Do you ever feel like you’re scrolling through your Instagram feed and all you’re seeing are accounts that aren’t relevant to you? It happens. Usually after a while of following the same people. The accounts may have been relevant to your industry, niche or community once but perhaps they’ve changed direction or are no longer posting the type of content which works for you. If this is the case, are you destined to scrolling through the tumbleweed of your Instagram feed forever more?
The answer is a big resounding no. With a new follower feature that Instagram are rolling out, you can actually see who you interact with the most and the least in order to curate your feed. Allowing you, essentially, to connect better.
Loved and lost (a follower)
Finding out which accounts you interact with the most and the least couldn’t be easier with Instagram‘s new follower feature. All you need to do is go into your profile and click on your ‘Following’ list. At the top of this list will be two options: ‘Least Interacted With’ and ‘Most Shown in Feed’. From here you can use these lists to manipulate your feed a little.
By this we mean going through both lists and unfollowing accounts which are no longer relevant to you. Don’t forget that you can mute certain accounts if you feel like you’re seeing too much of them but would rather not completely unfollow; to do so, simply click on the three dots next to the ‘Following’ button and the option to mute and / or manage notifications for that account will appear.
You can also sort by who you followed first, so if you want to clear out some of your earliest adds, you can do so. This will keep your feed fresh and relevant. (Ed’s note: booooom).
Find your favourite followers
Similarly, you may find accounts in your ‘least interacted with’ list that you suddenly realise you haven’t seen in your feed for a while. That pesky algorithm does sometimes get it wrong and hide accounts that we do actually love.
If you find this to be the case, often the remedy is just a simple click through to their profile and dropping some love on their posts in the form of a double tap or a comment. Once you’ve got some of those (24) fingers working on interacting with the account again, the algorithm should hopefully deem it fit to show their posts in your feed again.
Is unfollowing unfriendly?
Of course, you may feel slightly mean unfollowing certain accounts, particularly if you’ve been following them for a while, but there’s no need to feel this way. Firstly, hello aforementioned mute button 👋. That’s what the mute option is there for, after all.
Secondly, by building a feed and stories that you engage with more frequently, you’ll actually be creating a better social media community for yourself and those you follow. You may have heard it said that when it comes to social media engagement, bigger isn’t always better; it’s always more beneficial to have a small, engaged community of followers in the right target market than a large number of followers who have no relevance to you and are not going to buy into your brand.
It’s also being suggested that by unfollowing irrelevant accounts, Instagram will be able to boost ad views, because rather than scrolling or tapping forward at the speed of light, if you’re more engaged with what you’re viewing, you’ll be more likely to take in ads, too.
Connect better
Above all else, no one owes anyone else a follow. At the end of the day, it is your Instagram feed. You need to make it work for you.
And if you find you’re on the end of the unfollowing yourself? Don’t be bitter, remember the engaged smaller community and perhaps take the rollout of this new follower feature as an opportunity to shake up your content to create more compelling images and videos for your remaining followers.
All fingers and thumbs when it comes to your Instagram content? Get in touch with 24 fingers. We’ll get you to the top of your followers’ favourites in no time
