Does Follow-Unfollow ever cause shadowbans?

I kinda want to disagree, I got reach-drop and eventually shadowbanned because of botting f/u, did none of the other things you mentioned @Alexnvo… Did a big research and decided to stop botting… I know we botters don’t want to accept this, but imo botting does lower your reach and can cause a shadowban…

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It’s on what sources you use along with filters. Two types of targeting in f/u. Growth or EG. If for EG growth will be slower vs. Follower only growth often costs ER

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Definitely yes if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I got a couple accounts that have absolute garbage ER because I didn’t know how to do it back then.

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How do you target engagement? This is something I definitely need to start employing.

What do you do differently now to ensure engagement doesn’t suck?

Bro reread this short thread, you’ll find both answers in it :smiley:

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Haha, I nearly responded the same to him…then saw your thread :slight_smile: I need to read too haha.

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All of us have to haha :slight_smile:

A tip for f/u: Instagram will definitely notice when you follow a lot of people and unfollow them after a while. They will see that you want to increase your reach, thus decreasing how many people you reach with your posts.

Follow Unfollow hurts the community in a way that it decreases the value of a follow. Try to think back to the times when you first downloaded IG. You followed all your friends on day 1 and were excited, maybe you didn’t put up a photo right away because you wanted to be first post perfect.

If everyone gets a follow by everyone and then gets unfollowed again after a while, a follow has no weight anymore and more and more people would start doing this.

When everybody does U/F, Instagram will lose it’s purpose and ultimately it’s customer base and die out. Why do you think they show count of followers/followings/posts?

My suggestion for automation would be to keep it as realistic and simple as possible. It would also be interesting to know if Instagram treats different kind of behaviour differently when it comes to automation. :slight_smile:

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I think it depends on the content, a lot of my clients are very high quality and are almost too big to fail. Some of them hit a ceiling with engagement while their followings continue to grow though.

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I think follow/unfollow can ruin engagement for sure. Shadowban I am not sure about that.

That is normal though, engagement rate always goes down the bigger you get…

Generally, liking = better ER, lower growth and F/UF = faster growth, lower ER.

And you should engage (like, comment etc.) on your followers posts. This is important.

The final thing is to block fake, bot profiles.

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Shadow bans and low Er are two separate items

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The question that I answered is “What do you do differently now to ensure engagement doesn’t suck?”

Not “How to avoid shadow ban?”

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Let me save you some time. If a client mentions shadow ban send them this:

That’s simply not true. You as a human can follow and unfollow anyone you want. Instagram does not shadow ban based on those actions. Shadow Banning is something bloggers like to write about for fluff. Instagram came right out and stated they do not ‘shadowban.’ Instagram is built for follow, unfollow and liking photos. They will never hide content base on those actions.

Instagram finally confirmed to TechCrunch and other outlets in June 2018 that the ‘what is Instagram shadowban?’ dilemma was was total bullshit. From that article:

"Instagram doesn’t downrank users for posting too frequently or for other specific behaviors, but it might swap in other content in between someone’s if they rapid-fire separate posts.
Instagram doesn’t give extra feed presence to personal accounts or business accounts, so switching won’t help your reach.

Shadowbanning is not a real thing, and Instagram says it doesn’t hide people’s content for posting too many hashtags or taking other actions."

Also, here’s a bonus for you when someone asks about F/U to grow:

“The only way your account is going to grow is people need to see it. They will not search for your account and no one can claim to build your account any other way. Think about it, how is someone going to bring thousands of real people to your account each month? You have to like and follow users, they have to see the notification, they then need to go to your account and make a ‘real person’ decision to follow your account. That’s the organic nature of all this.”

Now here is what I really want to say to client:

“I need you to please get your head out of your ass because there isn’t a single person searching for your new skin care line. Not one. Ok, maybe your Mother, but how do you expect your account to grow? Really think about it and get back to me!”

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I used to follow engagers of target accounts, and it helped my engagement but I was lucky to see 50 followers a day from it. I switched off from that and am now gaining 300-400 followers minimum daily. It’s a trade off.

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That reply was perfect :slight_smile:

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I’m taking this as my new template response to most prospects when they think f/u is bad :smiley:

In all seriousness great insight. I’m still not convinced even with an article that Instagram doesn’t shadowban. Corporations are not exactly known for being truthful to everything they do (like back when cable companies swore up and down they weren’t throttling Hulu & Netflix on their ISP networks and then it was proven they were). But even if I don’t personally believe it, it’s a great source to calm down any client so that in itself makes it a great resource. Thank you

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Does Instagram shadowban? Maybe, maybe not. Point is…tell the clients they don’t and move on. I shut the debate down right then and there.

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