5 Reasons Being Unfollowed on Social Media is Positive
Most people get angry and upset when they lose followers on social media
Of course, different people take it differently.
Some people take it personally and wonder what they did wrong.
Others write an angry message to the person who unfollowed them.
I get it!
When you get unfollowed on social media, it sucks!
There you are, trying to grow your followers and page, but when you get unfollowed, you’re doing the opposite.
But what if I told you that getting unfollows is a good thing?
Yep, you heard that right!
Getting unfollowed is actually good for your social media page, and here’s why:
1. They weren’t relevant
As a brand – or someone who is trying to grow their account, relevance is everything.
Many people believe that the more followers the better – and so did I when I first started out with social media.
However, that couldn’t be further away from the truth.
Essentially, you’re using social media for one reason, and one reason only.
To drive sales!
Now, you might say “But Jens, I don’t agree. I use social media to increase brand awareness”
Or something similar at least.
But what does brand awareness ultimately lead to?
More sales of course!
There’s no point in having thousands of followers if none of them actually care about your industry or what you do.
Why?
Because they’ll never buy from you, or even be interested in the content you share.
Of course, driving sales is not everything.
2. They were bots
Every single follower you lose is a punch in the stomach.
At least that’s how a lot of people feel.
But have you taken a moment to think about what types of followers you are losing?
Heck, you can even find out exactly who unfollowed you with the help of various tools.
When you realize that many of the followers you lose is fake accounts and bots, you might just feel a little bit better.
Bots are the least attractive followers on social media.
They never engage with your posts.
And…
They aren’t even real people.
They’re just fake accounts created by computers.
Who would want to be followed by those?
I know I don’t.
Inevitably, you’re going to accumulate a few fake followers over time – whether you like it or not.
Unless you actively block them as soon as you spot them.
Social media plattforms are actively trying to reduce spam by banning fake accounts and this is also a reason to why you are seeing unfollows.
In these cases, the truth isn’t that you’re getting unfollowed.
It is that the fake accounts are being banned.
You can get an estimate of how many fake followers you have on your social media accounts with the help of various tools.
Because I don’t know exactly what social platform you are most interested in, it would be weird if I shared a “fake follower checker” tool
3. Your engagement increases
The people who unfollow you are usually people who doesn’t engage with your content. The most common reason to this is because they aren’t interested in what you post.
Simply put, they were ghost followers who didn’t engage with your content or hardly didn’t pay attention to your posts.
When they unfollow you, your follower count may decrease.
However, your engagement rate stays the same because they never engaged with your content!
It’s far more valuable to have a few highly engaged followers than to have a ton of followers who never engage with you.
That’s the reason why micro-influencers are so popular today.
Not because they have a huge following, but because they’ve got a small yet highly engaged follower base that listens and trusts every single word of the influencer.
As a brand, you want that too!
By having a smaller and more engaged audience, it’s easier to build a community around yourself and the people who follow you.
4. You get more engaged followers left
As mentioned in point number one, normally, the people who unfollow you are completely irrelevant to your brand.
This means that they will never engage with the posts you share.
In short, they’ll act like ghost followers.
The result of the point above is that you are left with more engaged followers.
5. They were going to leave you anyway
No matter how great content you share, people will unfollow you.
They just weren’t a good fit for your page or niche.
Whether you’ve created a social media account for your own enjoyment or for your business, you’ll attract people
It’s important that you continue with your content strategy even if a few people unfollow you.
It’s only when you see a trend that people are starting to unfollow you for your content that you might want to evaluate your strategy.
If you’re trying to please everyone, you’ll end up posting a bunch of random posts that aren’t relevant to your business or niche.
This is not a good path to walk.
Make sure you stay true to your niche, and you’ll attract people who really matter.
Why people choose to unfollow you
There are tons of reasons that people unfollow you, and yes, not all of them will be for positive reasons.
If I’d list all the reasons to why people unfollow you on social media and explain them, we’d be here all day. So I’ll skip that for this time.
However, Here’s a summary of the top 11 reasons you are being unfollowed on social media:
- You share content your followers don’t want to see
- You don’t follow back
- You stop posting
- You post too often
- You aren’t social
- You share too many promotional messages
- You use slang that doesn’t suit your brand
- You share low-quality content
- You are tricking your followers
- You don’t respond to messages
- Your followers are getting banned
Here’s an in-dept article on why you are being unfollowed on social media and what to do about it.
Conclusion
Don’t be sad when people unfollow you. Most of the time, an unfollow isn’t tied to a hatred of anger. It’s normally just that your posts no longer aligns with your followers’ interests.
Instead of getting angry or sad, see this as a great opportunity to build your community’s bond even stronger and make your audience even more engaged.
