Reculer Pour Mieux Sauter
Backup (v) to go Forward. Backup (n) to stay Ahead.
Looking back on last week
Some newsletters trigger more responses than others. My December 2022 newsletter about Engagement stands out: a record number of readers and a record number of responses. And so does last week’s issue on shadow banning (Standing in the Shadow of Love). Thanks, I appreciate your reactions!
It turns out that quite a few of readers of this newsletter suffer from shadow banning. They can post, communicate with followers, but are banned from the algorithm. Hence the number of accounts reached drops significantly. It looks like this:
Causes of Shadow Banning
Repetitive Captions and Comments. If you copy-paste comments, this may be seen as spamming, leading to shadow banning (or blocking the ability to post or comment).
Using irrelevant, yet popular hashtags. Avoid using frequent used hashtags which have little bearing on your post, like #love, #summer or #happy.
Posting improper content. AI-systems are checking posts (and specifically those with many views) for content which goes against the platform’s guidelines.
Back Stabbers. Followers who report your content may trigger penalties like shadow bans (or worse). Block Brutus.
Back Up
The ultimate penalty a platform may hand out is a total ban. In that case your account is deleted. You likely have copies of all content somewhere on a hard disk, but the activity you’ve put most effort into - acquiring followers - has gone to waste. To avoid being disconnected from your followers, you’ll need a backup. Unfortunately, no platform let you back up your followers to icloud, drive or another platform. The only way to create a proper back up of followers is to open a second account and entice followers to follow you there as well.
Most followers are humans, and therefore lazy to put in the required additional effort. So here are a few strategies that have proven to work.
Two or Three Main Accounts - set up several accounts (not too many) and post frequently on all of them. In each bio you advise followers about the accounts you have. This requires some careful communication, but if one account is blocked, you can ride along on the others. Caveat: copycats love this, as they can easily slip in another fake account.
Follow for reward - entice followers to click the follow button in your backup account by promising them a reward. For example content you only publish there. Make this a weekly habit, because it takes a lot of communication to get the bulk of your followers following you on backup as well.
Follow on a different platform - add a second platform to the mix. For example Twitter in addition to Instagram. Or Snapchat in addition to TikTok. When a temporary or permanent ban occurs, you can keep communicating with your base.
Newsletter - a different platform can also be email. You can add a newsletter to your services. This way you collect email addresses. Works very well with webshops and online sales.
Follow a peer - arguably the best strategy is to share users with one or a few peers. When you have trusted friends like this, the knife starts to cut at both sides. On the one hand, when your account gets deleted, your colleague can tell her followers (which happen to be also your followers) about your status. At the same time, you help each other grow followers. When you add joint content to the mix, you have an absolute winner.
Help
If you need help with solving some of these questions, or if you need help for totally different reasons please drop me a message. Pick any of the following four:
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