This post shows you how to get rid of ghost followers to boost your engagement.
What is a ghost follower
A ghost follower is someone who follows you on Instagram but who has not liked or commented on your last 50 posts.
Basically these followers are DEAD WEIGHT. Yes they may give your follower count a boost, but they drag down your engagement rate. After all why follow you if they don't plan to engage with you at all?
The best strategy is to eliminate your account of all dead followers.
What are fake followers
Fake accounts are simply accounts that don't represent real people. They're typically created by people who run botfarms or sell followers on Instagram.
Fake accounts tend to have the following characteristics:
- No profile photo
- No posts
- No bio
- Many followers
- String of randomly generated numbers in their username
The best strategy is to find fake followers on Instagram and block them from your account.
How to get rid of ghost and fake followers?
The answer is simple!
Free vs Pro vs Cloud
Free: One account, limited actions, local actions only, which means that the app must be open for it to work.
Pro upgrade: unlocks unlimited actions (though Instagram limits still apply). You can also have unlimited accounts in Account manager and it removes all pop-up ads
Cloud upgrade: This allows Cloud Service to automatically execute (app can be closed). It also executes actions for multiple users simultaneously - up to 5 users) and you can add up to 5,000 actions per user.
Upgrade to a Cloud account
I highly recommend upgrading to a Cloud account because you'll want to activate cloud service - which means the app will perform actions even if you close the app.
Cloud is a one-time upgrade and lets you add unlimited accounts.
However, if you just want to try it out, you can still go ahead with local actions only (but you must be on the app the whole time for it to work).
1. Adjust your settings
A) Turn Filter Followers List off. This means the app will then show you all your followers regardless of whether you follow them back or not.
(If you turn it on, it will only show you people that you don't follow back).
B) Turn Filter Whitelist Users on. Make sure you whitelist all of your friends or important accounts that you want to keep following. Toggle this switch on. This means that any accounts in your whitelist will not be shown to you to unfollow / block.
C) Set the maximum batch actions to 10 or 20. I do not go more than that in case I get blocked by Instagram.
D) In the Service Status setting, you can activate or deactivate the cloud action.
2. Go to the Followers Tab and hit the blue Quick Select Button
Click on "Advanced quick select"
Then "Select ghost followers"
The app will then search for all followers who have never liked or commented on your last 50 posts.
Once the app has found them, it will show "Selected XXX users!'. These are your ghost followers.
Go to the top right of the blue bar, and click on Actions.
Click on "Block" or "Block and Unblock" and add to cloud queue.
And that's it! It's as simple as that.
Your follower numbers may take a hit, but your engagement rate will improve. Then you can focus on growing a more engaged following of users who actually interact with your posts.
What about inactive followers?
You can also use the same method to identify inactive followers. Inactive users include accounts that have 0 posts or no activity in the last 90 days.
I personally tend not to use this, as there are a lot of insta stalkers out there who don't post on their own feed or stories, but do look at your posts and your stories. I'm ok with these insta stalkers but if you're not, please UNFOLLOW THEM.
And there you have it!
A quick and easy way to get rid of ghost, fake or inactive followers which will help to boost your Instagram engagement rate.
I hope you found this useful and if so, please leave me a comment below!
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Hi I'm Steph, I blog about Instagram Tips