Social proof is essential to your success on Instagram. And the best way to strengthen your social proof is by having lots of followers. When people see that you have lots of followers, they will be more inclined to trust you, and your brand will gain more credibility and authenticity.
The more followers you have, the higher your social proof will be. However, for a number of reasons, many Instagram users are looking for ways to hide their followers.
If this is you then this article is for you. Read on to find out how you can hide your Instagram.
Hiding Your Followers on Instagram
Unfortunately, there is no straightforward method of hiding your followers on Instagram.
This is because Instagram is yet to introduce this feature, and there is no guarantee that this feature will ever be rolled out.
This is one of the key areas where Instagram maintains a strict and straightforward concept.
But if you really want to hide your followers list, there are four effective methods that can work for you.
Control Your Visibility
Unless you’re running an online business, or you are a social media influencer or a public figure, you should consider limiting the Information you share with the general public. You may not even realize it but you may be putting too much information about yourself out there.
Thankfully, Instagram gives you the option to control your visibility by switching from a public profile to a private profile. When you have a public profile, there is no restriction whatsoever.
Anyone on Instagram can see everything about you such as your posts, stories, followers, and even all the people you are following.
When you switch to a private profile, on the other hand, this will automatically restrict your profile so that only your followers can see all the accounts you are following and all the accounts following you back.
Controlling your visibility is easy, fast and convenient. You only need to follow these easy steps to switch from a public Instagram account to a private account:
- Launch the Instagram app on your mobile device or visit the Instagram website on your favourite browser.
- Navigate to your profile and visit your settings by expanding the hamburger menu on the top right corner.
- Click on privacy and then scroll down to "Account Privacy."
- Under "Account Privacy," switch to "Private Account."
One thing about a private account is that if anyone wants to follow you they’ll have to send you a request first. After carefully reviewing this request you can then decide whether or not you want them to have access to your profile information.
Remove Followers
Even after switching to a private account, you may find that there are some people who are following you but you don't want to keep sharing your profile information with them. In this situation, you can easily restrict their access to your profile while removing them from your follower list.
To remove a follower from your profile you only need to follow the steps below:
- Launch the Instagram app on your device and navigate to your profile.
- Click on "Followers." This will open a list of all the people following you. Instead of scrolling through hundreds or thousands of accounts to find the ones you want to remove, you can easily find specific people by using the search bar.
- On the right side of the screen, next to each username, you will find an option to remove them from your follower list. Now, you can easily remove as many accounts as you want.
When you remove a user from your follower list, Instagram will not notify them that they have been removed. Once removed, these users will no longer have access to the information on your profile. So if they want to gain access to your information, such as the people following you and the content you post, they will have to send a follower request.
Restrict Followers
Depending on the situation, removing followers might be a little too much. So if you want to restrict access to your profile information but you don't want to go as far as removing followers, then you should consider restricting specific users.
When you restrict a user from your profile, Instagram will never notify them. This means that they can still leave comments on your posts. However, these comments will only be visible to them until you click the "See comment option."
This option makes their comments visible to you alone, and if you want other people to see these comments, then you need to click on "Approve."
Restricting your followers is just as easy as removing them. You can complete the process in four easy steps.
- Launch the Instagram app on your device or visit Instagram the website on your favourite browser.
- Navigate to your profile, go to "Settings" and click on "Privacy."
- Under "Connections," click on "Restricted Accounts," and then hit "Continue."
- In the search bar, input the name of the account you want to restrict and then click on restrict next to the username.
If in future, you decide to unrestrict any of your followers, you can follow the same process and click on “Unrestrict.”
Block Followers
Blocking an Instagram user is the most extreme way to hide your profile information from them. Consider this as a last resort. Blocking an Instagram user is just as easy as the other three methods in this guide.
Follow the steps below to get started:
- Launch the Instagram app on your device or visit the Instagram website on your favourite browser.
- Locate the account you want to block.
- Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen to expand the menu.
- Click on "Block" and then "Confirm."
That’s all you need to know about blocking someone on Instagram!
Once you hit the block button, they will neither be able to see the people you are following nor the people who are following you.
Conclusion
Hiding your followers can be overwhelming, especially because there is no straightforward method to do this.
However, with just a few clicks you can hide your profile information from anyone.
So the next time you want to restrict a particular user from viewing your profile information, you can try out any of the methods outlined in this article.