a community of 100,000. Honor where you’re at and make the best of it.

If you want to dive deeper into the world of conscious social media, listen to my solo episodes on Woke & Wired podcast and sign up to know when I launch my course that brings together (aligned) heart + (strategic) hustle.

-Ksenia Avdulova, public speaker, writer, podcast host and educator

More: Stuck On Social Media? Here’s How To Find Alignment The Mindful Way