Your experience in deleting ghost followers

Hi friends! Can you share your own experiences in deleting ghost followers? Does it helps? Does it hurts? There are opposite sides of view about it in theory, so I’ll be very grateful if you share how it worked in practice :blush:

I have never heard of a negative outcome when removing ghost followers or followers at all. Removing ghost followers and non-engaging users - after doing an engagement analysis - is especially important in the early stages of an account. Once you reach 10k and above it’s your goal to grow without follow/unfollow IF possible (there is still a lot of other options available). Starting to remove ghost followers on a 50k or 100k account becomes really questionable.

Follow sources for bots like Jarvee should be picked by an engagement analysis and not via followBackRatio. Otherwise, you will end up with a really bad account. Also, non-strategical-planned engagement rounds can damage your account really bad too, same with pods and everything else artificial. Always use the right tool for the right job.

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Thank you so much for answering!
My situation is that after hitting 10k I noticed that my reach just stucked at level when I was at 6-8k, my posts visible for only 10-15% of followers, engagement and amount of likes are same as a year ago, so I started to thinking about deleting ghosts, because visibility of posts is really disappointing no matter how much new followers I’m getting :weary: I’m just afraid that Instagram will think that I’m losing followers and decrease reach harder

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As far as I know, that is not how the reach is determined, especially since you are removing them and they are not unfollowing you. Maybe @Alexnvo can give you some input, he grows quite a “few” big pages manually. Depending on what he says, you could remove ~some ghost followers and see how that goes.

Can you show us some of the content you are posting?

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thank you again!! hope he’ll give some tips, they are super important for me! because I’m not experienced, trying to grow just one main page manually, because organic growth never worked well on my acc.

Sure! how can I show it? Should I write account name here or send PM to you?

Send me a PM first. I will check it, because this is the public section of the forum.

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Are you using engagement groups or is that all organic engagement?

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Its all organic, but I think some percent of engagement comes from F/UF when people come to like back without following

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Removing ghost followers is fruitless in today’s insta. It worked years ago, today it’s suicide.

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I noticed this a few times with one of my big accounts and I think the main factor is you have been growing with people that have a good follow back ratio or some other means. But they have bad engagement. So when you post the % of followers that initially engage on that post hasn’t increased while the followers have.

Also could be bad use of hashtags, change in post styles. I haven’t tried deleting ghost followers in bigger accounts only clients small ones, where the drop in followers would be minimal.

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Thank you for answering! Does it mean that ghosts will continue to pull down account and don’t let it grow organically? Is there some ways to increase reach or just keep growing searching for new active followers?

Thank you for answering! Oh I think its the case, because I’ve been working on all followers of competitors, not only on active ones.

Did it worked fine on smaller accounts? Did you noticed changes in engagement? my account is small too, only 10k

Haven’t tried it on 10k accounts. Usually accounts lower than 2k I’ve done it with. You want to target people that interact on posts not just followers

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Thank you again! So what should I do in this case, just don’t focus on ghosts and search for a new active ones?

I’m not one for deleting followers. Here’s my reasoning:

  1. I’d want to be very sure they weren’t just sporadic users of Instagram before I removed them.
  2. Do they have a highly competitive feed but my best pieces still reach them?
  3. Do they engage in ways that Instagram recognises but we don’t see (time spent on photo/caption/comments)?
  4. Will removing large numbers of followers flag something fishy with Instagram?

An extreme example: Should the NBA delete their thousands of ghost followers, or keep them as it’s easier to push ads to them down the line and use their network size for business clout? They still hit explore and reach their true fans, plus grow at an incredible rate.

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Ohh such awesome points, thank you very much!!

So this means that my account have chances to grow despite ghosts and this stagnation? Just keep moving?

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Keep growing it. Removing ghost followers honestly is not worth
A. Blocks
B shadowing from insta
C reduced ER. Yes, in today’s insta removing ghosts will Reduce ER. Often permanent – this reason don’t bother

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3 is main fact.
4. Permanent account damage if enough blocked

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Thank you so much for tips!! Its extremely helpful, so glad I found this forum🤗

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