There has been a rise in articles recently offering tips on how to remove followers from social media accounts. The article linked to below by the Social Media Examiner gives advice specifically for Instagram and Twitter.

Undoubtedly, these might feel counter-intuitive: surely one marker of social media success is having more followers than you know what to do with? Should you throw away those apps promising myriads of followers for a small fee?

As social media marketing matures, it’s becoming clearer that quality rather than quantity matters. Businesses are increasingly interested in higher engagement which fake accounts impact negatively.

Meanwhile, buying followers increases your chances of being perceived as a fake account in turn, which means you could get your account deleted or banned. Twitter, for instance, considers the ‘selling or purchasing followers, Retweets, favorites, etc.’ as spam, which can lead to account suspension.

Anyone can check your percentage of fake followers using one of several free tools, so it’s also quite an embarrassing predicament for your business if you encourage that practice.

Basically, is this really a risk worth taking?

Whether you have acquired accidentally or purposefully some fake followers, you should take the time every few weeks to de-clutter.

The Social Media Examiner suggests several free tools to get started, I suggest clicking through!