Having lots of followers on Instagram used to be the best sign of success, but now, ghost followers are a growing issue. While a large following can help boost credibility and open doors for partnerships, not all followers are valuable.
Fake followers can hurt your account’s performance. These days, businesses and influencers are focusing on getting high-quality followers rather than just aiming for a big number. Quality followers lead to better engagement and real opportunities, so it’s best to focus on them.
So, What Are Ghost Followers?
Ghost followers are inactive accounts that follow you without engaging with your content. They don’t like, comment, or share posts, which can harm your engagement rate. Identifying these followers is important for maintaining a healthy social media strategy.
To spot ghost followers, look for high follower numbers but low engagement rates. You can also check individual profiles for inactivity, like no recent posts or engagement.
A couple of random followers is nothing to worry about, but too many ghost followers can have a major impact on your Instagram engagement.
In this guide, we’ll tell you how to remove ghost followers and gain more real Instagram followers.
Why Are Ghost Followers Bad for Your Instagram?
Ghost followers hurt your Instagram presence by inflating your follower count without adding real engagement. This makes your account seem artificially popular, which can turn away genuine followers or potential partners.
They also skew your engagement metrics, misrepresenting your true audience and reducing your posts’ visibility. Identifying and removing ghost followers helps keep your Instagram profile credible and focused on real interactions.
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Ghost Followers & Engagement
Ghost followers negatively affect Instagram engagement by inflating follower counts without contributing to likes, comments, or shares. This leads to lower engagement rates and distorts the true reach of your content.
Consider two clothing companies marketing on Instagram:
1. Company A has 10,000 followers and averages a healthy 1,500 likes per picture and around 50-60 comments.
2. Company B, on the other hand, has 40,000 followers but only averages 30-50 likes and a handful of comments.
Though Company B looks better at first glance because of its astronomical follower count, it realistically is a much less valuable profile due to its low engagement.
Users with fake Instagram followers cannot truly determine their reach on Instagram as they have no idea how many real followers they actually have.
Today, Instagram is used for more than just sharing photos of your meals, vacations, and music preferences.
Instagram is becoming a mass marketing tool for both brands and influencers.
How Ghost Followers Effect Brands
Companies look to sell products on Instagram to reach any of the 1 billion users. The profit potential behind such reach is enormous.
However, ghost followers on Instagram will never attribute to likes on a post, clicks to a website, or sales.
“Be authentic. Instead of a bot invest the time to truly engage with your followers and comment and like their photos yourself. When you truly connect they know and become more loyal customers.” – Jessi Roberts www.CheekysBrand.com
How Ghost Followers Effect Influencers
Ghost followers can harm an influencer’s credibility by inflating follower counts without contributing to engagement. This can make it difficult to attract genuine followers and brand collaborations, as companies often prioritize influencers with active, engaged audiences. Ghost followers skew engagement metrics, leading to lower trust and fewer opportunities for partnerships.
Instagram Cracks Down Against Ghost Followers
Instagram has stepped up efforts to identify and remove fake accounts and ghost followers to keep the platform authentic. These actions target inactive or spammy profiles that distort follower counts.
Instagram has also cracked down on services selling fake followers and engagement metrics while giving users tools to better manage their follower base. By promoting real interactions, Instagram aims to build trust and ensure that engagement reflects true audience interest.
How Do You Prevent Ghost Followers?
The good news is that, in most cases, ghost followers are not something that just happens. Users have to engage in activities that increase the likelihood of gaining ghost followers.
There are several methods that can result in ghost followers on Instagram. Here’s what you should avoid:
1. Don’t Buy Followers for Your Account
The most common method used to obtain followers is by purchasing them.
Services such as Gramblast offer deals on followers. For just $2.99, you can by 100 followers. Buzzdays offers a similar deal – $1.89 for 100 followers.
These followers will likely never like or comment on your content. And, when you are caught with fake followers, your credibility is severely damaged.
2. Never Acquire a Pre-existing Instagram Account
Buying a pre-existing Instagram account with followers is risky. Websites like fameswap.com offer these accounts, but the followers may be fake, and the account’s quality can’t be fully checked until after purchase.
If you change the account’s name, many followers will likely leave, and Instagram may ban the account due to suspicious activity. It’s best to focus on growing your audience organically.
3. Avoid Purchasing Likes and Comments on Your Posts
It can be tempting to buy likes and comments to boost engagement, but using apps like Gramplify, Super Liker, and IG Flash only offers short-term gains. These services get likes from users who are just looking for likes in return, not real engagement.
This tactic isn’t sustainable. Instead, focus on organic strategies for natural engagement, which is the only way to maintain lasting growth.
How to Remove Ghost Followers on Instagram
Without a doubt, ghost followers are highly undesirable and can be detrimental to the credibility of your Instagram Account.
Luckily, some several methods and tools can be used to eliminate ghost followers from your account.
1. Remove Ghost Followers Manually
Go through your account and see who follows you. If the account has limited followers of its own and limited content, the account is likely a ghost follower.
Instagram allows you to go through your photos and search who liked them. If the follower in question has not engaged with any of your content, then you can even remove them as a follower yourself – much like removing a friend on Facebook.
However, this manual tactic can prove to be burdensome and is not practical if your account is one with hundreds of thousandsHowever, this manual tactic can prove to be burdensome and is not practical if your account is one with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Don’t worry! Several services offer to streamline the process.
2. Tools to Detect Ghost Followers
Tools such as Sprout offer in-depth analytics of total followers, likes gained, and comments received.
Comparing these metrics offers an opportunity to understand the engagement on your account and gauge if there is bot activity occurring.
Tools like this can help you understand how severe your ghost follower problem is and how much of a deep dive you will need to take to repair your account
3. Tools to Remove Ghost Followers
Simply Measured is another tool that allows you to understand your followers.
It gives an in-depth analysis not only into your engagement metrics, but also how engaged each of your followers are.
Similar tools allow you to see how many times a follower has engaged with your content and offer the option of removing them.
Methods to Get Real Followers for Instagram Organically
Okay, so by now, you understand that buying fake followers is seriously the worst move you can make for your brand.
But you still want to expand your social community and gain more authority in your niche, right?
In order to maintain a valuable profile, it’s imperative to have organic followers who will actually engage with your content.
There are several methods and tools to get real followers on Instagram, but here are the top 7 practices you should be implementing into your Instagram marketing to avoid ghost followers.
1. Post High-Quality Content
The tried and true way to get followers is to post high-quality content that other users want to engage with.
Specifically, you’ll want to make sure the 12 most recent pictures that make up your grid have a strong signature style so that new users get an ideasa of what your brand is all about right from the start.
Take @thedrybar for instance. All of their pictures revolve around their core business of hair and beauty products, while cohesively fitting in their yellow them.
2. Include Geo-Locations in Your Post
Be sure to tag popular locations so that you can significantly increase your reach.
By adding a location to your photos you will increase the likelihood of showing up on the Explore page and enter the feed of people in the same location as you.
3. Use Hashtags
Hashtags can also drastically increase your Instagram content’s reach, ensuring that you end up on the newsfeed of people who are interested in what you are promoting. After posting a photo, enter a collection of hashtags in a first comment.
Sites such as all-hashtag.com offer the top trending hashtags on Instagram, and generate several hashtags based off of the content you’re posting.
Make sure you do some industry research before starting to ensure you are picking the right hashtags for your brand.
4. Interact on the App
The common theme among any social platform is to engage with active users.
Commenting on other users’ content, liking relevant pictures, or following similar accounts is a great way to slowly build a following.
Go completely organic with the 5-3-1 technique.
While this technique may take a little bit of manual work, you can be very selective in who you are interacting with and, bonus, it’s completely free.
In the Instagram app, search targeted hashtags your ideal customer would use or look at users who are following your direct competitors and similar brands.
Once you find an account you like and would want to follow you:
1. “Like” the last 5 photos they posted.
2. Comment on their last 3 photos.
3. Get 1 new follower!
5. Use A Quality Instagram Growth Service
Some services, like Kicksta, help grow your Instagram following organically by engaging with potential followers while keeping your account authentic. Be cautious of services promising a specific number of followers in a set time—this is a red flag. Organic growth should depend on user interest, not fixed numbers.
Choose services that target followers based on location, gender, hashtags, and other metrics to reach the right audience. This approach helps attract real, engaged followers who will interact with your profile over time.
6. Host Instagram Contests
Instagram contests are a unique way to attract devoted followers.
Contests can be as simple as having users tag a friend in the comments or as complex posting their own picture and tagging you.
7. Use Influencer Marketing
You can dramatically expand your reach by partnering with influencers with large quality followings to promote your product. This is a great tactic because it allows you to reach a massive audience through a user that they trust.
Make sure you are partnering with an influencer who has a high engagement rate with this engagement rate calculator from Influencer Marketing Hub.
Conclusion
Ghost followers can affect your Instagram performance by making your engagement look lower than it is. These inactive followers don’t interact with your content, which can confuse brands and potential followers about your true reach.
By removing ghost followers, your engagement stats will more accurately reflect your real audience, helping you build trust and improve your Instagram presence. Stay active and keep track of your followers to boost your engagement!
