The Power of Bots

They never stop coming.

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Bots on Instagram are relentless, but it doesn't mean we should give up, or perhaps I should leave it up to you; maybe you like the extra heft they bring to your account. They stick to us like superglue; no matter how we try, getting rid of them is no easy feat. You might ask why deleting them is good; why can't they be a hanger-on? You know, like that guy at the party that kept talking' you up and wouldn't leave you alone? Here are some reasons to consider:

1. It makes your account look suspicious to not just IG but to potential followers (readers, publishers, authors) that you may actually want to follow you.

2. They decrease your engagement rate.

3. Even if they do engage, they make inauthentic comments that can damage you reputation and makes you look less than appealing.

4. If you desire to work with other brands now or in the future, they may not want to work with influencers who have a high percentage of bots.

5. Bots are sometimes deleted by IG, so you’ll have a negative trend in your follower count history. If you take care of it yourself, you’ll be in control of how many and when it happens.

How can you keep bots away? I have a feeling you aren’t going to like it.

1. The easiest way, make your account private. I know this is painful and seems counter-intuitive to gain followers, but making them request to follow you, makes it impossible for these leeches to latch on. After privatizing my account, I got 90 requests to follow me in one day. You can then confirm or delete them. Every one of them turned out to be a bot. How did I know these followers were bots? Read below.

2. If you don’t want to privatize and have a business IG account, find the profile you believe a bot and tap the three dot icon (…) and hit block. If you go through all your new followers each day, it won’t be too bad.

3. If you don’t want to privatize and have a regular IG account you can just remove the follower (delete them) each day.

How do you spot a bot?

1. They don't have any posts or very few under their profile, but they are following a huge number of people.

2. They have no profile pic or bio.

3. Their usernames are often letters and numbers mixed together.

4. If they have two of these characteristics, they are likely a bot.

What to do to clean up your existing account of bots:

1. After you know how to spot a bot, go through your present followers and identify those with two of the above characteristics. They are likely bots, and you can begin deleting them too. You didn't know your brother-in-law was a bot, did you? Okay, you had your suspicions. What I'm trying to say—proceed slowly; make sure you’re deleting a bot and not someone that has chosen to follow you who has a bad-looking IG account. When in doubt, leave them alone; you can return later and give them another look.

2. Don't remove too many bots at one time. You could set off alarm bells at IG. Deleting 50 or 60 at once would be plenty, although I've read articles saying you can remove 100 without a problem. I'd be more cautious.

I don't think this is going to fix the problem forever. I'll keep my IG account private for a couple of weeks and see if I can keep new bots from latching on, delete existing ones and then open my account again and see how it goes. I believe this will be a "cleaning process" one has to go through at least once a year, like spring cleaning.

I'm perplexed why IG isn't doing more to get rid of Bots since they seem to be all about SB accounts they suspect of having too many or maybe they are outmanned. Ha!

At the end of this, you might feel depressed. Now you don't have 2500 followers. You only have 1000 or even less. The truth is it's all a sham, and none of it is real anyway. So get over it. Better to have some actual real people instead of fakes.

If you decide to try any of this or have tried anything else to deal with bots, let us know. Good luck!