Picture this: your Instagram account seems to be doing well for itself and you’re consistently producing good quality visual content paired with interesting captions. Your profile is optimized and your link is in place, and you type in good call-to-action phrases in photo descriptions to encourage your followers to click on it. Follower count looks good - but how come the engagement of your content seems... empty?
Take a step back and examine your posts more closely, and check your back-end analytics. If you’ve noticed that your engagement rate statistics have plummeted and you haven’t been receiving the same amount of likes and comments as before, you might have a ghost problem. Specifically, ghost followers on Instagram. Just like an unlucky person whose date “ghosted” them through text or instant message, these accounts make themselves known to you by following your profile and subsequently never contacting you again. No likes, no comments, no shares...nada.
Instagram ghost followers are inactive accounts that don’t engage with your profile and posts. They’re also known as fake followers because the likelihood that these users aren’t real people are high. However, this isn’t always a bad thing depending on how you see their purpose. If you don’t mind lower engagement and just want a higher follower numbers, then having ghosts floating about isn’t such a bad thing as they boost your count perceived following clout.
After all, the most common way for ghost followers to appear is when someone decides to buy Instagram followers. It’s become common practice for some in the industry to purchase thousands of followers for cheap, with the two most common means being buying a bunch of inactive followers (or bots) and paying for a service to follow other users for you in the hopes they follow back. Both are unreliable in their own ways: bought followers most likely won’t engage with your posts, and followed accounts have a chance to engage but may not even follow back.
Having followers who don’t interact with you will affect your engagement rate negatively, as the formula depends on dividing your total number of interactions (likes and comments) by the amount of followers you have. Multiplying that result by 100 will give you your percentage. But for marketers looking for ROI on social media, it isn’t just about reporting numbers every month (though that plays a big part).
How the Instagram algorithm works is that it personalizes each and every person’s feed (via data gathering through machine learning) according to what that individual might like. The algorithm predicts what a user might like according to potential interest in the post, how timely it is, and their relationship to the poster. The key here is “potential interest,” because this is what engagement impacts the most. The app predicts this by looking at what you’ve already liked and commented on before, and uses that as the basis for what to show you next.
This is the biggest wrench for social media marketing plans on Instagram when dealing with ghost followers. Their lack of interaction with you or your brand’s posts means that they cause a direct hit on your visibility on feeds—not just theirs (because they may be inactive accounts anyway) but for others too. This extends to the Explore and Search sections as well, where users are recommended engaging posts by people they don’t follow.
Luckily, there are ways to exorcize these ghost followers. If your follower count isn’t that unmanageable yet, you can investigate your list and do this yourself by following a checklist of criteria. First, check their username—if it’s nonsense and full of weird numbers, it may be an empty account. Next, see if they bothered to change their profile picture. After that, check their bio, follower-following ratio, and the last time they posted anything, if at all. You can block these users, but for quick cleanup minus the blocking, set your profile to private for a short while (if public), tap “followers” on your profile, and remove the ghosts by clicking the three dots beside their username.
They won’t be notified of their removal, so don’t worry!
You can also download separate apps by searching Instagram ghost cleaners on your device’s app store. These apps do all the guesswork for you by automatically detecting ghost accounts and letting you delete, unfollow, or block them en masse. Most also have a feature where they can show how long since each person logged in last. Search for the top well-reviewed apps so you know you’ll get the job done!
Make checking (and purging) ghost followers a part of your weekly social media routine. It keeps your account healthy, increases engagement rate, and ultimately builds you a better online community!
If you want to remove ghost followers on Instagram, you can’t use those glitchy apps in the Apple Store. Seriously, don’t use a ghost followers app because it might block you from certain actions (or worse get your account banned).
This is because Instagram does not like third-party apps that are not authenticated by Instagram, and as it goes, most, if not all of these ghost follower apps are not approved by Instagram.
In this post, you’ll learn the exact steps on how to remove ghost followers on your account without flagging Instagram’s algorithm. If you’re going to go through the efforts of increasing your engagement by removing ghost followers, you have to do it safely!
Too lazy to read the whole post? This section has the safest method on identifying your ghost followers to remove.
What are ghost followers on Instagram?
Best Benefit of Removing Inactive Followers on Instagram
What Ghost Follower Apps and Services to Avoid
How to Get Rid of Ghost Followers the Right Way
1. Do It Yourself Method #1
2.
Do It Yourself Method #2
3. Hire Someone for a List and Do it Strategically
How to Force an Inactive Follower to Unfollow You
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The ghost followers meaning in terms of Instagram are basically followers that are inactive or fake accounts (bought and/or from giveaways) that don’t engage with your content. They boost your follower count without actually adding any value to your content.
You can get ghost followers from:
For example, if you’ve had Instagram for five+ years (like me), then most likely there have been some followers who followed you at first but then just left the app for good.
Also, if you’ve changed your niche/content, then some of your followers might not be interested in your content anymore and haven’t engaged in a long time.
Come say hi on my ig: @sarchetrit.
The biggest benefit of removing inactive followers is that your engagement goes up. When your engagement goes up, your content actually gets seen.
As an influencer, with more engagement, you can get better brand deals, and as a business, with more engagement, you can get more relevant customers.
As I’ve personally removed ghost followers, I’ve noticed a big difference in my story views. In removing about 1000 followers, my story views have gone up about 300-400 views!
You pretty much want to avoid all ghost follower apps you find in the Apple and Google Play Store. Instagram is getting smarter and smarter by the day and can detect unusual bot activity.
I’ve heard horror stories of people getting their accounts deactivated by using these unauthorized third-party apps so avoid them at all costs.
I personally tried to use a couple of these ghost follower apps and was sketched out when they needed to get into my account after I removed two-factor authentication– no thank you.
Also, their analysis of ghost followers is not that good. They only check the recent x number of followers you got who naturally may have not liked your content as much as old followers have.
Avoid ghost follower apps at all cost!
As for services you might find on Fiverr, avoid any who want to build a bot for you. Removing ghost followers has to be done manually on your own phone.
The best way to get rid of ghost followers is to see which of your followers have NOT liked or commented on your photos.
If you have a scraping program, you would take a list of all your followers and compare it to the list of everyone liking and commenting on your pictures.
Those who have not liked or commented on your last 60 photos but follow you are most likely ghost followers.
Then you’d take that list and manually force unfollow everyone slowly in the app. See below how to force unfollow.
Yes, manually unfollowing is very important, and it’s best not to do more than 30 force unfollows per hour (to not alarm that sensitive algorithm).
This method is a little less calculated but still effective (as shown by @creativeimpactco who cleared out 20,000 ghost followers).
Basically, you go through your followers list one by one and remove people who look “suspicious” as they said.
When they said “suspicious”, they probably meant accounts with no profile pictures and no posts or old accounts without any activity on it for awhile.
See below how to force unfollow.
The majority of us do not have scraping programs or even know how to do this.
It can also be time consuming and tedious if you have a large number of followers.
As a result, I recommend hiring this guy on Fiverr. Here’s why.
After checking out a few peoples’ profiles and messaging back and forth with them, I chose to work with Tom because he offered me a pure list for me to go off of. Everyone else I talked to recommended bots or some type of automation, which is a clear no, not only in my book but in Instagram’s book.
I grabbed the largest package of his, got a list full of details in a few days then started force unfollowing inactive followers manually. See below how to force unfollow.
I haven’t been consistent with it and force unfollowing people is making me lose followers overall, but within a couple of weeks, I’ve already started seeing my story views go up.
I’d rather lose followers and have higher engagement, then get more followers and lower engagement because I want people to see my content!
Check out Tom’s service on Fiverr.
Before you start force unfollowing people, you need to know that:
Now that you know the rules for force unfollowing, here’s how to actually do it (screenshots below).
Check out my ig @sarchetrit.
Pro Tip for Mac Users: This process can be quite tedious when doing a batch at a time so I like to:
This only works if your Mac and iPhone are synced to copy and paste between each other, but if yours are, then use this method. It really saves a ton of time from tediously typing in each follower’s username.
Hope you found this post to be helpful. If you liked this post, you might like this post on learning how to become an Instagram influencer.
If you need more help with Instagram, feel free to ask me anything in my free Facebook group or check out my TikTok.
xo, Sarah
@sarchetrit
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How to delete Grandmares on Instagram
You noticed that many of your subscribers do not interact messages you post. Instagram ? Can't understand why so many of them don't feel interested in the content you post on your account? If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about this: it's absolutely normal to have "ghost" followers, that is, followers who follow a profile without commenting or "liking" the content posted on it.
However, if you wish, you can remove the respective users from your profile quite easily. How should I do it? In the following paragraphs, I will have the opportunity to explain this to you in detail. I already assume that you can use applications for this purpose to identify ghost followers on Instagram so that you can easily remove them. In the meantime, I'll give you some "tips" on how to make the posts and Stories you share on your profile more engaging and interesting in order to reduce (as much as possible) the number of people following you in an unprofessional manner. active.
So, are you ready to discover how to remove ghost followers on instagram ? Yeah? Excellent! So sit back, take the time you need to concentrate on reading the following lines, and above all, try to put into practice the instructions I will give you. I have nothing else to do, but I wish you good reading and good luck with everything!
Index
1 DISTRIVERS (Android) You're unlikely to find ghost followers on instagram just pay attention to those who don't interact with your posts by commenting and/or leaving you a like. For this reason, I suggest that you use several suitable applications for this purpose, which can be downloaded both on Android and on iPhone.
Note: Instagram ghost follower detection applications are developed by third parties that are not controlled by Instagram. Since they have access to your personal account information, please be aware that their use may pose a potential risk to your privacy.
If you have a Android device I recommend you try Non-Followers and Ghost Followers , an application that allows you to easily identify users who stop following you, as well as those , who does not interact with your publications: namely ghost followers.
Please note that the app is notable for banner ads, which can be removed by purchasing the full version, which costs 4.49Euro.
After installing and launching the application, log into your Instagram account by filling in the fields Username (no email) es Password with login details for your Instagram account, check the box in the article I accept the Terms, Privacy Policy and Often ask questions and press the button Login . After connecting the app to your Instagram account, wait for it to analyze your profile, scroll down the screen and look for button Ghost Followers .
As you can see, the exact number of ghost followers that follow your profile is shown in brackets: to find out their exact identity, click on the corresponding button, read the general terms of service and after reading them, click on the voice of I accept .
On the screen that opens, you will be shown a list of followers who follow your profile without interacting with it.
As you can see, next to the name of each of them there is no button that allows you to delete them, but only one that allows you to start following them. If you want to remove ghost followers that were discovered by non-followers and ghost followers, you need to log into your Instagram account from the official app and proceed directly from there, as indicated in one of the following chapters of the guide.
IG Cleaner is another app that can be useful for identifying (and then removing) the ghost followers you have on your Instagram profile. As the name suggests, in fact, its main function is to allow you to "clean" your Instagram profile of ghost users (and more). However, I would like to tell you that it is free to use only for a short trial period.
To be more precise, Cleaner for IG allows you to use all its features for up to 50 actions, after which you need to buy the Pro version, which costs 3.49Euro.
To use it, run Cleaner for IG on your Android device o iOS tap the Login with Instagram button read the terms of use of the service and tap on the article According to present on the screen that opens to accept them. If the form to access your Instagram account does not appear, press the login button again and log in to Instagram by entering username es password in the appropriate text fields and tap on item Login .
Once you have connected the corresponding app to your Instagram account, click the Discard button to close the Cleaner for IG Trial Welcome, and then select the Followers tab located in the bottom left corner. Then press the blue Quick Select button at the bottom and select the items Advanced Quick Select > Select Phantom Followers from the menu that opens.
Therefore, wait for your profile analysis to complete and "as if by magic" all subscribers who did not interact with at least one of the last 50 posts you published will be selected. Now all you have to do is press button behavior in the upper right corner and in the menu that opens, select one of the available actions (for example, lock , stop , etc.), depending on the action you are going to perform.
If one of the applications used to find ghost followers on Instagram did not allow you to remove them through it (but simply to identify your identity), you can remove them from your list of followers by acting directly out of is the official app of Instagram , available for Android or iOS. To continue, launch the latter, log into your Instagram account and click on the little person located in the lower right corner to go directly to your profile.
At this moment, press the voice of Followers of located at the top, and on the screen that opens, find the user you want to remove from your list of followers. To complete the operation, just touch the icon with the symbol (...) on your behalf and select delete Menu Do you want to delete a subscriber? . Removing this user from his followers takes effect immediately.
For more information on how to remove followers on Instagram, feel free to refer to the guide I have dedicated to this topic. I am sure you will benefit from this reading.
Wrapping up this guide with some tips to reduce ghost followers on Instagram . Although, as I told you in the introduction to the article, it is a utopia to think of completely eliminating your ghost followers, you can try to make the content posted on the photographic social network more attractive in order to contain this problem.
How to do it? Great way to be original and fun - Maybe I'll post some funny content from time to time that will generate laughter and enthusiasm in the audience (like a funny meme, a specific photo, etc.) and when it's considered expedient, explicitly invites subscribers to you to express their opinion on the subject of publication, with a comment or the like.
Another trick you should follow is encourage users to interact directly with your account - Maybe you can do this by creating polls or doing live shows from time to time. You can be sure that your subscribers will enjoy such interactive content.
Remember then don't be a ghost follower people you follow who try to comment and like posts you are interested in;
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How to delete Grandmares on Instagram
9000
You have noticed that many of the subscribers do not interact with the posts you post.
Instagram ? Can't understand why so many of them don't feel interested in the content you post on your account? If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about this: it's absolutely normal to have "ghost" followers, that is, followers who follow a profile without commenting or "liking" the content posted on it.
However, if you wish, you can remove the respective users from your profile quite easily. How should I do it? In the following paragraphs, I will have the opportunity to explain this to you in detail. I already assume that you can use applications for this purpose to identify ghost followers on Instagram so that you can easily remove them. In the meantime, I'll give you some "tips" on how to make the posts and Stories you share on your profile more engaging and interesting in order to reduce (as much as possible) the number of people following you in an unprofessional manner. active.
So, are you ready to discover how to remove ghost followers on instagram ? Yeah? Excellent! So sit back, take the time you need to concentrate on reading the following lines, and above all, try to put into practice the instructions I will give you.
I have nothing else to do, but I wish you good reading and good luck with everything!
Index
You're unlikely to find ghost followers on instagram just pay attention to those who don't interact with your posts by commenting and/or leaving you a like. For this reason, I suggest that you use several suitable applications for this purpose, which can be downloaded both on Android and on iPhone.
Note: Instagram ghost follower detection applications are developed by third parties that are not controlled by Instagram.
Since they have access to your personal account information, please be aware that their use may pose a potential risk to your privacy.
If you have a Android device I recommend you try Non-Followers and Ghost Followers , an application that allows you to easily identify users who stop following you, as well as those , who does not interact with your publications: namely ghost followers. Please note that the app is notable for banner ads, which can be removed by purchasing the full version, which costs 4.49Euro.
After installing and launching the application, log into your Instagram account by filling in the fields Username (no email) es Password with login details for your Instagram account, check the box in the article I accept the Terms, Privacy Policy and Often ask questions and press the button Login .
After connecting the app to your Instagram account, wait for it to analyze your profile, scroll down the screen and look for button Ghost Followers .
As you can see, the exact number of ghost followers that follow your profile is shown in brackets: to find out their exact identity, click on the corresponding button, read the general terms of service and after reading them, click on the voice of I accept . On the screen that opens, you will be shown a list of followers who follow your profile without interacting with it.
As you can see, next to the name of each of them there is no button that allows you to delete them, but only one that allows you to start following them. If you want to remove ghost followers that were discovered by non-followers and ghost followers, you need to log into your Instagram account from the official app and proceed directly from there, as indicated in one of the following chapters of the guide.
IG Cleaner is another app that can be useful for identifying (and then removing) the ghost followers you have on your Instagram profile. As the name suggests, in fact, its main function is to allow you to "clean" your Instagram profile of ghost users (and more). However, I would like to tell you that it is free to use only for a short trial period. To be more precise, Cleaner for IG allows you to use all its features for up to 50 actions, after which you need to buy the Pro version, which costs 3.49Euro.
To use it, run Cleaner for IG on your Android device o iOS tap the Login with Instagram button read the terms of use of the service and tap on the article According to present on the screen that opens to accept them. If the form to access your Instagram account does not appear, press the login button again and log in to Instagram by entering username es password in the appropriate text fields and tap on item Login .
Once you have connected the corresponding app to your Instagram account, click the Discard button to close the Cleaner for IG Trial Welcome, and then select the Followers tab located in the bottom left corner. Then press the blue Quick Select button at the bottom and select the items Advanced Quick Select > Select Phantom Followers from the menu that opens.
Therefore, wait for your profile analysis to complete and "as if by magic" all subscribers who did not interact with at least one of the last 50 posts you published will be selected. Now all you have to do is press button behavior in the upper right corner and in the menu that opens, select one of the available actions (for example, lock , stop , etc.), depending on the action you are going to perform.
If one of the applications used to find ghost followers on Instagram did not allow you to remove them through it (but simply to identify your identity), you can remove them from your list of followers by acting directly out of is the official app of Instagram , available for Android or iOS.
To continue, launch the latter, log into your Instagram account and click on the little person located in the lower right corner to go directly to your profile.
At this moment, press the voice of Followers of located at the top, and on the screen that opens, find the user you want to remove from your list of followers. To complete the operation, just touch the icon with the symbol (...) on your behalf and select delete Menu Do you want to delete a subscriber? . Removing this user from his followers takes effect immediately.
For more information on how to remove followers on Instagram, feel free to refer to the guide I have dedicated to this topic. I am sure you will benefit from this reading.
Wrapping up this guide with some tips to reduce ghost followers on Instagram .
