Hey loves! I have been getting a lot of DMs about my reason for changing from 14k account to zero followers account. So I figured it was about time to give you my explaination, 10 years later LOL.
I slowly transitioned earlier this year, mainly because of my sponsorship deals that I had at the time. Now I feel like a free bird! I never imagined that I would be SO HAPPY with my decision.
There are several reasons why I left my old account:
#1: FAKE FOLLOWERS & ENGAGEMENT.
Ok, so I will be completely honest with you. There was a time I got frustrated. I thought “My content is not the problem, I just need more exposure” and that’s when I started to look into strategics to get my name out there. I came across some Youtube videos giving advices about buying a small number of followers to gain social proof = people think I’m cool = people are more likely to follow me. So I gave in, bought some fake followers but that’s when I discovered a new issue. My followers count doesn’t match my engagement. I did some more research and found out that there is an app that will like and comment multiple posts at once. At that time, I didn’t really think I could get banned or marked as a spammer for such behavior. I thought that I AM a real person, and I’m using the app every day so IG would consider me as a valuable user. Oh man, I was wrong. This is the main reason why my account is destroyed at this point.
#2 TELEGRAM ENGAGEMENT GROUPS.
Hold on, stop right there. These groups are toxic. Let me explain why you should STAY AWAY.
You get invited to a closed group conversation with lots of other bloggers in your niche. There are some rules you need to follow in order to benefit from the group. Most common rule are “Like + comment every single post last 24 hours and you can only post every 24 hour.” What this means is that you need to spread some love to all posts before posting your own. It was fun in the beginning. You feel like a superstar when all the big bloggers say how nice you look in your posts.
BUT this is not good for your reputation to Instagram. Look at it this way: You enter a post through a link (which is a strange way to find posts on IG), then you follow it up by using all features after 2 seconds of looking at it. Then you LEAVE the picture and less than a minute later you find a new post through a different link. Hmm, weird huh? Instagram knows there is something fishy going on. You act like a robot and you expect IG to reward you for your human behaviour. C’mon people! This is abuse at its worst. And while you are in it, you are so lost and you spend AT LEAST 1 hour spamming all posts before you can receive some love back. Somewhere deep down in your heart it must feel wrong? Why even bother going through this when it will just crush your account anyways…
#3 LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
I never thought of IG as a business, nor do view it as it today. I played around and never thought I had to be aware of certain rules. I kept uploading and deleting the same picture over and over, up to 10 times a day at its worst, lol. Keep in mind that this was before Planoly or UNUM apps were a thing. So this was my way to see if the picture would make a good fit to my feed or not. Over time I realized that when I did that, my posts where getting less exposure compared to the times I uploaded without deleting it beforehand.
So after reading all this, Do I need to delete my account too? No.
Would I recommend being conscious with every move on Instagram? Yes, if you want to grow organically and in a frequent speed.
Please don’t forget: Instagram is a big guessing game. What I shared with you here is not necessarily how everything works. Nobody knows how the algorithm operates – but that is the whole point of it! If people knew, then we’d all take advantage of it. I made this decision because I know that when you get so many strikes over several years, it is hard to build trust again. I felt it was my time to clean up my dirty past and start all over again.
Talk to you later,
Florentina
