Have you ever asked yourself why your reach is so low and you have so many not engaging followers or do not gain followers at all?

No problem we got you. After reading this blog Post you will know more than 90% of your competitors about Ghosts followers, what they have to do with your reach and how you can identify and remove them.

My Name is Alexander Kohler and I am the Head of Growth of MVRQ. Since 2017 we have managed to fix and grow over 800+ accounts in an organic and legal way. Despite many algorithm changes we have to admit, one thing always stayed the same! 

GHOST FOLLOWERS are bad for your account. 

We have seen the best content and the best conzepts but if you have too many Ghost Followers Instagram will hinder you to grow your account and restrict your reach. 

But let’s start with the basics……

What are Ghost Followers?

A Ghost Follower on Instagram does not necessarily need to be a bot or fake profile; it is simply an account that follows another account but does not interact with it. So the images that the other shares don’t get a reaction. The non-interaction affects the reach. More on this later.

Where do Ghost Followers come from?

A ghost follower can come from following things: 

• The profile is no longer being used but the profile still exists.

• Someone has a profile, looks at the pictures, but doesn’t interact with the pictures, because he is not interested in your content.

• You bought a bad growth service where you gained fake followers

• You have the wrong Instagram Growth strategy 

How do I recognize ghost followers?

You can often see a missing profile picture here, a very low number of people following them, and often a very high number of subscribed accounts.

Why remove ghost followers?

Many people think: hey, my profile looks much better when many people follow it. I don’t care if they are fakes. Wrong! They do harm your profile, even if indirectly. Ghost followers exist as a “dead mass” on your account. By not interacting with your content (no engagement in the form of likes & comments), they degrade your interaction rate.

What is the danger for active Instagram-users?

Every active Insta-user wants to be successful with their images, regardless of what is on the images. So the risk that comes from ghost followers is that – due to the algorithm – the reach decreases. Only if the accounts interact with each other, the respective images will be displayed. That means: if you want to support your favorite creator but only look at his stories, still like his pictures. In today’s algorithm on Instagram, the post is no longer delivered to all followers but to a group between 10-20% of the person’s followers. However, if now the image is randomly sent to the ghost followers, there is of course no interactivity and the image never has a chance to be delivered to even more people.

How does the current algorithm react to too much Ghost Followers?

Ghost Followers were always harmful for your account, but since the new algorithm change Meta or Instagram is even more strict when you are having too many ghosts Followers. So the current algorithm is punishing people with Ghost Followers cold. We have verified people with over 30k, which hired professional video filming teams for their reels and their reach went from 10-15k views to 1-4k views per reel. Also their engagement dropped down to only 16 likes and 10 comments. 

So how can I fix my account and get my reach back or avoid losing my reach?

The most important thing is to do clean ups and delete ghost followers right away when they come to your account. Also the right growth strategy is a big factor.

What solution does MVRQ offer?

If you really want to do a professional ghost follower cleanup because you believe your account is full of ghosts, shadow banned or you even thought about deleting your account and starting a new one. We suggest trying out our Ghost Follower Removal Service in which we fixed several accounts and got them back where they belong.

Learn everything about the service here: MVRQ-Ghost-Removal 

Great. 

Now you know more about Ghost Followers than 90% of the Instagram users. If you have any questions about Ghost Followers or want to work with us on your Instagram account or removing Ghost Followers, write directly to service@mvrq.co.