Follow-unfollow Strategy for Instagram & Twitter: What is it & Does It Actually Work?

Follow-unfollow Strategy for Instagram & Twitter: Social media has grown by leaps and bounds in the last half a decade or so. What’s even more overwhelming is the fact that every social media platform today is a host to both end-users as well as businesses and brands.

Out of all the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have been extremely popular, especially for businesses as they offer a huge audience base and a great launchpad. In fact, such has been the effectiveness of social media that every startup and small business, especially in the digital arena, fails to thrive in a lucrative manner without promotion or marketing on various social platforms.

Tactics to Enhance Visibility on Social Media

There have been numerous tactics coming up to help new and budding entrepreneurs and businesses make the most of social media platforms to grow their existence. Some of these tactics have been extremely successful, while others are little on the more controversial side.

These various tactics can be broadly divided into two sub-categories:

1. Organic
2. Paid

Organic

Considering the cut-throat competition that exists in this present market, organic marketing on social media has become extremely rare. Yes, such tactics are still used and are effective, but aren’t close to popularity as paid campaigns.

However, organic marketing on social media has its own perks, some of which are:

• Budget-friendly
• No investment required
• Required level of skill is moderate

Considering these major advantages of organic social media marketing, newly-flourished and small businesses can make use of social media to brand their existence among their target audience.

Paid

Paid campaigns on social media are the most common type of promotion of marketing. In fact, the market has become so saturated with paid campaigns that even flourishing businesses have started investing in paid campaigns.

Paid campaigns have a lot of advantage over organic social media marketing,

• Better ROI
• Higher customer retention
• Excellent reach
• Great lead-generation

However, while paid campaigns sound more lucrative than organic promotions and marketing, there is a cost factor involved, which differs from geographic location, target audience, and reach.

Strategies to Grow Twitter & Instagram Handles

Paid Promotions

Paid promotions are, by far, the most effective social media advertising and marketing technique. Businesses of all scales have gained immense success with targeting a custom audience base and pitching their product and services to the right prospective customers.

Instagram has been extremely popular with paid promotions, which has played a big role in shaping up digital entrepreneurs and content creators.

Post Frequency

Posting regularly on social media is more of a necessity than a way to boost reach on social media. However, the growth of your social media handle is just a by-product of posting frequently. What this organic tactic basically does is indicate the algorithms to push posts to more people with better engagement and interactions.

And needless to say, the more engagement you get from your audience, the better it is for the organic reach of your page and posts.

Reviews

Getting reviews is one of the most vital steps that businesses believe in doing. Positives on the social media handles or products and services play a huge role in drawing in customers and pushing the sales higher.

The more positives businesses have on their products and services, the more people start trusting your offerings.

Comment Interactions

Comment interactions do not help business directly, though the increase in engagement and regular interactions with customers and prospects help in building credibility.

It is always advisable for businesses to interact with customers over comments, address their queries, acknowledge their feedback and even appreciate their time they take to comment on your products and services.

Follow-Unfollow

Now we have come to the most controversial social media marketing technique for Instagram and Twitter. A lot of people (business owners and digital marketers) don’t normally address the effectiveness or uselessness of the follow/unfollow strategy, though the practice of this technique has been quite prevalent.

Don’t know much about the follow-unfollow strategy for Instagram and follow-unfollow strategy for Twitter? Let’s dive in and know about it first.

What is Follow-Unfollow Strategy for Instagram & Twitter?

Both Twitter and Instagram have a very large user base, so the opportunity is always unlimited. However, the techniques used to seize this opportunity are not always on the more reliable side.

While most of the tactics adopted by marketers are tried-and-tested and safe as per the algorithms, some are extremely controversial, especially on their effectiveness.

But what is the follow-unfollow technique? If you don’t know yet, let’s get a detailed insight into what this strategy is and whether it is effective or not!

Follow-unfollow Method: The Meaning

Going by the name, the method involves users following other users and then unfollowing them again. What this action does is that it tends to stimulate the other users to follow you back. The final stage involves unfollowing all the users who followed you back as well as the ones who did not get stimulated by your followers.

However, there are still some initial hindrances to this method:

1. Having a ‘Following’ list that outnumbers the ‘Followers’ makes the profile seem an unpopular one.
2. There are certain limitations in following people based on the policies of Instagram. So, it is most recommended to keep the following list under check.

How does the follow-unfollow method work?

The follow-unfollow method has been attracting quite a lot of users (both individuals as well as marketers) lately. It has been an interesting find for the industry, though the success ratio is quite debatable.

Individual users (laymen) generally don’t have great skills at executing this follow-unfollow method, which eventually results in low yields.

On the other hand, experienced digital marketers set aside a properly researched implementation strategy for the same. This increases the effectiveness to a great extent.

Advantages of Follow-unfollow Technique

1. Very pocket-friendly, especially considering other forms of Twitter and Instagram marketing that involve huge costs.
2. The followers gained from the follow-unfollow technique are real as the users follow you themselves.
3. The engagement rate is real and grows with time.
4. It also helps in locating potential customers and target audiences.

Are there any Disadvantages?

1. Going through the follow-unfollow is a time-consuming process.
2. Finding accounts to follow needs some expertise with hashtags.
3. Following a group of irrelevant people may bring back nothing in return.

How to effectively use the follow-unfollow strategy in 2021?

Using the follow-unfollow strategy is not very simple as you have to work according to certain limitations that Instagram has. Here are a few ways to do it.

Know the limitations

There are certain limitations that you need to adhere to to ensure that the strategic implementation is effective. Check out the hourly and daily capping that social media has.

Make an irresistible profile

Building a very attractive profile is a necessity when you are looking to work on the follow-unfollow strategy. You need to give a reason to the users you are following to follow you back. Two of the most important element you need to work on is:

1. Bio
2. Content (Posts)

Search for the Right Audience

In order to implement an effective follow-unfollow strategy, it is indispensable for you to have a plan of action. Following profiles randomly will not yield results. Instead, you should target the right audience by searching with the relevant genre and hashtags that you work on. This way, you get a more relevant audience to target with your strategy.

Needless to say, the turnaround is always better in this case.

Get an experienced Marketer to Do It for You

If you are thinking of working on the follow-unfollow, it is advisable that you do it the right way. Working on this method might not be very efficient if you don’t have experience, knowledge, and expertise.

On the other hand, if you hire an experienced digital marketer or an agency, you will be able to get better results from the follow-unfollow. Besides just that, an expert can also implement other strategies to grow your Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Final Words

The follow-unfollow has had its win-lose moments. Despite being a very controversial way of increasing reach and followers, it is practiced a lot more than expected. However, since this method needs a lot more knowledge and expertise to succeed, layman individuals find it difficult to implement effectively. After all, you have the limitations and algorithms of the social media platforms to work with.

Controversial or not, follow-unfollow has been proven to be effective if done the correct way. So why no give it a try!