Instagram active users are growing day by day; as of April 2024, the monthly active users of Instagram are 2 billion, and it will be growing drastically by 2028. Even after a big audience, why are your Instagram followers not growing? In this blog, we will discover the 7 biggest Mistake that are stopping your Instagram followers growth.
Why do you need to fix these mistakes?
Before moving towards the actual reasons, let's discuss how these mistakes will affect your business on Instagram:
Lower Your Business Reach
If you are making these 7 biggest mistakes, it will surely lower your Instagram growth by 47%. Not just that, it will reduce the number of organic leads that are usually a free source of revenue for a business.
Revenue Loss
Either you have created an Instagram account as an influencer or you have any business goals; these mistakes can make you suffer revenue loss by decreasing the potential customers or viewers of your account.
Loosing the Numbers Game
Many of us rely on the data provided by Instagram to measure the growth of business, whether its number of followers, likes, comments, saves, or complex analytical data of your audience insights. If you are making these mistakes, you might be seeing wrong insights of your account
Now you have realized why it is necessary to take care of these mistakes that are stopping your Instagram growth.
List of 7 Biggest Mistakes that are stopping Instagram Growth
1. Incomplete Profile
An incomplete profile is a critical signal to Instagram that you are not worthy of your audience. The more accurate information you put on your Instagram profile, the easier it is for the Instagram audience to understand your audience.
With an updated version of Instagram, there are a lot more options to customize your profile. It is recommended you fill in every single detail before you jump on creating your first post.
Compare these two Instagram profiles, one on the left with incomplete details and one on the right with all the details filled in. Which do you think feels more authentic?
We both know the right one catches your attention. That's how Instagram also scans your profile. It checks your profile name, category, description, links, profile pictures, etc. The more details, the better.
You can read about how to create profile in Instagram help center here
If you haven't yet finished your profile creation, then go ahead, do it first, and stay ahead in the game.
2. Living in Nostalgia
Sounds crazy, but many of us are still living in the nostalgia and keep creating the posts like we used to do 5 years earlier.
There is a huge difference between Instagram of 2010 and Instagram of 2024. We have tons of new features for post creation, like
- Multimedia Carousel
- Dynamic Stickers
- Lenses and Filters
- Remix Reels
- Video and Post Grids
- Multi Screen Live Streams
- Crossposting
- Collaboration tools
- Post Scheduling
- Creator Tools
It is NOT a hidden truth that Instagram created these features for you to use and make your content interesting. Still, we are living in the past using the tools of Past.
Many of us are expert in big creation tools like Adobe Premier, Adobe Photoshop, etc. and theres nothing wrong on these heavy softwares but,
Using Instagram, new features mark you as a Trendy Creator and Instagram automatically promotes your content because it wanted to promote its platform's new features to other users. Sounds like a plan, right?
Let's move on to the next mistakes out of 7 Biggest Mistakes that Stopping Your Instagram Followers Growth
3. Time is Money
If you have come out of nostalgia, its your chance to save time because for Instagram, Time is Money. It might sound bad, but Instagram wants its users to spend more and more time on its platform. So what's the mistake?
The mistake is your content is not holding users to spend more time on Instagram.
If you are creating Reels of 15s before, make it 1 minute long. If you are posting 10 pics before, make it 20. If you have never gone live on Instagram before, go live even if you don't have a lot of things to share. WASTE OTHER'S TIME IN A GOOD WAY.
The more time your content holds Instagram users, the more Instagram will show your content to others.
According to a blog posted on Oberlo, the average time spent by each user per month on Instagram is about 17 hours but its still less than Other big platforms like YouTube and Tiktok which are rivals of Facebook and Instagram
Its clear from the stats that Instagram wants people to spend more time on its platform because the more time users spend, the more money Instagram can make through advertising.
4. Always Selling
You definitely need money to run a business, but that doesn't mean that you keep selling all the time in your content. The 80-20 rule says that your content should provide 80% value and sell only 20% of the time.
There's two way to achieve it
- You create 80% of your posts as informational or entertaining and 20% of posts for selling.
- You divide your each post in 80-20, start with an entertaining or informative aspect, and sell at last.
Always selling will make your account non-engaged, which will decrease the reach. Instead, if you make your account a spot of entertainment or education, it will automatically give you new leads every day.
5. Black or White
No matter how colorful the Instagram logo is, there's only two Black or White aspects to it. Black includes all entertaining stuff (girls, food, traveling, luxury, sex, nudity, pleasure), and White includes all educational topics (teaching, mentoring, resources, courses, books, etc).
Depending on your business or account category, you need to choose any of these two paths and follow them through out your content. If you think your product is for pleasure, then create entertaining content. If you think your business is to enlighten people, then provide informative content.
Clarifying the path before you start your account will make it easier for you to create your content strategy.
6. Assumption Vs Action
This is the biggest mistake out of the 7 mistakes that are stopping your Instagram growth. Most of us assume what our followers like and want, and we don't take action by creating content.
We all have heard that people prefer quality over quantity; this statement is valid for those who have already tried many things and found out the better working content for their account.
If your Instagram account is pretty new, then go for Quantity over Quality. This will be your testing period to find out which content works and which doesn't
You will find out that most of the assumption that you made is a myth. The reality is something else.
In the fight of Assumption vs. Action, action always wins on Instagram.
7. No Money, No Honey
The one and only rule that applies in this materialistic virtual world is No Money, No Honey. Facebook started with the idea that it would connect people, but later on, when it got monetized, it became a money-making machine.
If you want to grow your Instagram followers, don't always rely on organic marketing; put a little budget into paid promotion.
You can ask a marketer to find the right audience for you and then run a lifetime campaign along with your organic content. This way, you will boost your organic reach very easily.
But remember not to waste too much money to buy followers and likes; just focus on reach and create the right content for your right audience.Conclusion
In this blog, we have seen the 7 biggest mistakes that are stopping your Instagram followers growth. May be you have already corrected some mistakes, and may be some are still remaining. Its a forever learning process. For that, you can bookmark our blog to get the latest tips to grow your Instagram account.