Bots, ghost followers, spam messages… THESE are what's hurting your engagement on Instagram.

The algorithm judges content by likes, comments, shares, and saves… So bots are no bueno because they distort engagement from real followers!

If you're ready to do some spring cleaning for your Instagram account, listen here boo.

Today, you'll learn why fake followers and bots may be targeting your account, and exactly how to get rid of them so your posts get shown to people who actually engage.

Let’s start with how to identify a bot or fake follower from a real beating heart.

Here are the signs your most recent follower is a bot:

1. They only have a few posts
2. They are following a lot of people
3. They do not have a profile photo
4. Their username is a bunch of letters + numbers mixed together

Now that you’ve identified they are a bot… Why are they targeting your account?

There are two ways bots and fake accounts that will target you. They are 1) if you use large hashtags with millions of entries or 2) as soon as you follow a very popular celebrity/athlete/influencer.

Bots target your account to either sell you something or follow you to legitimize their profile.

Okay, now we know who they are and why they’re targeting us… Now let’s talk about how to clean up your account without using a third party app (yes boo, we’re talking old school!):

1. Spend 10-15 minutes every day removing them from your account.
2. Invest in a virtual assistant who will do this for you!

Throughout this post, you might be wondering why does this matter?

>>It is important to remove bots and fake followers from your Instagram account because the algorithm gauges your content by engagement.<<

When Instagram shows your content to fake or bot followers and they do not engage, the algorithm will assume it is irrelevant and not show your content to others.

>>Something that could take just 15 minutes a day could massively effect the impact you can make on Instagram.<<

So friend, take the time to remove the fake followers and focus on the people who engage.

Even though it may be hard for you to remove hundreds or even thousands of followers from your account, forget about the metrics.

Remember: your account will go farther with 1,000 highly engaged followers than 10,000 fake accounts and passive followers just scrolling on by.