I am suggesting here the right ways of interacting and how to avoid getting flagged on Instagram by spam filters – which is very important for anyone wanting to grow on Instagram and/or have a successful marketing strategy for their products.
How to avoid getting flagged on Instagram
1. Without good engagement signals Instagram will be more likely to flag your account as a spam account. Thus, you need to be wise about whom you follow. Avoid following thousands of random people. Instead, use good hashtags to find relevant users and engage with them.
2. Don’t use automation software not approved by Instagram, but if you must, be careful not to use the same settings and proxy source for all your accounts. Also, buying accounts with lots of fake followers or likes will do more harm than good. Instagram will realize what happened and will start limiting the reach of those accounts, making you lose time and money without seeing the results you looked for.
3. Stay safe and don’t login into too many apps at once with your main account, and don’t overuse automations that could be seen as spammy.
4. Don’t be a bad marketer. If you annoy people or will make them mad or frustrated with your activity (e.g. images/videos, sending them messages they don’t want to receive), they’re likely to report you and flag your account. You could use the Stories feature instead to engage in a more indirect way with your followers.
5. When posting, use the right hashtags. Don’t pick too many but also don’t be afraid to be creative. Avoid generic ones like #photooftheday, #followme, #likeforlike, #instapic etc. Don’t re-use the same hashtag list for your posts, always find a way to diversify or randomize the hashtags, and of course, keep them relevant with what you’re posting. Same can go for captions but it seem the anti-spam filter is placing more weight on hashtags.
6. Be authentic. If you try to be something you’re not, your followers will sense it and this will only decrease your engagement. You’re not going to be flagged for lack of authenticity, but, being yourself will go a long way in increasing your account trust score (by increased engagement), so feel free to express yourself, as long as it follows Instagram’s Community Guidelines.
7. Be smart about using automated services like automatic likes and follows, etc. Use them wisely – for example, always use different times of the day for the automated actions, so you’re not leaving a footprint behind. Also, use randomized delays between actions.
8. Stay under the maximum Instagram limits for any given action and, when you reach a limit, you better stop doing that (if automated, have a trigger for a pause action), otherwise, your account will probably be flagged or even disabled if you keep doing that over and over again.
9. Yes, bad proxies can get your account flagged in a blink. If using proxies, make sure those are from a big and trusted provider. Small providers often make a compromise on quality and their proxies will end up being flagged by Instagram, affecting most of their customers at once (ever heard of mass ban waves? this is partly due to many users using the same proxy provider to spam on a given social network).
10. If your account was already flagged for too many actions on Instagram, I recommend you not to start the same actions too son. Instead, work on your engagement. You can unfollow the users who aren’t following you back, and focus on interacting with those who are already engaged with you. You can still do some actions but not in a high amount, and of course not the ones you were blocked for. This will make your account get some fresh air while you still do some management work.
I’m not saying all small proxy providers are going to spoil the quality (some are having a great service and good price deals), but if you don’t have enough money or time for testing smaller suppliers until you land on the ideal one, just go with what is proven to be safe from the start.
Closing tips
If you’re going to use an automation app for your marketing, you can check out online reviews by other users. If people are complaining about getting their accounts permanently banned when using an app it probably means that it really does that. When you see positive reviews and no complaints of getting banned then maybe the app is not that bad after all.
By using the above tips you’ll avoid getting flagged on Instagram and continue to grow your audience without too many roadblocks.
If you’ll still encounter blocks with your personal accounts and want to re-ignite your marketing with fresh power, you can make use of ready-made aged Instagram accounts.
