SHADOW BANNING IS REAL AND IT SUCKS

Shadow banning is happening all across Instagram. Ever since Instagram started rolling out new algorithms last year, another change was rolled out the first week of February 2017 we've seen our engagement and reach drop significantly and Instagram started doing some strange things.

WHAT IS SHADOW BANNING

Shadow banning is when you post an image to Instagram and only you (the poster) and your followers can see the image under those hashtags. If a new user (who isn't following you) were to look at that hashtag your image would not appear under that hashtag, hence you've been shadow banned. A lot of articles have been popping up about it and it's still kind of unknown a lot about what exactly causes it and who is being targeted. Even the huffington post posted an article about shadow banning the other day. The community is hoping with enough notice Instagram will do something about it....but let's be real.. they probably won't. 

WHAT CAN I DO TO PREVENT SHADOW BANNING

• don't copy and paste your hashtags
• switch up your hashtags for every post
• don't post too often 
• don't unfollow and follow people rapidly 
• don't buy followers
• change your password if it's been recently hacked
• if your account has been recently hacked stay off Instagram for a little while
• don't have more then one Instagram account coming from one IP address (i.e. having multiple accounts on your phone)

These are only theories about what you can do to prevent shadow banning and possible theories on why people were getting shadow banned in the first place. Again you could be doing all these things and be perfectly fine! You just never know what will trigger it. Hopefully we will have some more concrete information soon. 

HOW CAN I CHECK IT I'M SHADOW BANNED? 

You will have to log into an account (or create a new one) and not follow your main account, then search the hashtags you used on a previous post and see if those images are appearing. You have to make sure you are not following the account you want to check the images for. 

I AM SO THANKFUL TO HAVE AN ENGAGED EMAIL LIST

All I can say is I am so thankful that I have an active and engaged email list so I don't feel totally at a loss when thinking about what would happen if I got shadow banned. I always stress in my workshops to start an email marketing list and I offer email marketing workshops to help you think up your lead magnets (free downloads to grab email addresses), create opt in forms, create subject lines that get opens, and walk you through automation of mail chimp. As well as how to write an engaging email, what to say, how often to say it. If you've been on the fence about taking the workshop I highly suggest signing up!

IF SOCIAL MEDIA DISAPPEARED WOULD YOUR BUSINESS SURVIVE?

It's just too up in the air with Instagram changing so much. We need to start taking control of things instead of relying on others to market our business. If social media disappeared tomorrow, would your business still survive? View more info about the email marketing workshop here. -----> EMAIL101 WORKSHOP

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