However, a fake Instagram account can sometimes appear to be real. Most likely, we’re looking at a ghost account. In the example below, this account has no profile photo or posts, and it’s following more than 2,000 people but has no followers. They may also have a username that looks like gibberish or is composed of random numbers. The Instagram ghost followers that are easiest to spot have no profile picture, no posts, and a high ratio of people-they-follow to followers.
He estimates that 10% to 20% of brand accounts’ followers are fakes. “All large Instagram profiles have some percentage of ghost followers,” says David Dundas, founder of influencer marketing agency HelloConvo. In 2019, the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance conducted an audit of 100 of the most successful Instagram accounts and found that up to half of all the accounts following celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ellen DeGeneres, and Ariana Grande weren’t real at all. Just because you didn’t purchase them doesn’t mean these fakes aren’t lurking in your follower count. All those fake followers must be created though, and this process is often automated. These accounts exist because people are willing to pay for followers, which has created a market for follower accounts. However, they’re often social bots with no actual users behind them. Sometimes these accounts are created by real people who simply don’t use their account. However, they never interact with your content. Ghost followers are inactive or fake Instagram accounts that may follow you, contributing to your overall follower count.
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So here’s everything you need to know about ghost followers, including how to find them, remove them, and avoid them. Odds are your brand’s Instagram also has ghost followers that can hurt your credibility and lower your engagement rate. But not just because they were infrequent users or were uninterested in her posts - thousands weren’t real followers at all. The problem? Lots of Giovanetti’s followers weren’t liking and commenting on her content. Meanwhile, the average engagement rate for an Instagram business profile is 4.7%. Why? Because after conducting a quality audit of its account, founder Fab Giovanetti made a startling discovery: Its engagement rate - the percentage of followers who engage with its posts - was a mere 0.1%. In fact, Creative Impact Collective, a consulting membership for small-business owners, recently deleted 20,000 of its Instagram followers. It’s easy to assume that, when it comes to Instagram, the more followers you have, the better.