Instagram has never been shy about introducing new features and after recently taking a look at my follower’s list, I came across a categories section with a new ‘least interacted with’ feature.
Upon first glance, it may seem like this could be seen as something that will negatively affect marketers, content creators, and influencers. I believe this will be quite the contrary, though.
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How Instagram’s new ‘least interacted with’ feature helps users clean up their follower list
The clear benefit a feature like this would provide is that users can have a cleaner list of accounts they follow as the accounts they interacted with the least will be in one section for them to review for unfollowing.
It’s not the only new feature to be introduced though, with categories being brand new as well.
So, before we look at how these new features may be a huge blessing for marketers, businesses and content creators, let’s take a look at what else is new in the Follower Category Section.
Most Shown in Feed
This section shows you the accounts with the most posts in your feed over the last 90 days.
These are most commonly the accounts that you engage with the most, which is why Instagram pushes more of their posts to your feed.
Sort by Date Followed
The sort by date followed option allows you to sort your follower list by newest, I.e. the latest accounts followed, and earliest, I.e. the accounts you’ve followed for longer.
This allows you to go through your following a lot more conveniently, especially if your following list is in the hundreds or even thousands, and you can remove any accounts you’re no longer interested in.
Which is the main reason behind the introduction of these new features in the first place, here’s what an Instagram Spokesperson had to say about the changes to TechCrunch.
“Instagram is really about bringing you closer to the people and things you care about – but we know that over time, your interests and relationships can evolve and change. We want to make it easier to manage the accounts you follow on Instagram so that they best represent your current connections and interests.”
Least Interacted With
The big addition if you will.
According to Instagram, this is a tab that allows you to review accounts you’ve interacted with the least in the last 90 days, such as liking their posts or reacting to their stories.
That is quite a straightforward explanation and one that may lead you to believe that social media followings made start decreasing in the near future. As users start to find this feature, they could start cleaning up their following list of accounts that they’re no longer interested in or don’t interact with.
Why this is a good thing for marketers, creators, and businesses
This isn’t just a good thing, it’s a great move by Instagram for everyone involved.
Users get more engaging feeds as they will be shown content they’re not interested in less.
Creators, marketers, businesses, etc. will have a more engaged audience. This will result in their posts performing better, which then will cause them to have a more widespread reach, resulting in new followers that are more likely to maintain the account engagement.
Additionally, because account following will be more engaged (albeit possibly lower), creators and influencers may be able to attain higher fees when working with brands, thanks to the higher engagement factors.
Of course, Instagram itself stands to benefit as well. More engaged users will stay for longer on the platform, allowing for more ad placement in Stories and User feeds.
How To Prevent Losing Instagram Followers
Whilst the benefits of losing followers who are not engaging with our content are great, nobody enjoys losing followers.
What can we do about this?
Firstly, you can offset the unfollows, by creating engaging optimized content that brings in new followers… but I know you’re working on doing that anyway!?
So, to stop people from unfollowing you when looking through their least interacted with tab, the obvious thing to do is to get them to interact with your account. This ensures that your profile doesn’t end up there in the first place.
Apart from creating great posts, stories, reels, and videos, what you can do to encourage engagement within the audience base that is already following you, is to reach out to them.
What I mean by this is to go through your follower list and look at their profiles, if you find anything relevant and recent, don’t be shy to drop a like and leave a value-rich comment (no generic emoji only, copy-paste comments, or asking for engagement on your profile).
As these accounts are already following you, they’ll be far more inclined to stay engaged because you or your brand have shown that they go the extra mile with their audience.
P.s. You can do this even if you have thousands of followers. Every couple of hours spend 15 minutes going through your follower’s feeds and spreading the Instagram engagement. If you still lose followers thereafter, then these are accounts that provided no value to your Instagram account anyway.
P.s. You can also go and save other people some trouble by removing yourself from their list of followers by unfollowing Instagram accounts you are not interested in.
Final Thoughts
Right now it may be too early to get a definitive answer on whether or not this is going to be a great new feature for creators on the platform, but most of the evidence does suggest that creators will stand to benefit greatly from Instagram’s push away from vanity metrics and towards a more engaged and enriching user feed.
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What do you think about Instagram’s least interacted with the feature? Will it be something that benefits you as a creator? Or as a user, will you be using it to clean up your follower list for a more engaging feed?