You Posted an Hour Ago on Instagram and Only Got a Few Likes? Here’s Why This Happened
“Hello, why is our Instagram gone?”
This short message notification from your manager appeared. Instantly the sunny weekend turned tense, even though at that time you were relaxing and enjoying brunch with friends without even opening the text. You opened Instagram and searched your business office’s handle, but nothing showed up.
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Just like your crush, Instagram engagement can be a handful these days. Unfortunately, aesthetics are simply not enough. If your Instagram business account suddenly disappears, if the engagement drops dramatically, and if you can’t upload any more content, then there’s a possibility that your account has been penalized. This can happen because your account is considered non-credible, or Instagram has detected an unusual spike in your account activity. There’s no need to panic because there are a few things you can check to overcome these hiccups:
Verified Business Account is Not about The Blue Tick
Account verification for business accounts differs from verified blue ticks on personal accounts! As a page that represents a brand or business, different credibility is needed so that Instagram can detect that posts uploaded from your profile can be accounted for. Since 2016, when Instagram launched its business account feature, it has added special qualifications to differentiate the priorities for each type of account.
Applying for Instagram verification is easy, but proving that your account is qualified? That’s something else. If your account has received warnings of spam activity several times, which can lead to a ban from uploading any content, you may need to check your account connection with Facebook.
It’s not enough to just integrate it with the Facebook page, but you also need to add it to the Facebook Ads Business Manager. It’s easy peasy! Just open the Facebook business settings, and add your Instagram profile to the ad account that you already have.
Instagram Takes Memes Seriously
Still not solved yet? It’s time for you to check the quality of your account! Since the purging of 142 meme accounts at the end of July 2019, Instagram has recruited liaison memes to check more in-depth content censorship. However, this alone doesn’t solve the problem of misidentification. Your content is still at risk of being detected in violating Instagram’s community guidelines which can affect the account’s reputation in the system.
You can check the status of this reputation on the quality account Facebook page which can be accessed with a Facebook page that has been connected to your Instagram account. If there are issues that have not been resolved, immediately check whether your content violates the stated Instagram policy. If not true, the next step is to submit an appeal or directly reach the contact support on the Facebook Commerce Manager.
Infamous Censorship Mystery: The Shadowban
Another one of the most popular problems on Instagram is shadowban. This could be one of the causes for your engagement to suddenly drop dramatically. This shadowban can turn the content you’ve uploaded invisible to followers. Your account can even vanish out of thin air!
The main reason this happens is that Instagram detects activity similar to bots in your account. Starting from using the same hashtag, following and unfollowing accounts in large numbers, to multiple logins at the same time on different devices.
To fix this, again you need to open a quality account and resolve the issues that arise or reach out contact support directly to consult the cause of the drop in engagement. Unfortunately, if you’re proven to have violated the rules, your account could be at risk of being permanently banned.
As for accounts that suddenly disappear, just log in as usual, and Instagram will ask for verification by phone number. Don’t forget to log in from just one device! If it fails, you can submit a claim for your lost account through Instagram’s advanced help, by tapping on forgot password, then clicking on ‘need more help’, and just following the next instructions to submit an account recovery request. At this stage, Instagram will perform manual verification and you need to provide some evidence that you are the owner of the account.
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Just like keeping up with our loved ones, dealing with Instagram’s ever-changing algorithm and regulations shouldn’t be a headache either! Keep it cool and well planned. So what about your crush Instagram business account? Have you faced these issues?
*Let me know if you guys have similar stories, let’s connect and share!
(This article is originally published on my personal LinkedIn)
