Here’s Why You Need to Stop Mass Following Everyone on Instagram Right Now
What is Mass Following
Mass Following is a trick as old as Adam (well, not quite) used to find followers and clients for your business. This fairly easy method caught on in a finger snap, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. You launch this special app and it does everything for you, i.e. it starts following other users based on the filter criteria.
You can base it on location (geotags), hashtags, search for users following specific accounts etc. The notion is that part of the users you started following will be notified, and some of them might take a peep at photos from your account, and, in case they like it, they might follow you back.
Sounds much fun? But it might run not as smooth as peanut butter for you as there ought to be some consequences. Today we’ll show you why mass following every person out there is bad for your account’s health.
Forget that it is a direct violation of Instagram’s Terms of Use. Really, just flush it. Because everyone else did! These swarms of sellers selling cheap replicas, beauty salons, fitness clubs, travel influencers, infopreneurs, you name them, all of them are going on ‘Gram to vigorously sell you their goods. It did not take bloggers long to figure out they can mass follow too.
This is where it became a train wreck.
Mass Following Cool? Or Not So Cool?
Mass following is spam in the worst sense; it’s what most people hate in its entirety. Actually, people hate any ad exposure that:
- is irrelevant to the needs of a client, or that is plucked out of context;
- happens when it’s good for the advertisers, not when the client is ready to perceive it;
- tries to manipulate users’ attention.
The latter requires further elaboration.
When you like something, it’s as if you said to someone “That’s the spirit! Keep it up. I dig what you do”. Same when you start following someone. “I’m in love with your account so much I want to follow you from now on” — you imply.
Put in other words, a user receives like or gets subscribed by a Business Account. So this user gets a metamessage saying “What an interesting account of yours. I like what you do!” Whether realizing it or not, he or she is acting on the social media script thinking “Oh, I am interesting. I draw attention”. So the user goes to check the person subscribed, and guess what? Users get custard pied. It’s this lame and dull “Buy It Now! Limited Time Only!” offer. 99% out of time it is. Is it effective? Hell, no. Because it’s nothing but direct manipulation that hits people.
It’s worthless in the long run. Clients won’t engage in your content if they were brought up here by manipulation. And would you want a ghost followers who won’t respond to any of your posts?
The more passive users you have, the quicker you get a severely low reach. Instagram tends to show people posts that are liked and commented more than the others. If all you hear is crickets, Instagram algorithm realizes you’re not interesting anymore, so it drops your reach.
People spend their lifetimes in social media because they watch and read what they like, they discuss what occupies their minds, they share what they engross their thoughts. And successful bloggers are the ones who build up their relationships with their audience. They speak with them.
With mass following you build up nothing but annoyance because of constant manipulation. And the more bloggers understand that it just spoils their image, the less the companies will try to sell it to newcomers, offering the mass following as an “effective method to increase followers.” And the day will come when bloggers will stop paying for this while the “real” bloggers will not have to deal with these problems when trying to build up relationships with their audience. We hope.
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