If you unfollow someone on instagram then follow them again

As I expected, it was a waste of time.

The follow-unfollow method is probably the most common “hack” to grow on Instagram.

The idea is quite simple: you follow lots of accounts in your niche, and you unfollow them a few days later.

This method has been used for years on Instagram to grow accounts quickly on the platform. And the truth is, this method works. Some accounts grow hundreds of followers per week this way, and they gain a lot of social proof quickly. Needless to say, if you want to launch a company or a brand and if Instagram is supposed to be your primary marketing channel, using this method seems to be a no brainer.

With the years, this method is being used less and less because Instagram is now able to recognize if an account uses this technique.

However, I noticed that some accounts were still using it and that some “experts” are still recommending doing it. So I decided to try it.

The Follow-Unfollow Method on Instagram: How it Works

The point of this technique is to follow lots of accounts in your niche every day while hoping that these accounts will follow you back, and also hoping these accounts will be interested in your content in the future.

After a few days, whether these accounts follow you back or not, you unfollow them. Doing that allows you to lower your follower/following ratio, making your account look cleaner. It also helps with keeping a feed somewhat manageable.

When you follow someone on Instagram, they get a notification. While checking out their notifications, they are likely to check out your profile and follow you back if they are interested in what you do, or if they just feel the social pressure of following you back because you followed them first.

On paper, this method looks great and seems effective. But it comes with its downsides.

Why the Follow-Unfollow Method Can Compromise your Instagram Account

Instagram doesn’t like people using shortcuts and “hacks” to grow their accounts.

The reason for that is quite simple: if you can hack your growth, you don’t need to buy ads to Instagram.

Instagram is making it harder and harder to grow on the platform to push its users to pay to get their reach and engagement back organically.

If you use a “hack” or any other sort of shortcut to growing quicker than everyone else, Instagram will not like it and will make sure that the method doesn’t work for you anymore.

Instagram can now detect how many accounts you follow and unfollow every day, and they will action-block you if they think you’re interacting too much in a day or an hour.

If you’re action-blocked, you can’t do anything with your account anymore besides waiting a few hours or a few days, depending on the penalty you received.

If you get action-blocked too often, Instagram can even delete your account and make it inaccessible permanently.

Basically: you have to be careful with this method because it can have pretty severe consequences.

My Experience Following then Unfollowing People On Instagram

I started with an old Instagram theme page that I stopped using. It had around 2.7k followers. I started posting again to show Instagram that I was active.

After a couple of days and six posts published, I started using the follow-unfollow method.

I was doing it all by hand. Bots seem not to be working well, and they seem to draw a lot of attention to your account. So I decided to keep it simple and free by doing it myself.

I was somewhat shy at first, and I wasn’t following lots of accounts every day. Progressively, I started following around 20 people per hour. I didn’t get action-blocked for a while.

My first surprise was that the method was working. I quickly averaged 250 new followers per week, which is reasonably good. But my engagement rate seemed lower. My number of followers was increasing, and the average number of likes I was making was the same.

After a couple of weeks, after reaching 3.5k followers, I decided to stop and see how my account would do without following the follow-unfollow method. That’s when I was shocked: my engagement dropped very significantly, I wasn’t getting any more followers, and I was even losing some.

I went from an average of 450 likes per picture to 80, and I was losing around 10 followers a day.

My account became invisible. I wasn’t ranking on hashtags. I wasn’t featured on the explore page. I was trapped; my account was now dead.

I tried posting more than usual. I tried curating better content; nothing was bringing me back to the engagement rate I had.

My Thoughts on the Follow-Unfollow Method

I have to say, I was surprised to see my account grow this quickly. But at what cost?

Once I stopped using the method, my account was dead, and no one ever saw my posts. I was left with a bigger account than the one I started with, but the engagement rate was laughable, and the followers weren’t even staying.

While I think the follow-unfollow method can help very small accounts get some decent exposure to get started (I’m talking about accounts with less than 1,000 followers), the follow-unfollow method then just seems to do more harm than good.

The main issue is that once you get started with the follow-unfollow method, you get stuck and you have to keep using the technique not to get penalized. No big deal, you might say, but what if Instagram decides to punish these accounts more severely? Or what if they can now instantly ban accounts using this method? Also, even if growing 250 followers a week is rather good, the growth becomes limited after a while. You can’t scale the follow-unfollow practice and you have to be very careful with the number of people you follow every day to make sure your account doesn’t get banned.

The follow-unfollow method is just a shortcut. It gives you quick gratification, but it doesn’t serve your account in the long run, and it isn’t the best way to grow on the platform.

Do you feel like you tried everything to grow on Instagram? Hopefully, what follows will be the last thing you will have to do to reach your goals.

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