How losing followers actually helped my business.

From 12k to 9k. How losing followers actually helped my business.

We all know the story, you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. When reels was first a thing, my account went nuts with followers because of a few (semi) viral videos. It was exponential growth, and I rode that wave for as long as I could.

I ended up with a growth of almost 10k followers in 6 months. My account topped out at 11.7k followers. The growth was reflective of my DM's, of comments, of engagement. My work was being shared on other accounts, I had other designers and business owners reaching out asking me how I did it.

It was like having a high (ish) number of followers was a badge of honour and to be celebrated. When in actual fact, I didn't do anything specific, nor was it my intention, to grow that quickly.

Since then, it's been on a pretty rapid decline.

While I'll never truly know the exact reasons for losing followers (no posting consistently, not prioritising video, the algorithm, etc) it's most likely because that rapid increase of people following my account meant that they weren't actually engaged (or real) followers.

For the last 12 months, my followers have been dropping daily. Was I completely devastated at first? Yes. Did I try everything to keep people engaged? Yes. Did I blame myself for losing motivation while I was burnt out and not prioritising posting? Yes.

My audience may be smaller but...

• my follower engagement is higher

• still reaching a significant number of accounts

• enquiries are still coming through IG

So, the next time you find your follower count dropping, just remember that it's absolutely okay. If anything, it's for the better. It means that your audience is niching down, you have a more engaged pool of people that will be more likely to buy from or want to work with you. There's more to owning a business than getting hung up on your followers.