I had 50 new IG followers in 24 hours

but I blocked 20 of them... can you guess why?

Hey there gorgeous,

I started back up with a commitment to regular Instagram Reels last week. Actually daily Reels is the goal. This is because I have a deep-seated belief that you can’t coach people how to use Instagram if you’re not using it yourself. I’ve seen so many changes over the years I honestly believe if you even stop for a few months you can’t feel the cadence of the space properly anymore. So with the release of my 1:1 coaching spots and new Instagram course in the wings, it’s time to play and experiment there again.

The good news (depending on who you are) is that Reels is still the fastest way to build an audience on Instagram. The bad news is that your Reels game needs to be better now than it ever has before. Your ‘give’ to your audience needs to be targeted and communicated very quickly at the beginning of your Reel to keep people engaged, in order for the algorithm to recognise your content as being worth sharing organically.

But that’s actually not why I am writing today.

Today I wanted to chat about what happens when you are growing your following consistently, and how to manage your incoming IG follows.

In the last 24 hours I have had 50 new accounts follow me. And I have pruned a solid 20 of them off my follower count.

Why would anyone remove followers you may ask.

Well the answer is because those followers are not my ideal target market (or even close) and having them there will actually end up working against me in the long run.

How can that be the case?

It’s all got to do with the algorithm and how it reads our content and prioritises it based off of the initial reactions we get from our followers when we post.

What is important here is the percentage of people who follow your account who interact with a post when it is shown to them. The smaller the percentage, the less value the algorithm places on it. In other words, the greater the percentage of people who follow you who interact with your posts, the more the algorithm will show your posts to both current followers and potential followers.

So the ‘quality’ (for want of a better word) of your followers is actually quite important.

For example if I post a Reel and within the first 60 seconds of it going live, a large percentage of my followers interact with it then the algorithm will recognise my post as valuable and show that post to more people.

If a large percentage of my followers are actually not my ideal target audience and they’re not that fussed with my content, then when I post content aimed at my target market a lower percentage of my audience will interact with my posts.

This means that those people who really don’t have much reason to follow me but do anyway are actually hurting my potential organic reach. Their lack of interaction tells the algorithm my posts aren’t that valuable and therefore my posts get deprioritised.

So while it may seem counterintuitive on face value, removing followers who are not quality followers can be beneficial for you.

How does one know which followers to remove?

I remove -

-obvious bots (no profile pic, no bio, no followers, no posts, they follow hundreds if not thousands of accounts) because they will never engage with your posts

-the weird old men who think Instagram is a dating site and invariably all their posts are of them leaning against fast cars, fishing or holding guns (I mean ffs, really?) because the only engagement I’m likely to get from them is creepily sliding into my DMs to ask if I’m single

-accounts where they haven’t posted in years, but follow thousands of people and are on the other side of the world to me because while it may be a bit iffy removing them, their following so many accounts deprioritises me in the list of what they’ll be shown in their feeds each day

-accounts which are very obviously not my target market, (yes there must be a reason they are following me, but the more you speak to your target market the less these people will engage with you)

Finally, if I’m on the fence about whether or not to remove someone as a follower I check how many accounts they follow. The more they follow, the less likely I am to be prioritised in their feed, the greater likelihood I am to block them. If they follow 7000 people, I’m sorry but I will be removing them.

Sometimes I’m not as ruthless as maybe I could be. Because who am I to deny a person the opportunity to see pretty pictures and pottery in their feeds?

But ultimately I figure getting rid of the really dodgy accounts is the aim of the game.

Finally, if you are thinking of doing the same as me, my suggestion is that you make this culling a daily habit when you are in a growth phase. Maintenance for your Instagram if you will. Once a day at the end of the day run through your new follows and check them out. Block the ones that really don’t resonate. I promise it is worth the few minutes a day to do it.

X Ilona

PS there’s just a few spots left for private 1:1 Instagram for Quiet Creatives coaching available this quarter. If you would like a bespoke approach to your Instagram branding and growth mapped out I would love to work with you.