Removing Bots and Fake Followers on Instagram

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Removing Bots And Fake Followers On Instagram
Every account on Instagram attracts some degree
of bot followers, but removing them is crucial
to improving your account. Whilst high numbers of
followers are still important to influencers and
bloggers, quality of content, engagement rates,
and interaction has become much more important
over recent years. Large numbers of fake
followers or bots can be detrimental to your
brand and reputation. Luckily, there are steps
you can take to remove them from your
account. The Rise Of Fake Followers In the past,
around the early 2010s, the number of followers
that you had was considered essential to help
you to grow. In order to make a blogger or
influencer appear established or credible,
they needed to have a high number of
followers, ideally somewhere in the thousands. As
such, many people at that time bought fake
followers. The rules and regulations surrounding
social media werent quite as well established
just a few years ago. Buying fake followers to
help secure collaborations and brand sponsorships
was something that many people saw as a necessary
step to further their chances. Yet now, buying
fake followers will do more damage to your
account, reputation, and job prospects than
having a lower following. In short, it simply
isnt worth the risk. On the other hand, some
bloggers and influencers unwittingly gain fake
followers when they sign up for Instagram Growth
Services. Despite the service promising to
deliver you a large number of real followers,
the reality is that you end up with a load of
bots littering your account. Companies and real
followers alike are much savvier about the issue
of fake followers and bots. Rather than focusing
on the number of followers, they are more
interested in the quality of engagement, which
will be considerably lower if you have high
numbers of fake followers or bots. Simply put,
in order to succeed on Instagram (or any other
social media platform) to have to check through
your social media following and get rid of any
account following you that could be
fake. Related Can Hashtags Get You More
Instagram Followers?
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• How To Spot A Fake Follower?
• The first step in removing fake followers and
  bots from your following is to identify them.
  This can sometimes be trickier to spot than you
  might have thought. After all, not all real
  followers have high numbers of posts or a big
  following themselves. Some people are more
  active than others. Yet, there are some simple
  warning signs to look out for when trying to
  decide whether or not an account is in fact real.
  It all comes down to the quality of the account.
  If an account is of particularly poor quality, be
  suspicious.
• Account handle If the handle contains numbers,
  it is more likely to be a bot or fake than a
  real follower.
• The following number If they have a high
  number of people they are following, then the
  chances are that they are a mass follower. A
  mass follower account would be considered to be
  one that is following 5,000 accounts or more.
• A number of followers and posts Combine their
  following number with their number of followers
  and posts. If they have low numbers of followers
  and very
• low numbers of posts or no posts at all, then
  there is a high probability that the account is
  fake.
• Quality of content Consider the quality of
  their content. If the content quality is poor
  and you cant see yourself or your friends
  following them back, then you should be
  suspicious of the account.
• Post-engagement The same applies to the quality
  of post-engagement. If an account has lots of
  followers, but very low engagement, such as very
  few comments and likes, then there is a high
  probability that it is a bot.
• Why You Should Remove Fake Followers?
• Tempting though it may seem to simply buy
  followers or to just leave any fake followers in
  your following to help boost your numbers, over
  time, it will actually do more harm than good.
  In reality, the only way to ensure that you
  increase your following, as well as your rate of
  engagement on Instagram, is to put in the hard
  work, time, and effort and grow your following
  organically.
• 1. Damages Your Rates Of Engagement
• Having an authentic account, even if that means
  having lower numbers of followers, will help to
  boost your engagement rates. This will mean that
  your content can reach more people and over
  time, creates the opportunity for your follower
  base to grow organically.
• If you have fake followers and bots on your
  account, they will increase your following but
  crucially will do nothing to increase your rate
  of engagement. Nowadays, brands

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• and companies place more importance in your
  engagement rates than your number of followers
  because they want the content that you share to
  actually reach real people who will interact
  with it.
• Fake followers and bots actually prevent you from
  building a community and real conversation and
  interaction with your followers and the content
  you are producing. In the long run, it will be
  more detrimental to your account to have a high
  number of (fake) followers, but a low rate of
  engagement.
• Creates Spam
• Another problematic feature of bots on your
  account is that they can use your Instagram
  account to spam your real followers. The bots
  infiltrate your community and then use you and
  your account as a platform to spam your genuine
  followers and target your customers.
• Ultimately, this will lead to both you and your
  real followers potentially receiving lots of
  unwelcome and unwanted spam. If your account and
  your brand then become associated with spamming,
  this can significantly harm your reputation. If
  people think that your brand spams its followers
  with irrelevant content, then they are likely to
  stop following you. In the end, this will cause
  you to lose real followers who can actively
  engage with your content and will also harm the
  quality of your account.
• Easy To Spot
• Companies and brands have become much more
  tech-savvy. Marketers and PR reps have access to
  a range of tools that allow them to reveal the
  true amount of influence that a blogger or
  influencer actually yields. Crucially, this means
  that they will be able to tell if your account
  and following are genuine or fake. Approaching
  companies and brands when youre unsure that
  your followers are authentic can lead to some
  embarrassing and costly situations.
• It is also pretty clear to see when an account on
  Instagram has genuine, organic growth or not.
  For example, influencer accounts with real
  followers tend to have a fairly consistent line
  of follower growth, week on week.
• Accounts that have bought fake followers will
  have inconsistent growth spikes from
• week to week or even day to day. With free tools
  and software such as Social Blade, it has become
  extremely easy to check follower growth to see
  who has bought fake followers and who is
  actually working hard to cultivate a real and
  authentic audience.

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4. Damages Your Reputation Despite all the
influencers out there, the influencer marketing
world can actually be very small. The news will
travel fast when an influencer or bloggers
account has been revealed to have a fake or
inauthentic following. This can be extremely
damaging to you, your brand, and your
professional reputation. As mentioned
previously, companies and brands today are more
interested in engagement and interaction. If you
have a high following, but few likes or comments,
this will be a red flag to most companies. Your
followers-to-likes ratio is important. Most
brands will be reluctant to work with a blogger
or influencer with a poor audience. Ensuring that
your Instagram account is free from fake
followers and bots is crucial to maintaining
your professional integrity and fostering an
environment of genuine and authentic
growth. The effects of having your account
exposed as inauthentic can be extremely damaging.
Firstly, companies and big brands are unlikely
to want to work with you. There have been cases
where brands have even been known to blacklist
influencers who have lied about their influence
status. Secondly, it will make your real
followers and any potential customers doubt you,
your integrity, and your brand, meaning they will
be more likely to abandon you. Having fake
followers to simply boost your numbers is not
only dishonest but is also a professional risk,
simply not worth taking. Related 10 Smart Ways
To Promote Your Business Through Instagram
Stories How To Remove Fake Followers? However it
is that you have accumulated fake followers, the
good news is that there are ways to sort through
your Instagram account and clear them out. The
first thing to take into consideration is that
this is a process that will take time. Depending
on how many fake followers or bots you have on
your account, it is a process that can take days
or even weeks, so be patient and thorough. It
will be worth it in the end. 1. Manually Block
Followers Manually removing or blocking followers
is still one of the most effective ways to remove
fake followers and bots from your account.
However, this does take a long time and is likely
to only work effectively if there are less than
10,000 poor-quality accounts following you. The
only way to remove bad-quality followers and bots
on an Instagram Business Account is to manually
block them.
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In order to do this, you need to find their
profile. Tap on the () icon at the top-right
corner and then tap on the Block option. You
might decide to switch your account to your
Personal Account and then make it Private. This
way, you can simply remove followers without
needing to block them. 2. Use An App There are a
number of apps available that you can use to help
you remove unwanted followers, be they fake or
real. If you need to get rid of fake followers
and bots on a large scale, then consider using
one of the apps to help you. They allow you to
block and unfollow a large number of accounts in
a short period of time. However, it is important
to note that some of these apps may be considered
third-party apps by Instagram. This is in fact
technically against Instagrams Terms of Service,
so use them at your discretion. The best
cleaner app for removing bots and any unwanted
followers from your Instagram account is Cleaner
for IG. It is available on all app stores for iOS
and Android and, better yet, it is free to
download. Essentially, Cleaner for IG will scan
your followers and identify which ones are fake,
and provide you with the option to remove them.
The app basically allows you to block fake
followers en masse, which is the only way
to remove them from your profile. Additionally,
the app also provides you with the option to mass
unfollow and unblock other accounts, as well as,
unlike posts en masse. It will also track all of
your actions and activity in an activity log. It
is a handy app that allows users to remove bots
from their accounts easily and quickly, thereby
improving the quality of your own
account. Conclusion Ensuring that your account
is free from fake followers and bots is crucial
if you want companies and brands to want to
collaborate and work with you. Having an account
that is authentic will promote trust in your
brand and reputation and will allow you to grow
your following and community in a way that is
organic and genuine. Increasingly, brands will
distance themselves from working with bloggers
and influencers who have poor audience
engagement, so dont be afraid to remove a
bad-quality audience from your account.
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Remember that it can take time to successfully
remove all bots from your account. Look out for
any suspicious accounts and remove them. Whether
you are removing bots manually or using an app,
remember to do this periodically to ensure that
you keep on top of it and maintain an authentic
Instagram account that people will want to follow.