Why Is My Motorcycle Business Losing Instagram Followers?

You’ve worked hard to build your following on Instagram, and you thought you were doing everything right. So why are you now losing followers? It’s frustrating, right? The first thing you should not do is panic. There are a few reasons why your account is losing Instagram followers, and with a bit of investigation, you can figure out what’s going on. 

Get your motorcycle company’s Instagram account back on track by considering these reasons for losing Instagram followers. 

Your Instagram account is a part of your marketing plan. So, of course, you want to showcase your product or service on motorcycles. This is your chance to show your followers what your company can do for them. Not so fast. 

You’re talking to fellow riders; they are following you because they share a love of riding with your business. They aren’t there for you to sales pitch them with every post. This doesn’t mean getting rid of sales posts completely. Content that features your motorcycle product or service will have the highest ROI. You just need a balance between these salesy posts and other types. Try some of these other post types to break up the sales messages. 

Successful Instagram influencers have this balance of sales and content down T. They depend on apps like Instagram and TikTok to make money, so it’s their job to balance promotional content with non sales-driven content.

Another option is to make people laugh. This is the most effective strategy for gaining followers, shares, and engagement on Instagram. However, I caution you with this approach. There are several types of humor. You want to make people laugh, not offend or alienate people. Humor may also not be in line with your brand’s personality. So only use humor if it makes sense. 

Hopefully, you aren’t one of the many business owners that made the mistake of buying Instagram followers. Sure, it’s easy to buy a million followers and look like you have a lot of people following your business. Unfortunately, buying a lot of followers is never what it seems. Even if a company promises you high quality real accounts, you will never get real, active, and relevant accounts. You also won’t improve your engagement rate because these are not Instagram users. They are dead accounts. Over time, these fake accounts will begin to unfollow your account, and you are faced with a dropping follower count. This type of drop-off is especially concerning. Instagram’s algorithm will pick up on the drop in number of followers and think something is wrong with your account. This can cause your posts to be less visible, further hindering your ability to attract more followers. 

Stop trying to cheat the system and focus on building your followers list organically by doing these things:

Most marketers are able to grow their following by 1,000 in about six months by posting quality content on their social media platforms. However, don’t panic if it takes you longer, such as a year. Depending on your motorcycle business, your segmented market could be a lot smaller than the average business. This can make it harder to build a strong following. 

If you’re struggling to create a cohesive brand image, try using a tool to help you. Canva is a great resource for this. First, create and pay for a premium account. You can then upload your brand assets, choose your brand colors, and create a profile. Canva will then make it simple to use these assets across all of your social media content. 

The number of motorcycle riders has doubled from 4.3 million in 2002 to 8.6 million in 2021. This has resulted in the average age of motorcycle riders increasing. However, this is only half of the story. A better approach is to know the demographic of your target audience. For example, younger riders 16-44 will ride sportbikes, but they are rarely ridden by riders over the age of 45. Sport Touring bikes are popular among riders who are 35-64 but not common outside of this range. 

So why are these age demographics important? This is just the start of having a better understanding of your audience on Instagram. As people age, their lives and motorcycling habits change. So with this, your audience’s interests and priorities change. This means that your Instagram page also need to change. If you’ve been using the same strategy for your Instagram stories for several years now, then it’s possible that your audience is outgrowing your business. 

To determine if this is the issue, you need to look at your data. This is the only way to stay in touch with your audience across the popular social network. Perhaps overly stylized photos performed well, and now they barely register a few likes. Maybe your performance videos used to get a lot of shares last year, but now, the how-to videos are what generate the most engagement. You can use tracking apps and plugins to track the performance of your Instagram posts, stories, and reels.

As you can see, the answer to this question can be different for everyone. Perhaps you bought fake followers, and they are now dropping off. Maybe your posting volume is too little or too much. There could be a lack of consistency in your posts. Through a process of elimination, you can work your way through these reasons with your Instagram account to narrow down the source of your follower loss.