Sometimes, your Instagram just dies. Your posts aren’t getting engagement, your reaches collapse, and you haven’t gained many followers in months. It feels like your account is in quicksand. You’ve fallen off. Nobody cares about you anymore. 

But guess what: Dr. Clickstein (me) is here to give you a diagnosis to revive your dead account with genius strategies.

Here are four reasons why your Instagram is playing dead. 

#1—You’re just posting.

Or maybe you have a virtual assistant posting for you. Maybe you’re doing all the scheduling. But you basically just post and ghost. Or, as I like to say, you post and you peace because “post and ghost” is kind of cringe to say. 

You’ve stopped engaging with other accounts. You’re not liking stuff in the Feed, you’re not reacting to Stories, you’re not commenting back, you’re not DM-ing people or doing anything. 

You’re using Instagram just to publish and expecting people to keep engaging with your content. You’ve totally forgotten that social media is a two-way street. 

Think about it. When you’re active on social, you notice the people who are consistently engaging with your account. You’re like, “Oh, yeah! @BostonSellsHouses left another comment. I like that guy! I’m gonna like his post, you know. He’s my guy.” 

But if @BostonSellsHouses all of a sudden stops liking and engaging with your content, for whatever reason, and then you randomly remember, you think, “What the hell happened to that guy? F*** that guy! I’m never gonna like one of his posts again!” 

You didn’t think about DM-ing to ask, “What happened?” But the truth is @BostonSellsHouses probably wasn’t getting any love back, and it felt like it was finally time for him to play hard to get. 

If you’ve been just posting and not engaging, all your followers will turn into @BostonSellsHouses. 

So, a fix to help revive a dead account is to get social again. 

  • Comment on other people’s accounts. 
  • Respond to your DMs. 
  • React to Stories. 
  • Comment back to people on your posts. 
  • Like their comments. 

Engage with your audience. And be conscious: the more you give, the more you’ll get. It’s social media. It’s reciprocal. And people forget that. 

#2—You’re directing people off the platform too often. 

This has happened to my Broke Agent account more than once. I’m constantly plugging links and directing people to join our mailing list, asking them to go watch a YouTube video or a webinar, and to head to the BAM website. Basically, my entire goal is to get my audience off Instagram to other platforms. 

In fact, you’re probably reading this because I directed you here from the Broke Agent account on Instagram. And guess what: Instagram will be punishing me for this. 

Anytime you have a call to action to direct people off the app, Instagram will not like that. 

You have to remember that each social media platform wants to keep you on the platform for as long as humanly possible. The more they keep you on the platform, the better it is for advertisers. 

So, if you notice a significant engagement drop, you might be plugging too many links. Or you might be giving too many calls to action for people to leave the platform. 

The obvious solution is to stop posting so many links in your Stories. Stop giving calls to action in your comments. Stop telling people to hit the link in your bio and head somewhere else. 

By the way, I know we do this all the time on our BAM account, but we’re using IG as a gateway for long-form content, so we have to litter our Stories with captions and CTAs and tell people to go elsewhere nonstop. 

So, instead of plugging a link in your Stories, tell viewers to head where you want them to go in Create Mode. Or maybe just flip your camera around, front-facing, and say, “Hey, go check out this video I did. Head to the @nowbam YouTube channel…go do it.” Something like that. 

That way, people don’t click off the app through a link. They go to the destination organically. Sometimes, of course, it’s easier just to plug a link. So, just do it sparingly. 

#3—The content you’re posting is only being seen by your followers

I stress this a bunch, but if you’re making content that’s hyper-local, that’s great for your clients. But it won’t get shared to other markets because nobody in Tucson cares about your open house in Portland. 

The solution to this is to make more content for a larger audience. If you’re doing a market update, do them locally, of course, but maybe also sprinkle in some that have more of a mass appeal. Do broader market updates, real estate definitions, and more content that can be enjoyed by a consumer in Ohio, even if you live in Vegas. 

#4—You’re not getting people to watch the entirety of your videos.

Once you get in a hole where Instagram starts recognizing that people are clicking away from your content, it becomes harder and harder to grow, because they won’t share your content with anyone. 

Your number one thought when posting content should be “How do I get people to watch this entire thing?” Or, if it’s a slideshow (aka carousel post), ask yourself, “How do I get them to scroll through every slide?” Or “How do I get people to read my entire caption?” 

Your entire profile and post should be designed to keep them there. So, how do you get them to spend more time on your post? 

Well, if it’s a video, you need a great hook. And then, throughout, you need quick cuts—no dead space—captions popping up to retain attention, and changes in settings. 

The more you bounce around, the better. Look at my green screen videos. I’m all over the screen. You don’t know where I’m gonna be next. 

But at the end of your Reel, give a call to action. Ask the audience their thoughts, and they’ll engage in the comments. 

Obviously, this is way easier said than done, but keep that swing thought in your head when you’re filming or posting content. 

Whenever you’re making a video, you should be thinking— 

  • “How do I get people to keep watching?” 
  • “Am I doing enough cuts?” 
  • “Am I changing enough settings?” 
  • “Are captions popping up?” 
  • “Are they going to be constantly engaged?”

Think about that in the back of your mind. 

If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out BAMx—the Netflix of real estate education and marketing, where I and other BAM Creators dive deeper and actually show you how to implement these strategies in interactive courses and livestreams.