CONTENT CONSUMPTION VERSUS CONTENT ENGAGEMENT

Let’s remember that Facebook owns Instagram and assume they utilize the same metrics and analytics system. That said -the reporting side is much more advanced on Facebook.

If I look at my Facebook Insights it shows data on engagement (Likes, Comments and Shares)

But it also gives some insight on Consumption (Views and clicks)

Extrapolating this out – most people on Instagram focus on engagement (Likes, comments and saves).

For those that have the analytics … it also shows us Reach and Impressions. And the data we don’t see is photo views and shares.

I think there are more consumers than engaged consumers. Based on analytics, it’s a trend that you will have more people viewing your photo or story than you will actually clicking a like or comment.

This is going to increase as the platform gets more crowded.

I’m going to go back to Facebook and look at National Geographic as an example with 42 million followers. If you go back an analyze their “engagement” then you will see the percentage of engagement has gone down through the years.

And the typical Facebook consumer scrolls without engaging because the don’t want to show or share what they are looking at with their friends.

As more and more people from Facebook come over to Instagram – that behavior will carry over.

More and more followers stand the risk of being classified incorrectly as a ghost follower when in fact you have no idea or no way of knowing how often they are consuming your content without engaging.

APPS ARE ONLY TAKING THEIR BEST GUESS

Third party apps that claim to report ghost followers have access to data scraping a limited data set at each time. So they are taking their best guess but they only have likes and comments. They don’t know who is viewing your content.

LOOK TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL CIRCLE

Have you noticed that list of “Facebook friends also on Instagram” growing? As an early Instagram user I was one of the first among my personal network to use Instagram.

But I’ve noticed that the list of people opening up accounts has increased.

I have 224 friends that have an Instagram account that I do not follow. And when I click on their accounts – they may or may not have a posted a photo ever. They may or may not have a profile photo.

For those that have started to use it – they are posting once every 45 to 60 days. It’s just not something they do.

However, when I talk to them – they regularly use Instagram to “view’ and “read” those they follow. But if you were to classify them they might look like a ghost follower. As the Facebook masses come over to Instagram more of this type of behavior will occur.

Contextually you have to know the demographic that acts this way is those that are older.

I myself have a personal account. You can look me up as @tinyfoot and you’ll see I’ve posted perhaps 6 photos in 2018. From all intensive purposes I look like a ghost follower however I can assure you I’m in my personal account almost daily and I love the luxury of being able to consume content without actually engaging.

I can name more than 20 of my personal friends who use Instagram this way. And in this group of 20 I’m the one who I would classify as a “publisher” where post photos on my various accounts.

I invite you to test this out on your own circle of friends and Facebook friends. If you were to analyze their accounts would they look like engaged users or ghost followers?

FOLLOWERS ACTIVELY CHOSE TO FOLLOW YOU

At some point … a human being looked at you on their phone and clicked “Follow”. Something about your account appealed to them.

Why on earth would you shut the door and remove them from your list of followers?

You have no knowledge if they are viewing your photos and videos or stories.

What if your photos bring them joy and happiness?

Also if for some reason they did in fact stop seeing your content … could it be they have something else going on in their lives? Maybe they have finals. Maybe they moved homes? Maybe they just had a baby. A third party app has NO way in knowing why they aren’t looking at your posts even if it could tell they were a ghost follower.

THINK LONG TERM

Instagram is in its infancy. The platform is just starting to grow. If you only have two hours a day to dedicate to your account, wouldn’t you spend your time focusing on:

Creating better content

Engaging with others

Trying to learn how to do more of what is right versus trying to figure out what is wrong

THE ALGORITHM IS YOUR FRIEND

The sole job of the algorithm is to get people to come back to the platform. When it’s functioning properly our enjoyment with the platform goes up. The more time we spend on the platform the more Instagram grows.

The average user spends 35 minutes on the platform signing in for 9 to 10 times a day.

But the amount of content has increased. Yet the amount of time to consume it hasn’t increased that much.

I post 6 to 7 photos a week on my gallery and anywhere from 2 to 20 photos/videos to my InstaStories a day.

The average user then has to decide which feed to look at, and either let the algorithm serve them content or to look people up.

As the volume of content increases engagement goes down. It’s what happened on Facebook and it’s what is starting to happen on Instagram.

Stories in fact have lowered gallery engagement because we’ve created content that competes with our galleries.

CONTENT IS ALWAYS KING

Sure we talk about tactics to grow followers or grow engagement but first and first most …. the foundation is your content.

Learning how to take the best photographs or capture the videos that represent your story well should always be goal number one. Growth and engagement happens as a result of that.

I work with brands and when we look at various accounts we don’t look at follower count first. In fact that’s typically third. The first thing we look at is the content. Then we look at “how” an account shows up for their followers. Do they have a tone that resonates with us? Do they engage with their own followers? How do they speak to them? And after all of these are answered then we’ll look to see how big their account is.

THE CONCEPT OF GHOST FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM

I think that this is one of those concepts that started off under a well meaning purpose. It was meant to guide you to weed out scam or spam accounts. But unless this is obvious to you … I caution in following this as a tactic to increase engagement.

As more and more people come on to Instagram as “viewers” and “consumers” and not ‘engagers” you won’t easily be able to tell the difference.

WHAT’S THE END GOAL ANYWAY

If the reason you were doing this was to increase engagement here’s a tip to focus on how to increase what you want.

Engage with 30 people in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening.

Strategically select people that are your followers, your loyal friends, people on the explore feed, friends of friends. And do this repeatedly every day – and I guarantee your engagement will go up.

If this article was useful – you may be interested in:

My Instagram guide: How to make my dog famous on Instagram

We are MaggieLovesOrbit on Instagram and currently have 113,000 followers.

Other articles that I recommend you read:

And if you’re interested in a third party source on Engagement versus Consumption read this article

This post was originally published in November 2017 and updated October 2018.