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Instagram Followers & Engagement Ratio

Disclaimer!!
Instagram algorithms and what we consider as a healthy account/profile is relative and dependant on many factors.
Some of these factors are influenced by the frequency of post, the number of followers seeing your post and many other goalposts only known to Facebook. So I will speak in general terms, using metrics we can see.

In light of recent research conducted Swedish e-commerce start-up A Good Company and analytics firm HypeAuditor, assessed 1.84 million Instagram accounts across 82 countries.

In the UK, the study found that nearly 10 million accounts had fake/Ghost followers and engagement levels.

Healthy Account:
As a benchmark, using a metric of 2k followers — Which in the time we live in, would be considered small. Each post should get around 200–300 likes for women/female-related content and just over 100 likes if it has men/male-related content.

Here is why.
100 followers to 1 like is a 1% engagement ratio, which is very low and indicates that the account most likely had fake/ghost followers who don’t engage with their content.

Having 3% to 5% engagement is an indication the followers are real and engage with the posted content, which will be 3 to 5 likes for every 100 followers. 10% to 12% is said to be exceptional.

Some content indeed has a higher engagement ratio, as a result of Instagram pushing the account content (mainly pictures and videos) onto the explore feeds to related audiences.

How to spot a fake account?
You will notice accounts with an excess of 10k + followers with a 1% engagement ratio (10k Followers and 100 likes).

If it looks suspect, it most likely is! No engagement is a key give away sign that the account has fake followers.
Some accounts have taken their forgery to another level and engage in purchasing fake/Ghost likes and comments to trick visitors and brands.

Nothing replaces genuine and meaningful engagement on social media, which can be attained with an active account.