Imagine waking up on one pleasant day, you sit at your desk to start your work but as soon as you open your engagement analytics you realize that your engagement has reduced visibly and you have lost followers. A pleasant day does not look pleasant anymore now, does it? Well, don’t worry. You aren’t the only one who faced this, in the past few months a lot of users were struck by this silent disaster. The only possible explanation people discovered was the Shadowban theory.
If haven’t stumbled across this term, let me elaborate on it for you. In this blog, we will read the following:
- What is an Instagram shadowban?
- Why were they developed?
- How to test if you have been hit by Instagram shadowban?
- Tips to avoid and recover from the shadowban
- Conclusion.
What Is An Instagram Shadowban?
To Shadowban your account means to decrease your content visibility in a way that you don’t realize right away. It starts off slow and slowly gulps down your entire content visibility, thereby affecting your engagement score.
Although, your content will be seen it is more likely to be seen by people who follow your page. In addition, the primary way in which you can check for shadowban is by reviewing how much content is actually displayed in the hashtags you used.
Hence, the reach and visibility are affected.
A lot of users found this very frustrating, it’s like someone spilled water over all their hard work. As time passed by, people developed ways to recover from the damage and also ways to avoid it. But before we get into that we should understand why did the Instagram developers feel the need to develop the shadowban algorithm.
Why Was The Shadowban Algorithm Developed?
Instagram’s Take.
Despite complaining or raising queries regarding the issue, Instagram refused that they did anything of this sort. Furthermore, they refuted the existence of shadowban. But, the outrage and backlash they received eventually made them look into the matter and finally published a statement on their Facebook page
“We understand users have experienced issues with our hashtag search that caused posts to not be surfaced. We are continuously working on improvements to our system with the resources available. When developing content, we recommend focusing on your business objective or goal rather than hashtags.”
– Instagram Team.
Although, they directly did not admit its existence they at least notified us about its significance. So is Instagram Shadowban a myth? I guess we will never know.
Why the algorithm?
From Instagram’s point of view, it does make sense. The platform wishes to promote the most authentic and relevant content. Often, people add hashtags that aren’t even nearly connected to their posts just to increase their engagement. Instagram captures those spam posts and bans them from that particular hashtag. In conclusion, the biggest red flag for Instagram is using irrelevant hashtags and using a lot of hashtags so try to avoid that and reduce the risk of getting shadowbanned.
In addition to irrelevant hashtags, many marketers use bots to increase their engagement and follower reach. Now this is a direct community guideline violation, yet they do it thinking it would go unnoticed but much to their surprise Instagram took the initiative to slowly yet gradually eliminate their content from being displayed on explore page.
How To Test If You Have Been Shadowbanned?
Since Instagram denies the existence of shadowban, there isn’t a fixed method you can use to figure out whether or not your content is banned. But there are a few ways you can test it:
1. Put your posts to the test
Publish a new post with a trending hashtag. Test the content under that hashtag with a few people who don’t follow you. In case it doesn’t, you might want to investigate further.
2. Keep an eye on your hashtags
It has been confirmed by Instagram that they have hidden some controversial hashtags. You might have used one of these hashtags if you see an unhidden message under that hashtag.
3. Analyze the data from your Instagram insights
It is possible that you have been shadowbanned if your impressions and engagement are suddenly dropping outside of your followers.
Tips To Recover And Avoid Instagram Shadowban.
Now, if you want to maintain a stable Instagram reach and visibility to avoid being shadowbanned, you can do the following:
1. Avoid posting guideline provoking posts
As stated earlier, many marketers use bots to increase their followers as well as post likes and comments. This is a violation of Instagram guidelines. It is not easy to fool the algorithm so it is easy to play safe and not use those bots. Instead, try to increase your reach authentically.
2. Don’t grant permissions to unapproved third party apps
If you want to keep a track of your posts and see their performance, and so you download an unverified app that allows you to do so. You should think twice before doing so because not only does it strike a guideline violation but it also increases the chances of your account being hacked or taken down permanently.
By permitting the unverified to track your media and contacts, you are indirectly giving Instagram an algorithm to take down your posts or make them invisible on explore page.
3. Don’t use controversial hashtags
Avoid using hashtags that have been unapproved by Instagram. Always ensure that the hashtags you use aren’t restricted and if it does but you realized it later, just edit to remove it. Don’t dig your own grave!
4. Dodge being reported
One of the as to why your content might be taken down is because you got reported. And the only logical explanation is because the content was borderline sensitive or the algorithm mistook it for borderline content. Therefore, always ensure whatever you post is within the community guidelines.
What classifies as borderline sensitive content?
It is the type of content classified as inappropriate to Instagram guidelines. Now there isn’t a fixed number of classifications but here are some of them:
- Content depicting violence
- Graphic or shocking content
- Sexually suggestive content
- Posts with misinformation
- Spam messages
5. Take a break!
Users who got shadowbanned reported that taking a week off the platform helped them to restore the engagement and paved a way for a fresh start. You can try that as well (but always proceed with caution).
Conclusion…
To summarize, if you follow Instagram’s terms and conditions, you won’t have any problems. Taking precautions is always a better idea than becoming a victim of a shadowban on Instagram.