Ask Alex

Q: I’M LOSING FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM. MY FOLLOWER COUNT IS GROWING BUT SLOWLY, BECAUSE I’LL LOSE A FEW EVERY WEEK. HOW CAN I STOP THIS?

A: You’re losing followers – great! Did you expect me to say that?

So long as you haven’t said anything too controversial, risking a ban, or you’re hemorrhaging followers, seeing your follower count go down isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those people aren’t interested in your treatments and products, and now they’re making you feel like you’re not getting as much interest as you could be, but losing followers is a totally normal part of running a social media account. I think it’s secretly a blessing. It’s the same when people unsubscribe from a mailing list; your analytics will go up percentagewise if you can replace the lost followers, and you’ll be talking only to people who are actually interested in your business.

Consider that these “followers” could also be bots, not real people. Instagram regularly cleans bot accounts from the platform, which will be reflected in your follower count when they get deleted. Bots also skew your analytics. You may not have paid for fake followers yourself, but these bots do follow more random accounts that they aren’t paid to do to make the account appear genuine and disguise the identity of the accounts that have paid for the service. I block bot accounts as soon as they follow my pages for this reason.

Please don’t get too hung up on the number on your profile. It can cause a lot of anxiety, especially if a competitor has more followers than you, but it’s all about what you do with the followers you do have. Do you engage with them, do they become patients, do they stay as patients? If so, these are the followers you want and the ones to concern yourself with, not the lurkers who do nothing but bring your engagement rate down.

ALEX BUGG

Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a familyrun digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. They build websites and deliver marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her: alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic