Hi Morgan!
I thought about doing this with a few of our accounts but realized that some of the followers are related to team members (a doctor’s wife, a resident’s aunt). We kept following them and it turned out to be really beneficial. Turns out they became a secondary audience that we identified in our social strategy.
I don’t think that the ratio of following to followers matter too terribly much. If you are receiving direction to do this from leadership, I’d recommend only unfollowing the people that are not following you.
Happy to chat more :)
Hi Morgan! I love the question. We try to use follows as a strategic tool as well - following celebs when they visit, donors, partner organizations, government health organizations, etc. While we haven’t completed a mass unfollowing, we regularly monitor to make sure we’re still supportive of the people we do follow. Since it’s sometime viewed as an endorsement, I think it’s important to make sure you/your org would want each account you follow to make sense.
I’ll be following this thread to hear other team’s learnings!
Thanks,
Cortney
I promise you, no one is going to go to your Instagram profile and start looking at who you’re following. If you have a massive difference between followers and following, I’m sure your leadership is worried about the optics. But, I promise people aren’t paying attention to it, or if some random reason they are, as much you are…
I think the optics of someone noticing that you used to follow them and you unfollowed them are arguably worse, not a hill I’d die on, but think that would be worse for your brand.
I know there are exceptions to the rule - KFC only following spices, people caring about and looking deeply into who Taylor Swift is following, etc. - but for the most part if you’re thinking about cleaning house, make sure you’re very intentional about who you unfollow.
I’d try to keep your following to whoever follows you/follow back, news outlets, key community leaders and organizations, nonprofits you support, schools or training programs you have partnerships with, any influential people in the community, donors (if you’re a nonprofit system), government officials and organizations, local brands near or onsite, health outlets and organizations, and employees + providers.
I looked back at an Instagram I created for a children’s hospital I worked at back in the day, when we followed a ton of people before we ever had followers (this was like 10 years ago), and it looks like they kept most of them -- their followers just increased over time.
I work in the veterinary medicine field and not human healthcare, but I’m happy to provide feedback here based on my experience. Our company falls under a much larger umbrella, and so on our brand channels (and the guidance we provide to our individual pet hospitals), we only follow accounts that fall under our company umbrella, specifically those in the pet care space, confirmed partners of our brand, and a limited number of reputable associations in our industry and publications who regularly share stories from our hospitals.
When I came on board in 2021, I combed all the pages we were following and cleaned up our list to just a bit more than what I’ve detailed above. Though the first thought for many may be that nobody cares who you are following, I assure you, they do. And by following an account on social media, your company is unofficially showing endorsement of that account. Social audiences are more informed now, and though they may not comb through the list of pages you’re following, if they come across an account that posts something offensive or inappropriate, and they see that you’re following that account (which is very visible on most platforms), that can reflect poorly on your company’s reputation and open you to unnecessary risk, as well as your parent company.
