As you can already tell from the title of this post- today we are going to go into detail about the Instagram Shadow ban. I don’t have all the answers but I will try to explain as much as I can to the best of my knowledge! Let’s get into it!
Ok let’s start with the easiest question- what is a shadowban?
A shadow ban is when IG hides your posts from the hashtags that you use. Doesn’t sound too terrible right? WRONG! If you are someone who uses your IG for business purposes this can be detrimental to your business because this means that the only people that are seeing your posts and the people that are following you. And as we all know (and hate) the IG algorithm only shows your posts to 10-20% of your overall followers. Let’s do some simple math. Say you have 1000 followers x20% = 200. So out of 1000 of your followers, IG will only show your post to a maximum of 200 of those people. Now if you used hashtags, your post could be seen by TENS OF THOUSANDS of people. But if IG is hiding your posts under those hashtags, you wont be able to capitalize on that exposure. Pretty shitty if you ask me!
Why do you get shadowbanned?
If only I knew!! I would scream it from the rooftops so I could help as many people as possible. I don’t think that anyone can truly know what causes a shadow ban unless you work at FB/IG. But there are many speculations. Some of the most common ones include:
- Using the same hashtags on your photos over and over and never changing them up.
- Always using 30 hashtags
- Using 3rd party apps (anything that asks you to log into your IG from another app/site, this includes planning apps, follow/unfollow apps, apps that like and or comment for you)
- IG wants you to pay to promote your posts, so if you see you’re shadowbanned you’re more likely to pay to promote your post
- You are in engagement pods and IG has detected it and is punishing you
How do you know if you are shadowbanned?
Ok so this one is super easy! If you have a business account you can see the insights on every single photo that you post. Under your picture, click insights, and then click on the box that pops up, and scroll down to where is says “Impressions” there should be 4 rows under that say “From home, from profile, from hashtags, from other” If yours does not say FROM HASHTAGS this is a very good indicator that you are shadow banned. Even if it says from hashtags with a very small number, even 1, this means that you are not shadow banned, yay! Another way to check is if you have a personal hashtag that you use, mine is #busybeingblake, when I clicked on it when I was banned, none of my pictures would show up, even though I have over 100 photos that I have used that hashtag on. I would recommend starting to use one if you don’t have one already! Just make sure the hashtag you are using is personal to you and no one else is using it!
In the picture above, you can see that I reached almost 15,000 people and 75% of them weren’t following me, and I got 16 people to follow me just off of seeing this post, which is great!
How long does it last?
I have been shadow banned twice before. My first ban lasted a little under 3 weeks and my second ban lasted 15 days. I have upwards of 10 friends that this has happened to as well, all of theirs have been lifted after 15 days. I do have one friend who runs a boutique page and she was banned for almost 7 weeks! But that is the only case I have heard of it lasting that long.
What can you do if you are shadow banned?
I don’t think there is much you can do to lift the ban any quicker than 15 days but I did report the issue to IG over 100x a day for a week, to no avail. But if you have the time to do it, it cannot hurt! The message that I sent was simply “Help!! I’ not showing up in any hashtags! I use this IG as my business for blogging and since I am now shadow banned no one is able to find my posts and it is hurting my business tremendously and I am losing out on income due to brands not being able to find me. If there is anything you can do, or that I can do to remedy this, please let me know!
The other negative effects of being shadow banned:
When I am shadow banned, obviously brands cannot find me, which means less collab emails. When I am not banned I get about 8 emails a day from companies to collab, when the ban is going on I get about 8 a week. -____-
Brands as well as other people who may engage and follow you are not able to see your content, so you will miss out on followers.
When I was shadow banned, for whatever reason, my followers dropped DRASTICALLY. I usually gain about 100 followers a day and lose about 15-20. So I end up with 80-85 new followers a day. When I was shadow banned, I was only gaining about 50 (which is still good), but I was losing about 100. So on average I was losing 50 followers a day (somedays I would lose up to 100). The first time I was banned, it lasted 19 days and I lost 1200 followers total. I went from 18.4 to 17.2. The second time I lost 700 in 15 days. I do not know why this happens and as soon as the ban is lifted I start gaining like crazy again.
If y’all have any other questions at all please let me know in the comments below or follow me on IG and shoot me a DM!
I love you guys and I hope this isn’t happening to you and if it is just hold strong and keep creating amazing content and don’t let it get you down! I know its frustrating and super discouraging but you got this!! <3
