Spam Purge: Hitting Instagram's Biggest Accounts Hard

Instagram: a self-promoting social media hub. Whether you're just another non-famous Instagram user or a well-known brand or socialite, Instagram is your go-to for putting your life or brand out there for the world to see. For individuals it's a way to express your creativity, share your life, or simply show off but for brands it's more than that, it can drive sales, increase site traffic, and spark conversation (Ridge, 2014).

As an Instagram user myself, I found my follower numbers increasing, at the time I thought it was my photography skills or my friend level or my semi-annoying use of hashtags...but I was wrong. Spam Accounts; they were the culprit for my increasing numbers and when Instagram noticed and eliminated these accounts from their app, my numbers dropped. 

 You'd think Instagram users would appreciate the deletion of spam accounts on their profiles in order to see a more accurate portrayal of their popularity or following but not ever user was amused. 

 According to Rich McCormick from the Verge.com, rapper Ma$e proceeded to delete his Instagram account when we went from having over 1 million followers to just over 100,000 due to the spam purge. While most will disregard this resolution to fake followers, many users have become upset. Apparently people can purchase Instagram followers through online sites to bump up their numbers (McCormick, 2014). When I first heard of this upset, I instantly had 2 questions: why are people so concerned with having tons of followers and are companies, brands, and 'celebrities' buying their followers to come off as more popular? 

 At first thought, some might believe that this might be damaging to brands that use Instagram as a way to connect with their customer but I believe, like Eric Brown from the article below, that this might be one of the best things that have happened to these brand accounts. The point isn't how many "followers" you have but more importantly how well your brand is connecting with the actual followers and customers you have. 

 For those of you who don't believe in Instagram and social media in general to be a successful marketing tool for public figures and brands of all short, just look at the stats. According to a recent poll by L2, Instagram has the most "engagement and conversation from browser to shopper." (Gillett, 2014). I've included a diagram (above) that shows the different statistics through adoption, engagement, and content of a brand. While companies are starting to jump on the Instagram bandwagon due to it's astonishing numbers, it still remains one of the most underused forms of social media available (Gillett, 2014). Either brands haven't placed Instagram as one of their top priorities or they haven't considered using it at all. While Instagram may not be for every brand, they should consider it's 300 million users as a reason to start. 

To avoid spam "followers", companies should invest time in their social media platforms. By setting accounts to private, companies are able to better select who can follow their brand and weed out the spam accounts in the process. Although that might take up a bit of time and resources, brands should be able to easily access the same program Instagram used to get rid of all the inactive or spam accounts.

While most brands may not have the time or resources to engage in such time consuming work, there are alternate ways to hone in on the true "followers" by connecting with them through their fans accounts. Benefit Cosmetics have done an amazing job with engaging with their true followers by having fans submit photos of themselves using products that Benefit supplies. 11,900 fan submissions later, Benefit is now able to show the Instagram world that not only are they a brand but they are a brand that real people use (Gillett, 2014). The article by Rachel Gillett, gives 7 tips, from promoting new products to holding follower competitions and contests, for Instagram brands to adopt for optimal brand exposure and connection to followers.

The big debate; which is more effective, Instagram or Twitter. After doing some research into what others have found, my intuition was correct. With more impressions, likes, and views, Instagram takes over the social media world. The graph below shoes that although Instagram has less brand posts compared to twitter, they have a larger interaction on less content. So while companies are busy tweeting their hearts out, they could be spending time on other things while occasionally posting to their Instagram accounts (Elliott, 2014).

There is a great article by Socialbaker Analytics that compared Instagram and Twitter's post engagement and profile interactions and once again, Instagram blew Twitter out of the water. But why? Why is Instagram so much better than Twitter? In the article by Vindu Goel of the New York Times, Instagram not only has more users than Twitter but it also have more authorized accounts than Twitter and photo and video social media is what is in demand for marketing at this time (Goel, 2014). 

While both Instagram and Twitter have their pro's and con's, I believe that Instagram is a more effective social media platform for engaging with customers due to their ability to easily communicate with their followers and share images and in my opinion, images sell better than words.

Want to check out the article for yourself?

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Works Cited

Mairead Ridge

Nate Elliott

Rachel Gillett

Rich McCormick

Socialbakers

Vindu Goel