Why do my followers on Instagram keep going up and then down again?

Circleboom
7 min readSep 18, 2023

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Why do my followers on Instagram keep going up and then down again?

I love seeing “x started following you” on my Instagram notifications. You understand me if you are an avid Instagram user.

No matter why we use social media, increasing your reach and gaining new followers is a stimulus to spend more time and create more content. You may use Instagram and other social media channels:

  • to keep up with the agenda,
  • to sell your products,
  • to stalk your friends,
  • to share your daily life.

Sometimes people experience a different case on Instagram. They reach a number of followers, they standardize their content strategy but suddenly they see going up and down in their follower numbers.

Why does that happen? Why do my followers on Instagram keep going up and then down again?

If you experience fluctuations in your follower numbers and want to find out, you are in the right place! In this article, I will show you why your follower number on Instagram is going up and down and the possible solutions!

Why do the numbers of my Instagram followers keep changing?

Below I try to explain every possible reason why your Instagram follower number fluctuates.

#1 Follow/Unfollow

If you experience sudden ups and downs on your Instagram followers, you may be a victim of follow/unfollow practice. Some users on social media just follow people to make them follow them back. After a while, they unfollow and keep their following number at a desired level.

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This practice is not only about Instagram. You can see follow/unfollow on Twitter also. If you are unfollowed on Twitter and want to see who unfollowed you, you can utilize Circleboom!

If this is why your followers keep changing, you can’t do anything! But for the future, do not accept follow requests from suspicious profiles who can unfollow you without any reason in the future.

#2 Inactive or Fake Accounts

If you have many fake or inactive profiles in your followers, do not forget that Instagram purges fake and inactive accounts occasionally. You can experience sudden ups and downs in your follower number when Instagram removes fake and inactive profiles from the platform.

Fake and inactive accounts are not the problem of Instagram. All other social media platforms have many bots, spam, inactive, and ghost users. They are really problematic because when you try to set a strategy for your content or ads, you need to estimate impressions and engagement in return.

However, fake and inactive followers cause miscalculations in your expectations. So, you should find and remove these fake and inactive profiles on every social media platform.

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Circleboom helps you conduct a very effective Twitter follower audit to spot fake and inactive, and then you can remove them if you wish!

#3 Big Changes in Your Account

If you recently made significant changes in your Instagram profile like username, profile picture, bio, etc. some followers can decide to unfollow you. This doesn’t happen frequently but you can experience it once.

#4 Content Strategy

Most of your followers follow you for your content. If you change your content strategy suddenly, you will see sudden changes in your follower number. It can go up or down, depending on the success of your new Instagram content strategy.

If you want to grow your Instagram followers, you should be creating eye-catching, engaging content and you should do this continuously. To be successful on the platform, you need to use an Instagram feed planner.

Circleboom has the best tools and features to plan, design and share your Instagram content for your multiple accounts in one dashboard.

You can use Circleboom’s AI Instagram Post Generator to auto-generate Instagram images and captions on any given topic. So that, you can easily find captivating photos and words to attract the attention of other users.

AI Instagram Content Generator

Auto-generate Instagram posts with Canva and ChatGPT on Circleboom!

TRY CIRCLEBOOM NOW

Once you prepared your Instagram post, you can post it immediately or schedule it for a later time. Or, you can set time intervals and automate your Instagram posting.

You should follow these steps to create your Instagram posts on Circleboom:

Step #1: Log in to Circleboom Publish with your account.

If you don’t already have a Circleboom account, you can get one in seconds for free!

Circleboom Publish

Step #2: If this is your first time using Circleboom Publish, you will see several options for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google Business Profile.

Select Instagram and connect your account(s). You can add multiple accounts from each platform.

Social media platforms in one place

Step #3: You should click on the “Create New Post” button to create Instagram posts. As you see, there are specific post options for each platform. You can choose Instagram Specific & Reels, too.

You’ll proceed to account selection.

Create New Post

Step #4: The social media image generator on Circleboom has 4 options: Canva, Unsplash, Giphy, and Google Photos. You can also upload your own files to send them directly.

Canva is where you can curate and design images as you wish. You can apply ready-made templates, filters, effects, and other kinds of elements to edit your image.

Canva dashboard

Also, you can use Unsplash to find auto-generated, high-quality images to share on your Instagram accounts.

Unsplash

Giphy is where you can generate high-quality GIF images for your auto-generated Instagram posts.

Giphy

Step #5: The next station is the social media text generator. Thanks to OpenAI integration, you can create auto-generated Instagram captions and all kinds of texts enriched by AI-generated hashtags, emojis, and other extras like grammar checks or translations.

OpenAI text generator

You can define the style of your words, warmth, etc., on Circleboom Publish.

AI Suggestions

You can also enrich your Instagram caption with extras like grammar fix, translations, CTA’s, etc.

AI Extras

Step #6: You can also use Circleboom Publish’s native Instagram hashtag generator to find, create, and save relevant and popular hashtag groups for your Instagram images and Reels.

Instagram Hashtag Generator

Once your ai-generated caption is ready, you can add it to your Instagram post immediately.

AI text generator

Step #7: Once you create your Instagram posts and add your auto-generated captions, you can share them immediately Or schedule them for the future.

Also, you can set time intervals and automate your Instagram posts.

Schedule your posts for the best time

That’s it! You are now an Instagram expert and you can grow your followers without the fear of losing them again!

#5 Technical Issues

Sometimes Instagram has some technical problems that can affect follower counts of profiles. This will be temporary and your real follower count will be set once the problem is solved.

I listed 5 main possible reasons why the number of your Instagram followers can go down or up. Fluctuations in your profile could happen for this reason.

If you think one of these caused sudden drops in your follower count on Instagram, you should immediately take action and stop it!

Final Words

Sometimes, the number of your followers on Instagram can go up and down suddenly, and you don’t know the reason. I created a list of possible reasons for these sudden fluctuations in your Instagram followers.

I think the most effective one is changes in content strategy. If you start to publish new types of content, you may lose some of your followers who don’t like your new content.

Circleboom’s Instagram Content Planner helps you during the whole post-creation process with its AI tools, scheduling, and automation features. You can also create posts on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile with Circleboom at affordable prices.

Originally published at https://circleboom.com on September 18, 2023.

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