Should marketers live in fear of a shadowban?
The word, “Shadowban” has been tossed around a lot in marketing circles lately.
To give a little context for how I’ve been hearing it used, imagine someone whispering the word, with dread and fear in their tone.
“Shadowban”
It does sound scary when you say it THAT way.
This brings to mind a quote. “We fear what we don’t understand.”
That’s why today we’re talking about shadowbans–what they are, how to know if you’ve been shadowbanned, and how to fix it if you’ve been shadowbanned, and how to avoid being shadowbanned. We’ll help you understand it so you don’t have to fear it.
Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash
What is a shadowban?
Shadowbanning most frequently refers to Instagram. It is the act of blocking a user’s content from being seen on social media sites without telling them it’s blocked. Meaning, if your account, or a specific piece of content has been shadowbanned, Instagram won’t tell you and you might not know it.
If you’re a marketer who’s trying to play by the rules, it can be a little panic-inducing to think about your engagement going down and your hard work going unrewarded all because you unknowingly broke the rules. That’s why you’ve got to really stay on top of each social media platform’s Terms of Use.
Instagram also bans content that uses specific hashtags
Instagram blocks content that uses banned hashtags from being seen by people who aren’t following you. If you’re trying to grow your following, this is a big problem.
The other annoying thing, as a marketer, is that the list of prohibited hashtags changes constantly. This is really important to know, because even the most innocent-seeming hashtags can be banned.
Please, don’t write to tell us why certain words are banned - at this point, we don’t want or need to know why. 😳
Here’s what happens if you search #kansas on Instagram
For example, #Kansas is a banned hashtag.
Fun fact: I’m from Kansas. Literally born there and grew up there. I feel like there can’t be a more innocent hashtag. Absolutely no clue why Instagram would ban it as a hashtag. #KansasCity is ok. #KS is also fine.
It’s odd, and as a marketer, a bit annoying, because it means we’ve got to constantly be checking to see what hashtags are shadowbanned by Instagram.
Another case in point, today, as I was working on this post, I read that #ValentinesDay is now also a banned hashtag. This was news to me. I had to remove it from one of my client’s posts. Had no idea it was banned. #Valentine and #Valentines are fine though
Moral of the story: check to see what hashtags are banned frequently.
How do you know if you’ve been shadowbanned?
WAIT - before you leave this article to search for sites that can tell you if you’ve been shadowbanned, don’t use those shadowban checker websites. They’re not 100% reliable.
However, there’s a quick and easy way to check to see if you’ve been shadowbanned.
Create a new post, and use a hashtag you made up (Check to make sure it’s not a widely used hashtag). Post the content.
Within the next few minutes, have a friend log into Instagram, and if they’re following your account, have them unfollow you while they do the test.
Have the friend search the hashtag you just used and posted. If they DO see your post under that hashtag, that means you HAVE NOT been shadowbanned. If they DON’T see your post, it means you HAVE been shadowbanned.
After the test, don’t forget to have your friend re-follow you, and you can take the post and/or hashtag down if you’d like.
How do you fix a shadowban?
Did we mention that Instagram has not officially come out to talk about shadowbanning? Because of this, they haven’t posted any official content about how to fix it.
Based on research and talking to other marketers about what works, here are a few tips.
Take a break from posting for a couple of days
Delete banned hashtags from previous posts
If you’ve been putting your hashtags in your comments, put them in your caption
Report a Problem to Instagram via the app. Click on your profile, click on Settings, click on Help, and then on Report a Problem. We think it’s best to be upfront, and tell them that you didn’t realize you had used a banned hashtag, and that you’d like
If you aren’t running any advertising, consider switching your account to a Personal profile. You can switch it back to a Business profile at any time. (This is more of a last resort - if you do this, you will lose all of your account insights and your Insignts data will start back over once you switch back to a Business profile.)
How do you avoid being shadowbanned?
I know you’re not trying to cheat the system by using bots to follow or engage on your behalf, right? So we won’t even talk about that.
Here are some things to avoid doing, if you don’t want to be shadowbanned by Instagram:
Don’t use banned hashtags. We talked about how to find out if a hashtag is banned, but you can check back to this post for our frequently updated list of banned hashtags.
Use only approved social media scheduling software.
Remove “ghost” followers. If you have followers who don’t have a picture, that’s usually a pretty good sign they’re not a real person. Another telltale sign - If someone has only one post, or posted the same picture of something multiple times, that’s generally no bueno and another sign they’re probably not legit.
Read up on Instagram’s Terms of Use, and make sure you’re not posting content that doesn’t comply. No hate speech, no nudity, no illegal activity, no spamming, etc. You know the drill.
Sounds like a lot of work to stay on top of all of this, huh? That’s ok. Our team at Kafen8 can help take social media completely off your plate.
Got questions about shadowbans? Get in touch with us. We’re here to help.
