How to find inactive instagram accounts
How to Find Inactive Users You're Following on Instagram - Ampfluence
It is very frustrating when you find out that you are following a ton of people that are actually inactive on Instagram – they never post anything, not a picture, not a story, and they might not even check their Instagram account. So if you would like to see how you can spot these inactive users and unfollow them, then you are in the right place.
Before we move one…. Let’s define what inactive users are….
Well… inactive users are actually those who do not use Instagram anymore. They might belong to someone who just stopped using Instagram for some reason, or to someone that has forgotten their password and never logged back in, or they might also be some fake accounts that have been created for a special reason and are not currently being used. Another term for this that you might come across is a ‘ghost account’. Ghost followers are users on Instagram who are inactive. They are either created by people or by bots. So you might be following ghost accounts without realizing it or maybe these ghost accounts might be following you. There are literally hundreds of reasons why an Instagram user account is inactive and to be honest it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is how we can identify those inactive users and get rid of them because they are literally not adding organic Instagram growth to your account.
That is a very good question. Recognizing these accounts might sound simple at first but it actually might be quite hard as you go along the list. Because a lot of things are kind of subjective so you will need to use your critical thinking until you get the hang of it and be able to spot a ghost user in a matter of seconds. So some basic things that you should look out for are:
- Post Frequency
Check out the feed. Does it have any content? If yes, how often do they post? Has it been a long time since their last post?
- Profile Picture
Does the account have a profile picture? Does it look real? Usually, fake accounts created by Instagram bots do not have a profile picture and they rather have that generic avatar.
If you see that then that’s a definite warning of a ghost account. - Username
What is the username like? Does it look realistic or is it something like okk835? Again, a username that does not look real is a warning sign of a ghost account. Just a word of advice here – usually (although this is not a rule) real users will have either their name or surname displayed in their username.
Once you have identified inactive followers, remove that follower from your list. So this is a fairly easy process:
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Go to their user profile
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Tap the green button that says ‘following’
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Tap unfollow
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Done!
Now to remove an inactive user from your follower list, then follow these steps:
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Go to their user profile
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Tap the 3 dots (…) on the upper right corner of your screen
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Select ‘remove follower’
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Done!
You can also block or report some accounts if you are suspecting that they are created from a bot or they are fake accounts.
The process for this is:
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Go to their user profile
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Tap the 3 dots (…) on the upper right corner of your screen
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Select ‘Block’ or ‘Report’
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Done!
A fast solution would be to use apps. There are literally hundreds of apps that you can download from the app store that can go through your account and detect inactive users. Using apps is definitely a really fast and fairly accurate solution to the problem, but nevertheless, this might not be the best choice. These apps might not be authorized so you might end up getting your Instagram account banned. So, keep an eye on these apps and make sure that you first check whether the third-party app is authorized or not.
There is really no point in having inactive users following you, and there is no point for you following inactive users. The process is pretty simple.
I hope you enjoyed this article and that you have found the tips and tricks useful!
How To Find Inactive Followers On Instagram?
Table of Contents
If you eventually figure out that your Instagram comments and likes on the posts are decreasing, and followers are rapidly increasing. In that case, you are most probably dealing with the inactive followers for your Instagram account, or maybe they are the ghost followers.
So, this article will help you find out the ways and the apps that tell you how you can find inactive followers on your Instagram posts. So, let’s have a detailed look into it, helping you to protect your profile in the long run.
When we talk about inactive Instagram followers, Instagram is just a platform like all other social media networks. Inactive Instagram followers refer to the people who create their new profiles and then forget their login credentials; therefore, they stop using Instagram and their accounts.
Inactive Instagram followers are the profiles actually that do not bring any value to your official page regardless of the fact that how much the number of followers increases on your profiles.
So, if you are trying to use Instagram to expand your business, then the user or the people who follow your account do not make any purchase from you for the services or products you offer. On the other hand, if you want to increase engagement, it won’t happen with inactive followers.
The reason is they are not real followers, and neither are they going to add anything to your Instagram profile. In short, the inactive followers or ghost Instagram followers are the ones that are going to follow your Instagram profile, but since they are the inactive people, so they do not engage with the posts and content you post.
Inactive followers or real people!Here, we will talk about the two different types of inactive followers: robotic people and real people. You can easily be able to recognize all the inactive profiles as robots because they are the ones who do not have enough profile pictures on their accounts, and neither they have so many posts on their Instagram feed.
Moreover, such comments will also be not realistic and pretty much similar to each other, and they will also not have so many people following their profiles. Also, they mostly have some weird usernames along with some low-quality and unattractive images posted on their accounts.
Besides all these facts mentioned, you also need to do your research well and check all the profiles carefully because some people also have all these features on their Instagram profiles. However, the thing that really matters at the end of the day is your overall objective, which is finding and targeting people who come over to follow your profile and interact with your content.
How to find ghost followers or inactive followers?There are two popular methods to find inactive or ghost followers on your profile; however, the easiest one, in our opinion, is the alternative that Instagram offers itself to its users. Instagram has thoroughly figured out a way to recognize the audiences sitting on your account by including the list of “least interacted with” or “most shown in feed” that you can find on your applications both on IOS and Android.
Ultimately, this is one of the greatest ways to know which of your followers are not interacting with your posts and content anymore.
So, if you are someone who is using the Instagram profile and want to know if who are the ghost followers on your profile; then follow the below-mentioned instructions:
- Go to your Instagram application
- Go to your profile
- Choose “following,” where you will be able to see the two categories as we mentioned earlier: ‘most shown in the feed,’ and ‘least interacted with.’
Here, the “least interacted with” option provides you a list of the profiles that interacted minimum with your content in the last 90 days. On the other hand, the “most shown in feed” option gives you a list of most active profiles and interacting with your content in the last 90 days. The fact that regularly checking the followers one-by-one to know and differentiate who is the real follower and who is the ghost follower could be a little challenging and a huge waste of time.
Therefore, it is always suggested to apply the second method, selecting a third-party application that helps you with this process, saving your time and efforts. So, let’s now have a detailed look at them:
Best applications to figure out the inactive followers on Instagram:Using a third-party company or application is one of the easiest ways to find out the inactive followers and the ghost followers who do not interact with your profiles and the content you post on Instagram. Here, you need to ensure that whilst you use a third-party application to unfollow or remove the ghost or inactive followers from your profile, they should not be able to damage your profile and Instagram reputation in any way possible.
Spam guard:It is one of the easiest applications to find out the inactive and ghost followers that ultimately spam your Instagram profile in so many ways. Spam guard undoubtedly helps you protect your profile from ghosts and spam, and they can also perfectly help you remove any spammy activity from your profile.
This is the reason that makes this application a great cleaner because it can ultimately eradicate any kind of unwanted activities on your profile so that you do not have to be worried about it anymore. Moreover, the application also helps prevent spam from plaguing your account, ensuring that spam and unwanted comments cannot get through the filter.
Growthoid:Growthoid is a well-versed application, helping you find and detect all the inactive Instagram followers on your profile and the ghost followers who are there on your profile for a long time and do not interact with your content. The application comes up with all the features that help you detect all the spamming activities and encourage you to boost your organic engagements on your Instagram profile.
How to find inactive Instagram followers (and remove them)
Content:
Finding and deleting inactive followers on Instagram is important if you want to get a good level of engagement.
If your engagement rate is low, you may have a lot of inactive or ghost followers on Instagram.
If you don't delete consistently inactive followers on Instagram, your engagement rate will start to decline as your followers increase.
This will negatively affect your account.
However, it can be quite difficult to find inactive subscribers.
Therefore, this article will tell you how to easily find inactive followers on Instagram, how to remove them, and more.
What are inactive followers on Instagram?
So what are inactive or ghost followers on Instagram?
Inactive Instagram followers, also known as ghost followers, are followers who don't like or comment on your posts.
Inactive/ghost followers on Instagram are followers that are not participating in your posts. These are the type of followers you want to get rid of.
In other words, inactive followers are following you, but they are not interacting with your posts.
Most of these followers are bots that use a follow/unfollow strategy to increase their following.
If you don't know what a subscribe/unsubscribe strategy is, it is essentially the act of subscribing to a group of users with the intent that they subscribe in return.
However, some of these inactive subscribers are real people.
In any case, it's a good idea to find and remove these followers, as it will benefit your account.
It is always better to remove a subscriber than to have an inactive one.
This is because even if you lose a subscriber, your engagement rate will be maintained or even increased.
Engagement rate is the most important metric on Instagram.
You can have tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, but if your engagement rate is low (less than 3%), your account is bad.
In order for brands to work with you, your account must have at least 1000 followers and a decent level of engagement.
Likes are therefore an important factor in determining the quality of your account.
After all, the more inactive or ghost followers you have, the lower your engagement rate.
How to find inactive followers on Instagram
There are two different types of inactive Instagram followers.
Bots and real people that are inactive.
To find inactive followers on Instagram, you need to be able to detect bots in your followers list and people who are inactive or no longer using Instagram.
You need to remove two types of Instagram followers. Bots and real people who are either inactive or no longer using Instagram.
How to find and remove bots
Bots can be easily identified on Instagram.
This is what a bot account looks like:
- No profile picture
- Almost no messages
- Publications are little involved
- Not many followers
This is the number of factors to consider when identifying a bot.
However, you need to study each person carefully.
This is because there may be real people who have all these factors, but bots do not.
So do not rush to conclusions.
Real people vs. bots
When you look at these bot followers, you need to keep the end goal in mind.
It's all about getting people interested in your content.
So if you're looking at your list of followers and you think someone might be a real person, but don't think they'll participate in your content, you should delete them.
How to find and delete real but inactive people
Now that I've talked about how to find bots, how can you find real people who are just inactive subscribers?
How do you identify these people?
You can find real but inactive people by looking at people who are constantly liking or commenting on your content.
If you know that you have followers who don't like or comment on your posts, you can find inactive people.
Alternatively, you can use Instagram's "Least Engagement With" feature to see who you interact with the least, which means that person might not have been involved with your posts as well.
Since this feature is fairly new to Instagram, you can use it to unfollow people without blocking the activity.
This feature is Instagram's way of telling you to unfollow these people based on the fact that you don't interact with them much.
Use a third party application
Simply search for "Instagram Analytics / Followers / Unfollowers" in the App Store or Google Play Store.
However, viewing your inactive or ghost followers is usually a premium feature on these apps.
So, to see these followers, you have to be willing to spend some money.
However, if you use these applications, never unfollow or delete subscribers in the application itself.
Otherwise your account will be blocked.
This is because Instagram may detect that you are using a third-party app because you may be able to complete actions faster than usual.
Instead of unfollowing/unfollowing people from the app itself, do it manually.
How to Find Inactive Followers on Instagram: Next Steps
Now that you know how to find bot followers and inactive people, you have two options.
The first option is to continue interacting with these people by viewing, liking and commenting on their content.
However, you should only do this if you really like their content. Don't do it just for them to reciprocate.
By engaging in someone else's content, they are more likely to access it.
This is because once people know you like their posts, they can respond in kind by liking your posts.
It's something like that.
In addition, you can remove these people from your list of subscribers.
Let's delve into this in the next section.
How to remove inactive Instagram followers?
There are several ways to remove inactive followers on Instagram .
Here are ways you can use to remove inactive Instagram followers.
1. Remove inactive subscribers from your subscriber list.
The first way to remove inactive or ghost followers is to remove them from your follower list or from their profile.
Instagram has released a new feature where you can directly delete people who don't follow you.
Not everyone has this feature, but if you do, it's incredibly useful.
You can remove subscribers by going to your subscriber list.
After you delete someone, they will no longer follow you.
They will not be notified that you have removed them as subscribers.
Also, they won't be able to see your new posts or stories unless they go to your profile and follow you again.
Second, you can remove someone from your subscriptions by going to their profile.
Then click on the icon with three dots in the right corner of the screen.
Finally, click Remove Subscriber to remove it as a subscriber.
Again, the person will not be notified that you removed them as a follower unless they visit your profile.
2. Block them
The second way to remove inactive or ghost followers is to block them.
I don't recommend doing this, but if you don't have the ability to remove subscribers, you should block those users instead.
Here's how you can block users.
Just visit the user's profile and click on the three dots icon in the right corner of the screen.
After you block someone, they will be removed from following you, your account will be removed from following them, and they will not be able to find your account.
The person will not be notified that you have blocked them.
Why are inactive followers on Instagram bad?
If you have a bunch of inactive or ghost followers on Instagram, it can negatively impact your reach.
What happens is that you will interact less with your new messages as they are not shown to everyone.
For example, if you have a lot of inactive Instagram followers, Instagram will think your content is bad.
This is how the Instagram algorithm works.
Messages in your feed used to appear in chronological order.
However, messages are currently displayed based on how likely you are to use them.
This means that if you recently posted something and people don't show interest in it, Instagram will consider your content to be bad and not allow it to be shown to more people.
The Instagram algorithm works this way because they only want to show you the best content so you stay on the app.
Imagine that your feed is filled with poor quality images. You are more likely to exit the app and never come back.
However, if your channel contains great content, you tend to stay in the app for a longer period of time.
In some cases, low engagement doesn't mean your content is bad.
This simply means that you have a lot of inactive or ghost followers who are not interacting with your content.
Why is it important to delete inactive Instagram followers?
Inactive followers will drastically reduce the reach of your posts and the engagement rate of your posts.
It's important to remove inactive Instagram followers to maintain engagement.
As mentioned in previous sections, your engagement rate is the most important metric on Instagram.
Using an analogy, inactive subscribers are simply subscribers that are on your subscriber list and are not doing anything.
They don't like your posts and don't comment on them.
It is unfavorable if you like someone's posts for a very long time, but this person never replies.
This is the type of people you want to unfollow or remove as followers.
Thus, your engagement rate will either increase (if you get rid of a large number of inactive subscribers) or remain.
Why don't people interact with your posts?
People may not interact with your posts, or you may get fewer likes for several reasons.
Here is a list of reasons why people don't like your posts or why you get fewer likes on Instagram:
- They don't care about them
- You are disconnected
- They are not interested in your content
- Not enough time
- They have too many posts in their feed
- You are banned
- Your content is bad
- They don't use Instagram anymore
- You are using bad hashtags
- You are not participating in their messages
As you can see, there are many reasons why people don't interact with your posts.
It could be because they are no longer interested in your content, they are no longer using Instagram, you are not participating in their posts, and so on.
Otherwise, this may be due to the poor quality of your content. In this case, you will have to create better content.
Compare your posts with others. Is the quality of your content comparable to users who have millions of followers/likes?
If not, you need to rethink your content strategy or improve the quality of your content.
Conclusion
Removing inactive or ghost followers is critical if you want to maintain or increase engagement.
To find inactive followers on Instagram, you can either do it manually or use a third party app.
You can remove inactive subscribers using the "delete" function or by blocking them.
Engagement rate > subscribers.
After all, it's better to lose a few followers than to have low engagement.
Remember that inactive or ghost followers do not help your account - they only harm it.
How to remove inactive followers on Instagram
In Instagram, the number of followers has long ceased to play a decisive role. On the contrary, given the work of new algorithms, sometimes it is even better to remove inactive followers on Instagram. The priorities of promotion on Instagram have long been replaced by engagement and reach. Now a huge audience with a low ratio of their interactions not only looks unnatural and ugly, but can also harm the promotion of the account.
Why are “dead” subscribers bad? In fact, a “dead” audience can only be useful to media personalities, for whom the cost of advertising directly depends on the number of subscribers. Although inactive followers can “put a spoke in the wheel” to them.
The presence of a large number of inactive followers in the profile can lead to many problems:
- Low percentage of engagement.
A large number of inactive subscribers leads to a natural decrease in the percentage of engagement. And in this case, no matter how high-quality content is released, it will not work to increase engagement without deletion. - Loss of confidence. Your subscribers, buyers or advertisers can easily notice low-quality accounts among your followers list. This will lead to a decrease in trust. You get the impression that you are winding up subscriptions.
- Downgrading. Posts can start to get lost easily in the feed. Instagram algorithms closely monitor user interaction with posts and accounts. Therefore, if the profile has a lot of inactive subscribers, and posts are rarely responded to, its publication is rarely shown at the top of the news feed.
- Small number of advertisers and low cost of advertising. If you are selling advertising, then with a dead audience, you will not have to count on a good income. Today, advertisers always check bloggers before collaborating for cheating, and the key factor when choosing an influencer for collaboration is the percentage of involvement.
Who are “inactive” subscribers
Inactive subscribers are profiles that do not perform targeted actions for a long time and do not show interest in the content of the account. Such subscribers hang like a “dead” weight, spoil the statistics and make others doubt the absence of cheating.
But you need to understand that there are many reasons for the lack of activity. Sometimes it happens that the client just found what he needs, and so far no longer needs a profile. It may also be that the content of the account simply became uninteresting for the user and he got bored. There is no need to rush to remove such users.
But some inactive subscribers are still worth getting rid of. First of all, these include:
- Bots are accounts that are used to increase the number of followers.
- Commercial accounts and stores. Live people may be hiding behind such profiles, but they are generally not active, as they are busy developing their profile.
- Blank profiles - blank profiles without publications. These are peculiar analogs of bots that are created by users to make money on the Internet or secretly browse pages.
- Non-target subscribers - users who are not included in your target audience. They will not be active, because the subject of the profile is not close to them.
- Mass followers - accounts with a huge number of subscriptions. Even if such a profile hides a real person, and not a commercial account, due to the large number of subscriptions, it is almost impossible to break into the feed to such a subscriber.
The categories of accounts listed above are not only useless, but can also harm him. When you post a new post on Instagram, the social network's algorithm shows it to a certain number of people and watches their reactions. If a post gets views, likes, and comments, the algorithm decides that it is interesting and should be shown to more users.
And so it continues until the algorithm sees that the publication receives responses from viewers.
Now imagine what would happen if most of the profiles to which the publication will be shown are bots, shops and abandoned pages. Let's say there are 10,000 followers on an account, of which only 1,000 are active users. If the algorithm selects 1000 users to display a new post, there will be no more than a hundred active viewers among them. Someone will not see the publication, someone will find it not interesting enough. As a result, the publication gains only a few likes, the reach and engagement on the account are falling. And all this could be easily avoided if you just cleared the subscribers in time.
How to understand if your account needs it
Inactive subscribers slow down the development of the account and devalue the work in creating content. Therefore, undoubtedly, efforts should be made to get rid of the “ballast”. But how to understand that your account really needs it, and how to identify inactive subscribers?
Using standard methods to get ahead of inactive subscribers is not so easy - outwardly, profiles can seem completely ordinary, and besides, it will take a lot of time.
You can get detailed information about the audience using trendHERO . This tool allows you to get detailed information about the account, including detailed analytics of its audience.
The trendHERO service checks an account using more than 90 metrics, allows you to check the quality of the audience, find out the level of engagement and reach, identify bots and non-targeted profiles. To check whether your profile needs to remove subscribers or not, just insert a link to your account and run the check.
After analyzing the account, trendHERO will show the level of engagement on the account, the quality of the audience, the ratio of personal, commercial, suspicious profiles among subscribers.
Removing subscribers must be done if the percentage of engagement on the account is not high, and the number of suspicious subscribers is high. The trendHERO service will show you when everything is bad and you should clean up the inactive.
Try trendHERO for free
How to delete followers on Instagram
You can clear followers on Instagram using standard methods or using special services. The first option is somewhat troublesome, but recently the social network has somewhat simplified the task of deletion for users.
Previously, in order to clean up the audience, you had to search for an account among your followers, go to it, and then click the "Unfollow" button. Now you can delete subscribers directly from the list of followers. To do this, do the following:
- Create a list of inactive subscribers.
- Login to your Instagram account.
- Click on the “Subscribers” section.
- Click on the “Delete” button next to the required accounts.
Manual deletion may take a long time. Especially if there are thousands of people on your account. The Instaplus service will help you quickly cope with the task. The main purpose of the service is to promote your Instagram account, send automated messages to Direct, but with its “Data collection” function, you can easily remove inactive subscribers.
How to unsubscribe followers on Instagram using Instaplus:
- Register in Instaplus service and add the required account to it.
- In the main menu of the service, select the “Create task” option, and then click on the desired account to promote. Instaplus allows you to work with five accounts at the same time.
- Select the "Data acquisition" function.
- Select the source “Subscriber activity”.
Next, the service will provide two lists of subscribers - a full list and a list of inactive ones. This data can be converted into an Excel spreadsheet and get a convenient list of inactive subscribers.
The next step on the service is to create a task to remove inactive subscribers. To do this, select the “Create task” option again and the desired account. In the action selection menu, select the “Unsubscribe” option.
The service will offer several deletion options:
- unsubscribe from all;
- mutual;
- non-reciprocal;
- private;
- not accepted;
- block by list.
Select the last option and then create a list of inactive subscribers.
Instaplus deletes it automatically, taking into account social network limits. The maximum size of one list is 150 thousand accounts. If the base of inactive subscribers is large, you will have to create several lists and remove “junk” followers in stages.
How to avoid mistakes and not harm your account
Inactive subscribers can pretty much spoil the statistics and impression about the account. But their quick deletion is not a panacea for an account at all. There are many nuances that must be taken into account in order not to spoil the account statistics.
- Remember that inactivity does not always mean that the account is dead and should be deleted. It is possible that the person is simply not interested in the product or your content right now. With such a profile, you can and should work. It is definitely worth deleting only the profile that has not been visited for a long time.
Such an account is most likely simply abandoned. - Not all commercial accounts should be deleted, because they also hide real people. The main thing is that there are no your direct competitors among the subscribers.
- Quick deletion of followers can negatively affect the coverage of the account, or even lead to blocking. Cleaning of inactive subscribers should be carried out gradually, using in parallel various methods of promoting and attracting new followers.
- Before cleaning, be sure to study your target audience. You need to have a clear portrait of a potential client so that, along with a cold and inactive audience, you do not accidentally delete your target audience.
- Respect the limits. This will protect you from blocking and shadowban. So, if the account was created less than a year ago, it is recommended to make no more than 200 unsubscribes per day. For accounts active for more than 1 year, this figure can be increased to 1000. However, in any case, a pause of 40-60 seconds should be maintained between unsubscribes.
- Don't use questionable services. If you decide to clean with the help of special services, then be sure to study the reviews and reputation of the service. Remember that free programs can often hide scammers who want to take over your profile.
- Most inactive subscribers come from mass following. So that you don’t have to repeat the cleaning often, use mass following only on your target audience.
- Do not delete foreigners. Many, when clearing an account, add all followers from other countries to the deletion list. But it's not always worth it. For example, Arabs are often quite an active audience. They may not buy anything from you, but at least they will like your posts.
Purge alone will not increase profile reach and engagement. Promotion on Instagram requires an integrated approach - the correct design of the profile, high-quality content, and work with the audience. Work on promoting your account, create interactive experiences for users, motivate them to interact and communicate.
