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The Instagram Shadowban and your Business

Simply put a shadowban means that your Instagram account will no longer be searchable with the use of your hashtags. Your account is effectively invisible to anyone outside of your current followers. You can still use hashtags and from where you sit it all appears fine. When you click through your hashtags your photos show up however, to a stranger who searches for a hashtag, your photo will not show up on the gallery page.

If you have received a shadowban you will probably get a drop in engagement, all engagement will only be from current followers. If you would like to check and be sure that this is not the case then you can use this tool.

Instagram has not released any formal statement as to why they have changed their algorithms or what triggers the shadowban so basically we are all stumbling around in the dark to ensure that we are not the latest victim.

There are a few things that you can do to ensure you will not receive a shadowban;

1.Do not use bots to share pictures.
Bots that violate the Instagram’s terms of service such as growth services or bots that claim to do all the work for you like Mass Planner and Followliker are all banned from Instagram.

2. Do not used banned or broken hashtags
Instagram has been trying to crack down on hashtags that usually have lots of adult content linked to them such as #Booty or #eggplant. It is easy to know if the hashtag has been broken or banned just search for it on Instagram and if there are no Top Posts then leave this hashtag out of your post. Using just one broken hashtag can block the whole post from being seen.

3. Using the same Hashtags
If you simply copy and paste the same hashtags on all posts then this can also ring alarm bells for Instagram. Try to mix up your hashtags and try to keep them relevant to the content you are posting right now and not just the content your audience is interested in.

4. Continually being reported to Instagram
If your account is reported to Instagram repeatedly then this will quickly get their attention. They will either kick you off completely or give you a shadowban.

5. Using your Instagram daily and hourly limits Instagram. It has limits to the amount of likes you can make and follows you can do in a certain time frame. If you are continually hitting these then chances are you are using a bot to achieve this and Instagram may give you a shadowban for this reason.

So you have accidentally done all of the above, you have run the check and you have indeed got a shadowban. How do you get yourself out of this dark hole without starting a new account?

The short story…It is not an overnight fix and can take some time to do it so be patient.

• Ease up on activity for 24-48 hours
• Check your hashtags are not banned
• Stop using bots
• Report your shadowban to Instagram
• Switch from a business to a personal account
• Remove any questionable content you have already posted

Try all of the above and wait for some time. Hopefully you will be able to see an improvement over a few days in your account.

Don’t have time to do all this yourself? Check out Social Media Management for how we can help you.

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