I remember when my Instagram account was dead. By dead, I mean that my engagement fell to 3% or less. No one was commenting or seeing my posts, and any Reels that I posted had less than 10 views.
In the past, many Reels were getting hundreds or thousands of views.
But an important lesson was learned: how to revive a dead Instagram account. You can revive your account, but you need to make a commitment to change because what you’ve done in the past is causing your account to fall out of Instagram’s favor.
Here’s how to revive your account in just seven steps.
First – Figure Out Why Your Account is Dead
Before you start doing anything, you need to find out why your account is dead. You’ll never know with 100% certainty why your account isn’t gaining traction, but the most common reasons are:
- Inactivity: When was the last time you posted or engaged with other people’s content? Instagram pushes accounts that put in the hard work and post consistently. Over the last month, how many times did you post? Three months? Six months? Collect the data and be honest with yourself about your activity level.
- Breaking Community Guidelines: If you break Instagram’s community guidelines, you’re going to see a ton less reach and engagement. You’re not being canceled; you’re breaking the rules. What are Instagram’s community guidelines? You can read them here.
- Switching Niches and Audiences: Did you change the direction of your account? I used to follow a fitness influencer who was on the cover of hundreds of magazines, and he shared amazing advice. One day, he changed his account to be 100% political, and he dropped off of my feed and I never saw his Stories. I still followed him, but Instagram knew that I didn’t follow him for his politics, and his account never regained traction, even with hundreds of thousands of followers.
- Not Creating Great Content: Why would someone want to view your content? What value does the content provide? Could your content be better? Be honest with yourself and work on content creation. We’ll be going over this in much greater detail below.
Instagram wants you to succeed. Your account being dead means that you took a misstep somewhere. If you can determine when your content stopped getting love and why, it can be the catalyst for bringing your account back.
How To Revive a Dead Instagram Account in 7 Proven Steps
You’ve done a lot of work already, but your account isn’t revived. In fact, you’re just getting started. An account transformation must take place, and this starts with your “goals and plan.”
1. Define Your Goals and Create a Plan
Instagram influencers do not fall into their positions by accident (yes, there are some exceptions – but not many). Somewhere along the line, the person or brand had a goal or plan that they intended to execute.
Statistically, there are 500,000 influencers and 2+ billion active users. You need to have a goal and plan if you want to stand out.
If you want to revive an account and make it a success, start with the basics:
- Who do you want to target?
- What do you want to post?
- What do you want from your account?
- Who are you as a brand (if you’re a brand)?
When you define your goals, you then need to create a plan. Your plan needs to be ambitious yet moves you toward your goals one post at a time.
For example, your plan may include:
- Posting once per day
- Posting 15 videos this month (they receive 3 times the engagement)
- Comment on 100 accounts
- Gain 1,000 followers
- Etc.
Your goals and plan will help you find your “why,” and start creating content that is worthy of hitting the Explore Page and being shared and engaged with.
Tools To Help You Define Goals and Make a Plan
If you’re struggling to define your goals and make a plan, there are a ton of fantastic tools that can help. A few of the tools that are worth checking out are:
All of these tools offer free versions that will allow you to create checklists or tasks that you can check off. Deadlines can also be set, so you’re 100% positive that you’re moving the needle closer toward your goal.
2. Find Your Why
Your plan isn’t done just yet. If you think about your own account, who do you follow? Why do you follow the person?
Why should people follow you?
Will people follow you because:
- You show training videos on how to get fit?
- You post funny content that brightens up the person’s day?
- You motivate people to reach their best selves?
- You post amazing business content like GaryVee?
- Your brand sells amazing apparel?
You need a strong “why” for your account. If you don’t know why people would follow you, then you need to think about:
- Who you want to reach
- Why those people should follow you
- What you can do to get those people to follow you
And once you have our why, you can then figure out your “focus.”
3. Find Your Focus or Lose Your Audience’s Focus
Now, you need to focus on your content. You know what audience you’re trying to reach. Now, put yourself in their shoes.
- What content do these followers want to see?
- What insights can you provide to these followers?
Your audience needs to value your account so much that they’ll follow you. Once they follow you, they will give you their time in return for the value you provide.
How?
Create content pillars or categories that you’ll fill your account with. Every successful account follows this practice, and we’ll start with the fitness niche as an example.
AthleanX is a good example, and you’ll see how he covers a few main categories of content:
- Videos on exercises to reach specific goals
- Videos that help you maintain form and avoid mistakes
- Tips on posture, spotting and losing weight
Sure, some fun posts are mixed in, but the account has 2.3 million followers because viewers get a massive return for the time they spend on his content. But that’s not all.
Instagram’s algorithm will categorize pages and connect the right people to your account. If you have 2 – 4 categories of content that you post, it will be easier for the platform to put you on the Explore Page of people who want to follow your account.
Plus, you’ll have a much easier time creating content because you’ve defined what types of content you’ll be posting.
Review Your Content Analytics
You don’t want to let the algorithm keep your content from being shown to your followers, nor let little mistakes cause your account to fall off. One thing you can do to learn what types of content resonates with your audience most is to frequently analyze your analytics.
You can check your analytics by following these steps:
- Tap your profile picture
- Tap Insights
- Go to Content You Shared > See all
- Select All > Last 7 Days
- Select the Time Period to review
You’ll now be able to see the accounts reached for all of your posts. If you have a certain type of post that continues to reach a lot of accounts, analyze it and find out why. You can also analyze posts that didn’t work to learn where you went wrong.
What do you have to do next?
Post.
4. Post, Post, Post – Consistently
One of the major reasons why Instagram accounts die is because of inactivity. Users suddenly stop posting consistently, so their followers and the Instagram algorithm lose interest.
If you want to revive your account, make sure that you’re posting regularly. But don’t just post for the sake of posting. Make sure that your content is engaging.
Why?
- Instagram scans and tests content
- The algorithm looks at data to see if your content is engaging
If your content doesn’t resonate with your audience, it will be harder to build your following and get your content discovered on the Explore page.
It’s also important to post consistently because the more you post, the more Instagram can collect data to understand your account and what it’s all about.
Plus, consistency will ensure that Instagram values your content and helps you make new connections.
We recommend creating a content plan for your posts and scheduling them out, so there’s no excuse not to be consistent. Aim to create a plan for at least 30 days, with daily posts. Take your time creating content ideas and really flesh them out beforehand.
Tools To Help You Schedule Posts
There are so many scheduling apps and tools out there for social media. Some of the top ones include:
Scheduling your posts isn’t all you need to do. Also, log in and comment on other accounts and reply to comments on your own, too..
5. Reoptimize Your Profile
Now that you’ve found your “why” and defined your ideal follower, it’s time to reoptimize your Instagram bio.
Your bio is the perfect place to tell Instagram and profile viewers what you’re all about.
To optimize your profile:
- Add keywords related to your niche or industry.
- Answer the who, what and why. Who are you, what do you do and why?
- Add hashtags if you have branded ones.
- Add emojis for greater visibility and engagement.
If you cater to local clients or customers, then you may also want to incorporate your location into your bio.
Here’s an example of an optimized bio:
Let’s say that you’re a business coach. An optimized Instagram bio may look something like this:
👏 Online business coach
💥 CEO of @sixstepstosuccess
😎 Helping entrepreneurs reach their goals
📌 New 6-week course is live 👇
6. Speed Up Connections with Strategic Engagement
Strategic engagement can help you make quicker and deeper connections that may bring your account back to life more quickly.
But what is strategic engagement, exactly? Here’s how it works:
- Find posts that are relevant to your niche or brand. Let’s say you’re in the fitness niche, and you find a post sharing a workout routine.
- Scroll through the comments on those posts and look for users who would be your ideal followers.
- Engage with these accounts. Follow them or respond to their comment with something insightful. Answer a question or provide some advice.
To succeed with strategic engagement, you want to make sure that you’re:
- Not spamming. Don’t just ask people to follow you.
- Providing real value with your comments, messages or engagement.
If you can follow these two rules, these “ideal” users will likely follow you and start engaging with your content, too.
7. Stick to Your Plan
Creating a plan for your account and content is crucial, but you need to put that plan into action. And once you put that plan into action, you need to stick with it.
Sounds simple, right?
But many creators lose patience. They don’t see results right away, so they give up on their plan and start trying to create a new one.
If you want to succeed, you need to stick to it for at least 30 days. Because social media takes time, it’s better to give it a few months before you start trying something new.
Tracking Your Plan’s Progress
While you’re implementing your plan, make sure that you have a way to track its progress. If you can track your progress, you’ll know if your plan works and how long it takes to start seeing results.
How Long Will It Take to Revive a Dead Instagram Account?
You have a plan to revive your Instagram account, and you’re excited to get started. But how long will it take to bring your account back to life?
For most users, it takes about 30 days to revive a dead Instagram account.
It took you a while to build up your following initially, so it will naturally take some time to revive your account.
Instagram’s algorithm needs to learn how to trust you again and that you can be relied on to post consistently.
Depending on the level of engagement you receive and the quality of your new content, you may be able to bring your account back to life more quickly. Other creators may find that it takes a little longer to get things going because of their niche or their content quality isn’t up to snuff.
The most important thing is to be patient and consistent. Keep posting. Keep interacting with your followers. Remember that building a following on social media takes time.
If you can keep your eye on the prize, you’ll succeed at reviving your dead Instagram account.
