Instagram Changes November 2018

“Why is my Instagram engagement so low all of a sudden” …”Have I been shadow banned on Instagram?” …”Why have I stopped growing on Instagram?!”

The struggle has always been real when growing your following on Instagram. However, does it seem like your Instagram engagement and growth has come to a complete halt these past few weeks?! I thought it was just me until I heard the same complaints from a few blogger friends.

What gives?

I have had a mostly steady growth since the beginning. In fact, after 2,000 followers I grew at an even quicker rate. Once November hit, my growth stopped around 2,590. I ended up gaining maybe 5 followers a day, and losing around 3. It was snail pace for sure. Some days I would lose followers (totally normal by the way!) and not gain any. I could not break 2600 no matter what I tried. I thought it was just a phase, so I upped my Instagram game a bit.

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I was the most active I’ve ever been on Instagram, but I still went down from 2590 to about 2560. I am used to be un-followed by bloggers doing the “follow & unfollow” strategy, but I’ve never seen a period of no growth to make up for all of the un-follows. I knew something was up!

After doing a little side research to see if Instagram is having any algorithm changes, I found something well… super important. 

Instagram Revealed a Huge Bombshell for all Influencers and Bloggers.

According to Instagram’s blog post,  (yeah…did you know Instagram has a blog?! ’cause I didn’t.) they are now cracking down on accounts that use third party apps to boost their popularity. This refers to bots, paid likes, paid followers and all that good-but-really-bad stuff.

This is great news for companies wanting to work with honest influencers, but it’s kind of bad news for influencers whom may have got a little extra help along the way. In all honesty, I am glad they are cracking down on this! It creates honest competition.

Heres what really confused me: I have never purchased likes or followers and I don’t use any Instagram bots, so everything should be good in the neighborhood, right?! Then why is my engagement an growth at it’s lowest?! Again, what gives?!

Harmful Third Party Apps on Instagram

After reading through the blog post, Instagram noted “There are some accounts that may have unknowingly shared their login credentials with a third-party app.” Could that be me?! Once I checked my settings and saw a few third party apps like Reward Style, Shopstyle Collective and WordPress. All of those apps had minimal access to my profile. Those are fine.

After scrolling to the bottom, lo and behold I  saw that I was connected to a few third party apps that were given access to follow, like and comment on other photos.  I have no indication on whether this happened or not and didn’t even realize I had given these apps any access to these things. These are the apps that Instagram is cracking down on! The ones that help us gain popularity in dishonest robotic ways…

Note: I share how to view these third party apps and revoke their access to your account at the bottom of this post

These third party apps that I had unknowingly granted liking/commenting/following access to were simply apps that tracked my growth, un-follows and analytics. I thought they were harmless, but they may have been doing more harm than good as of late. Honestly, I didn’t even remember installing some of those apps. You must check these!!

Did I see improved engagement after Removing these Apps?

After revoking access to these apps I noticed a small (but perhaps big in the long run) change within the next few days. My follower count began to increase daily. The unfollow count remained the same, but like I said this is normal! They are really just bloggers doing the follow-unfollow method, so I just don’t take it personally anymore. I got back up from 2560 to 2590. Shadow ban lifted?! I think so!

Secondly, my blog traffic from Instagram increased. It is definitely not where it was prior to November, but it is way better since it took the hit.

What this means for you as an influencer/blogger:

I really believe Instagram is beginning to “shadow ban” accounts that are using these third party apps. It is too coincidental that all these bloggers are struggling with engagement. Even more so, it is too coincidental that I saw immediate improvement in my own growth once I removed these apps.

Here is the biggest takeaway for all of you bloggers and influencers, “accounts that continue to use third-party apps to grow their audience may see their Instagram experience impacted”

You can read Instagram’s Announcement here.

Final Thoughts

I really think we have nothing to worry about as long as we aren’t purchasing likes, follows, using bots or giving too much account access to these third party apps.

Instagram wants us to use the App, so why would they make natural growth impossible? In fact, I have a feeling they are going to start to place the honest and natural growing accounts above the not so natural growing accounts.

Companies may even feel a little more comfortable reaching out to micro-influencers, since they will be able to see which accounts have a real following. I truly believe this is for the best!

However, If you are still having trouble building a following on Instagram check out my post: Instagram Tips: How to get Your first 1,000 Followers I took my Instagram from 80 followers to over 1k in around a month!

How to see which APPS have access to commenting, liking and following & how to revoke access.

1. Go to Instagram.com on your desktop computer

2. Click on your Profile, then “Settings”

3. Click “Authorized Apps”

4. Click “Revoke Access” to any of these Third Party Apps that list  “commenting, liking and following” below “Permissions”.

Note: I did not revoke LiketoKnow.it’s access, because they don’t have “commenting, liking or following” listed in the permissions. (I already revoked access to all the apps that had these listed, so I couldn’t screen shot, sorry!)

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