Those who are familiar with Instagram automation strategy would be aware of the process of following and unfollow strategy. In this strategy, you follow the users who are active and would be interested in your content. You wait for the follow back or you unfollow them after a few days. It’s one of the important strategies to increase Instagram followers on your account and has proved to be successful. It is a much better method than to buy Instagram followers.
But there is a catch here, it works mainly with automation tools. It’s time-consuming if you manually start following users and like their content. Often you can end up losing the “following hit block” which happens when you run out of a number of follows in an hour.
Not everyone will follow back
According to studies, there are chances of 20-30% of people following you back. These results have been found by tracking Instagram accounts. It measures all the details to ensure better results. There are multiple filters which are available in automation which allows you to reach the right audience, and follow only those who are interested in your content.
Without automation, the follow/unfollow method is unlikely to g et your desired results. There are studies done between manual and automation which has shown astonishing differences.
The manual following had just around 10% follow back whereas with automation it was around 20-30%. If you unfollow a user, there are chances that the user would unfollow you as well, but it happens only when the user is aware of it.
Instagram shows only the positive engagements like follow, like or share and does not share this information of unfollowing with the users.
Timing is critical
It’s important to give a sufficient time period to the user to follow you back. Your business can be hit hard if you unfollow them without giving enough time for them to follow back.
For example, you follow a user in the morning and they don’t log in until night, but you unfollow them. This results in a notification on their screen and when they checkout the notification it lets them know you have unfollowed them already and there are very fewer chances, that they would follow you.
Automate the process
Instagram limits the number of users you follow in a day. It’s very time-consuming to manually follow/unfollow hundreds of followers in a day. The best method to follow/unfollow is to use automation. The fear of using automation is that when noticed by Instagram, it can result in a temporary block on the account.
Instagram also limits the number of follow/unfollow you can do in an hour and for that matter how fast. According to Instagram limits, a user cannot have more than 7500 followers. You are allowed to follow around 20 users per hour and a maximum of 100-200 user in a day.
Takeaway
The Follow/Unfollow method can accelerate your Instagram growth but not when attempted, manually which is time-consuming and potentially cost intensive. Realizing that not everyone will follow you back, knowing when your ideal follower will be online, and automating the follow/unfollow process using software tools is the only way to compete on this uber-competitive platform.