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Speaker 2Hey , Hey, welcome back to the Jasmine star show. I'm grateful you're tuning in today. Now, one of the most common questions I get in my Instagram direct messages is Jasmine. What should I do about bots on Instagram? Why? Because they're annoying. That's why those bots are infiltrating and they're inflating numbers. And I know what it's like to see some responses, like maybe say on a pole and then you get excited because you're getting engagement only to realize that half of them are fake accounts. I have been there scrolling through comments on my post, ready to chat it up with my dream customer only to see tons of comments, consisting of emojis or something. That's completely irrelevant, like thoughtful content. Thank you from P L six nine two eight three zero two. And I'm like, Hmm , bots, ghost followers, and spam messages make it feel like we're getting engagement, but it's actually the exact opposite. These are the things that are hurting your engagement because the algorithm judges content by likes comments, shares and saves like bots are no bono because they distort engagement from real followers. We're going to dive into what I mean about that specifically in a second. But before I get that, I just want to ask you a real question. Do you want to do some spring cleaning for your Instagram account? Because if you do and you're ready to connect with real people, I want you to keep listening in this episode, you'll learn why fake followers and bots maybe targeting your account. How do I identify a bot follower and finally the best practices for removing them from your account. Get ready to watch the likes and comments from real customers and followers start rolling in. So let's get into the guts. What are bots? You might be wondering like, how do they work? What really is it? Well, basically bots are the result of people using services to artificially view stories on behalf of their profiles so that those people will see them and follow them. A few months ago, we saw a big surge in what was called mass viewing. There was a series of bots where people would use them pay money. And the bot would view your story view with like air quotes around it. Because what's happening is that people were looking at who was viewing their stories. And they're like, Oh, Hey, who is this person? Maybe I should follow them. So if in the past you would see your stories. And there was like one of your stories that had considerably more views than any of you. There are stories. And you're like what happened? It's probably because of mass viewing. Now I am not a fan of the word, like fake follower, ghost follower, or bot, but there is really no better way to describing this high tech follow for follow method other than stupid. Now, if you have kids around say, Jasmine just said a bad word, and we're not going to use this in their house. And then you can close your ears again. Cause I'm about to say stupid. Let me offer some advice, which is a hundred percent free, unlike that. But service. If anyone comes to you and says they can grow your account by thousands, organically run away. That is like be as in the highest regard, baby, boom . I mean, I am just feeling extra sassy today, but I'm going to deal it to you. Honestly. I can't help, but get an attitude. When people want to take shortcuts for their business friends. I am here to tell you, there is no such thing as a shortcut. There was no such thing as a hack. There is no such thing as the back door that my friends is the quickest way to get your account banned or to get zero engagement on your account. There is no better way to grow your following than by having conversations and putting in the work. That's it like no amount of money or bots can beat hard work. So when we talk about bots, like who are they? Or what are they? Because we can now say like what bots are, right? They're artificially inflating engagement just to get you to follow back a certain account, but let's chat about how to identify a bot or a fake follower from somebody who actually has a real beating heart. Now, here are the signs. Your most recent follower is a bot. One of, for one, they only have a few posts on their account. When you click over to their profile to , they are following a lot of people, three by and large, they don't have a profile photo. And for their username is a bunch of letters and numbers mixed together. Now for any account that has all four of these things, it is a hundred percent of fake follower or a bot. If somebody has three of these four things, it's probably a bot and two of the four, you might have to dig a little, but chances are like, if somebody follows you like T Y X one one two, two, three, three, three, and then they have like 30 photos and a ton of followers. Yeah. Bot bot bot it's screaming bot. So why would bots be targeting you? Okay, now that we've identified that they are quantifiably a bot, why are they targeting you? Okay. There are two ways bots and fake accounts will target you. They are number one. If you use a large hashtag with a ton of entries, yes, there are people who've programmed programs and bots to target a specific hashtag. Now the bigger, the hashtag, the more that bot can infiltrate accounts or to , as soon as you follow a very popular celebrity athlete influencer, yeah. Bots will target these types of people. Now the bots primarily will likely target your account to sell you something or for you to follow them so that their account is legitimized. Now I want to take a time out. I am not just going to explain what about is , and I'm not just gonna explain why they're doing this and I'm not going to explain why they're targeting your accounts specifically. I'm going to actually give you solutions for this, but this is where I want to just like, take a pause and have a little bit of real talk. I work with thousands of small business owners and I connect with hundreds, if not thousands a day. And for people who admit oftentimes like, Hey Jasmine. So , um , I did this , uh , thing. People are embarrassed to actually admit that they have bought like invested in like growers that they have invested in people going through and using bots to like mass view. And oftentimes when somebody says, Oh, I'll grow your account by thousands. What they're really doing is inflating your numbers with a bunch of fake followers. And I have heard specifically from one person and she came up to me and she was devastated. Cause she had like 5,000 followers. And she had said, Jasmine, I did use an automatic like grower. So what you do is you register your Instagram account and you pay this company money and then they will follow a hashtag. And they will like photos in a hashtag because what happens is if a smaller account gets a like from your account, they're going to click over to your account. Like, wow, that was really nice that this person liked my photo. And then they're going to follow you. That's the plan or that's the intention. And then what happens is that in, you know, late, mid to late 2019, Instagram had a crack down on all of that stuff. And if Instagram had identified your account using a third party software to artificially like or artificially engage, when we talk about artificial engage, have you ever gotten a comment on your account? That's like, nice, lovely. Do you need investment, help click on this profile? Like you've seen ever that like, those people are truly buying fake comments and she'd reached out to me. And she said, Jasmine, I stopped using them, but I am, I haven't grown. Like I haven't got a single follower in six months in my engagement is completely dead. And I know that I should have come back to her like, Oh, I'm so sorry you're going through this. But I'm like, you knew this would happen. Like, you know, better. Like, you know, if you're going to inflate, it's truly, I , I liken it to steroids. If you use steroids and then you stop using the steroids, what's going to happen to your body. You're going to shrink and you're going to look prematurely aged and you're not going to get the desired result. That's exactly what these things are. So friends stay far, far away from them. Now, if you're hearing say Jasmine, I haven't invested in a third party software. I don't know why all these bots keep on following me. I, well, I'm going to say, I might not be able to give you a clear answer, but I can walk you through how to clean them up. So let's talk about how to clean up your account without using a third party app. Yes. Boo or not talking about apps to grow, and we're not talking about apps to clean. We're going to get it, take it old school. I'm going to do this in two ways. Number one, you can spend 10 to 15 minutes every day, removing bots from your account. It's like, you can just go through your followers and you could start. Like, I will seriously just open up my followers. I'll just grow and start deleting people who I know distinctly are a fake follower or a buck or two. You can invest in a virtual assistant who will do this for you. Yeah. You can pay somebody 10 bucks an hour to say, here's my Instagram account. These are the qualifications. Or you could just pass along this podcast to them. So I know that this is a short and sweet episode and you might be wondering why does this matter? And it matters because it's important to remove bots and fake followers from your Instagram account because the algorithm gauges your content by engagement. Like if you're saying like Jasmine , I have really great content and nobody's seeing it. And I'm like, people could possibly be seeing it, but they could be bots. And if they're bots, they won't engage. And if the content is shown to a bot first and the bot does not engage your real followers, won't see it as a result. So the algorithm will assume it's irrelevant. And if the algorithm based on people not engaging assumes it's irrelevant. It's not going to show it to other people. Something that could just take 15 minutes a day could massively affect the impact you can make on Instagram. When mass viewing and bots really hit a peak, like at the end of 2000, 19, early 2020, I had a conversation with our social curator, creative director and her name is Tammy. And she said that for a while, she was talking with members of social curator and they were really feeling bummed that they were having to clean up a lot of accounts. So they really bombed that they saw a dip in their Instagram story views and she responded and said, yes, but if you hosted a party and you filled the party full of mannequins and two people, would you say that your party was full? Like if I walked in and I were to move 98 mannequins and there was only two live people in the room, would you say that your party was more or less cooler? Of course not mannequins. Just like bots. Aren't real. So even if your party looks full, it's fake. So friend take time to remove the fake followers and focus on people who engage, even though it might be hard for you to remove hundreds, even thousands of followers from your account , forget the metrics. Remember your account will go farther with a thousand highly engaged followers, then 10,000 fake followers and passive viewers just scrolling on by. Okay. I know isn't this episode is a little bittersweet. I feel like I need to bring out like a kazoo and string some streamers and put a little cat meme here. Okay. I know that hearing, this could be like a downer, but really the truth always will move the needle in your business. And I hope this episode helped you make a decision about how to handle the bots, plugging your Instagram account. If you'd like more Instagram tips like this one, I'd love to invite you to grab my free Instagram marketing guide@jasminestar.com forward slash I G marketing guide. It's jam packed with an ebook, explaining the five types of photos that foster engagement. You get a link to download five of my photos that you could freely use on Instagram to start building out those conversations and an explanation on how to use each photo on Instagram to showcase your uniqueness as an entrepreneur. And I know you're going to love it. Had to Jasmine star.com forward slash IgG marketing guide to get your goodies and up level your Instagram game. You can also find a link to this free download in your show notes from wherever you're tuning in today. Thank you so much for listening to the Jasmine star show today. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1[inaudible] .