i was averaging 400 likes on my instagram posts but now only 120. i just hit 40k. am i shadow banned? i even post at the best suggested times? i need help understanding what has happened…
maybe… if u spammed or they caught u doing stuff that breaks terms of service they might reduce ur reach
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1% engagement for an account under 100k is bad. Instagram probably started to realize that 
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Maybe you can explain what number you used for automation? Did you buy a massive following? Posting nude content? Or did something else that you maybe shouldn’t have done?
I would let the account rest for a few days doing NOTHING at all and see what happens if you post a picture. Check if your hashtags are working…
If you’re only averaging 400 likes in a 40k account, you likely bought 35k+ of those followers. Start over and do it correctly.
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Agree with @Connor_Lipke. Sounds like you bought a lot of followers. If you can lose the account, lose it and start over.
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Wouldn’t it also be an option for him to just block followers that aren’t engaging? There’s a tool in Jarvee that does this! I haven’t used it before, but I’m sure it would improve overall engagement rate at the cost of follower count.
Or maybe this is more trouble than it’s worth. Thoughts?
If he’s invested money in the account, it may be worth it, but from what he’s told us so far, it’s not worth salvaging in my opinion. I’ve got 10k less followers than him but average 3k likes and 50+ comments per post. His following is likely not organic. He’d have to block 20-30k ghost followers. That would take 1-2 weeks in any automation program and look really bad to the real followers.
you cannot look at the percentage of likes to followers and deduce if fake followers were purchased. speculation is often fatal advice without looking at the account history/posts, what if any hashtags used cippled the account and the content itself. to do otherwise is not wise.
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I have a similar problem! ): Recently the engagement for some posts dropped quite drastically. I have ~38k followers and average at a meager 1.2 - 1.6k likes. I had days where I post content that are less aesthetic and they would have difficulty garnering likes after 1k. But lately, I have posts getting below 600 likes. 2 days later, the subsequent post hit 1.6k likes.
It doesn’t feel like a shadow ban but a problem with having too many low/inactive followers. I never bought followers but I was in the F/U game for a while. 
I would like to block and unblock these inactive ones gradually but right now it seems like there isn’t a lot of reliable tools for this execution. I hope someone with success in this area could share their story. I’m not managing many accounts - just my own and I’m a photographer. sighs.
That engagement is actually decent. I’ve got a few 50k accounts that follow me that get similar engagement, and 30k accounts that get far less. I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless it continues to drastically drop. I have a similar follow count and get 2-3k likes and 50-100 comments, but I also use DM groups. If all you’re doing is f/uf then you’re doing pretty well.
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Updates past few days saw numbers drop. Seems back to normal now
agreed with a few people here, 400 likes with 40k is terrible, im getting 3-5k likes in a 40k account
but i have experienced decrease before and what worked for me what changing my hashtag every post. I used to use same 30 hashtag every post but now i do 25-30 hashtag randomly.
try that and it could pick back up in a week or so
Like I said. No followers were bought. I stopped using the account a couple times for a couple months at a time due to dealing with some personal situations but every time I started to reuse the account there were no engagement so I had to f/uf to get new followers every time I stopped. I manually got the account to 28k then recently added that account into the MP3 at 28.5. Now I’m at 40k…
Would it be better to just delete all hash tags…?
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no i would use different hashtag for every post
you wouldnt benefit from not using hashtag since your account is dead
Add stories with polls and ask something in your captions. Anything to raise engagement up. It’s uphill and doable within few months
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