Spam protection
Any more or less popular page, be it a blogger’s profile or a representative office of an organization, inevitably encounters a huge amount of spam. Not only advertising mailings appear in personal messages and comments, but also many meaningless entries from ordinary users.
Of course, completely closing the page is not an option; usually bloggers and companies simply limit access to messages and comments. However, some popular Instagram pages deliberately close the profile and only allow followers after the application is approved.
Closed accounts on Instagram - why?
“Should I close my profile before advertising?”, “Why do bloggers close accounts?” and “How can I see content and followers in private accounts?” - these and many other similar questions constantly come across to me in thematic communities, so I decided to understand the topic.
Private Instagram profiles
In the Instagram application, regular accounts can be made private and no one except the owner and subscribers of the profile will see its content, subscribers and subscriptions. Business accounts and creator accounts cannot become private; to do this, they need to remove the “business”, lose statistics and the opportunity to advertise.
Why do people close accounts? This is usually done by administrators of entertainment public pages, bloggers and ordinary Instagram users. I will analyze the reasons of bloggers and administrators.
More subscribers
According to administrators and advertising managers, in closed accounts the subscriber dynamics graph behaves better, there are more subscribers and fewer unsubscribes for the same efforts. If you compare an open account and a closed one, then with the same quality of content and advertising budgets, the audience on closed ones grows better. Let's figure out why this is so.
Intrigue
Creating curiosity to get something is an old advertising trick. Even in folk tales, witches attracted children, arousing curiosity. Unknown content in any account evokes a desire to find out “what’s there,” and if the account intersects with the user’s interests, then the desire to find out is irresistible and the finger reaches for the “Subscribe” button.
They say it works well with entertainment publics and city ones. Imagine if it's a combo? A resident of Khabarovsk is sitting. And then his friend sends a direct message with a repost from a closed account: “Look what happens!” He goes over and sees the closed city account “Khabarovsk News” for 90 thousand and thinks to himself: “So I’m from Khabarovsk, and I’m here No? Disorder! I’ll sign!”
Therefore, administrators and bloggers often close their profiles before an advertising campaign, hoping that by intriguing the audience, they can get more profit. This is especially true for accounts with “low-quality” content.
People subscribe to a closed account faster, all other things being equal.
The advertising campaign is also carried out in such a way as to take full advantage of curiosity. This move was popular in the early 2010s, when the beginning of exciting stories was distributed throughout the public, and in order to find out the continuation, you had to go to a closed wiki page, accessible only to subscribers of the public. You can’t run such an advertising campaign on VKontakte anymore, network moderators stop it, but on Instagram it’s still possible.
If you are hooked and want to know what is happening in the photo, then it is almost impossible to stop subscribing to the account...
Fewer unsubscribes
Many SMM specialists assure: “There may be more subscribers, but when they see what kind of content there is, they will then unsubscribe.”
But assuming that the target audience will do exactly the same as you do is a big and unforgivable mistake for a marketer
However, this is not quite true. Experienced administrators say that the window that pops up when unsubscribing says “Are you sure you want to unsubscribe?” motivates people to stay. By the way, this technique is often used by email marketers, who send a message to those who have unsubscribed with an offer to return to the mailing list or resubscribe to another one. They know that retaining and returning a subscriber is easier than attracting a new one.
When you click on the “Unsubscribe” button from a closed account, a similar warning pops up. This notice is causing many to change their minds.
Avoid markups
Many bloggers, and sometimes commercial accounts, temporarily close their profiles due to a wave of bots signing up, since due to a sudden and massive boost, Instagram can block the account.
Protect from blocking
Instagram’s advertising policy suggests that a blogger advertising any brand will mark “sponsored content” if there is advertising. And if there is no mark, this is a reason for Instagram to remove the content due to the use of a trademark.
In 2021, many bloggers had such “illegal” advertising content removed. It is believed that it is more difficult to get the attention of Instagram algorithms from a closed account. This is the reason why the myth of “curing shadowbans” with closure has spread.
Typical Trademark Infringement Complaint
Chosenness
Sometimes private accounts are used to create a sense of specialness. This works great with city accounts, when a Khabarovsk resident asks the question: “Why are 90 thousand citizens subscribed to this account, but I’m not.” This works well with closed business clubs that create a private social media account and sell access to it.
Content theft
It’s much easier to steal content from an open account and pass it off as your own.
Problems with closed accounts
Only personal accounts can be closed. Such accounts have no statistics. They will not set up the target from the application. The advertiser has to be content with indirect metrics - subscribers, the average number of Stories viewed, the number of comments and likes per post.
Administrators of such accounts face another problem - in addition to their usual responsibilities, they must constantly approve subscriptions. It’s one thing to accept 10–20 applications, but what to do when there are thousands of them, and even several accounts? For such administrators, the SMMplanner service has developed automatic acceptance of subscriptions, or face control.
Face control?
Owners of SMMplanner pro-tariffs (from professional and higher) can set up automatic acceptance of subscriptions to a closed account. To do this, you need to connect your closed account to the service and set up auto-acceptance. SMMplanner will accept applications once every half hour.
By checking the box next to this item and clicking on “OK”, SMMplanner will accept all those who have subscribed during this time every half hour
Why is Instagram closed?
- Get more subscribers by arousing curiosity.
- Receive fewer unsubscribes due to the desire “not to lose.”
- Protect your account and content.
- Avoid a wave of bots that will ruin your statistics.
- Create a feeling of being chosen among the audience.
PS Special thanks to Sergei Krasnov and Timofey August for answering the questions “Why are accounts closed?”
Reluctance to share personal information with strangers
In turn, ordinary users often do not want to expose their lives to the whole world. As a rule, people share personal photos and recordings only with their acquaintances, friends and family. Any social network has a variety of privacy settings, but you can completely restrict access to a page only by closing your account.
In addition, this solution helps protect against scammers who copy the user’s information, create a copy of the page and write to the user’s friends asking for a loan. Also, a private profile is a great way to stop the haters you might encounter on the social network: an aggressive user simply won’t be able to get personal.
Advantages and disadvantages of a closed profile
Before closing your VKontakte profile, you need to familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of such a decision in advance. The advantages include:
- All personal information is available only to close people. No one else will be able to see photos, videos and audio recordings, groups, contact information and other personal information.
- The profile will not be visible in the list of people who reposted any post.
However, you will have to delete some data in VK yourself. These include first and last name, general list of friends, city of residence.
It is important to know that even if the VKontakte account is closed, its owner can still write messages or submit friend requests. To prevent another user from writing anything, he must be blocked separately.
Personal reasons
In some cases, people or organizations want to restrict access to a specific person. Of course, you can simply blacklist the user, but this is not always appropriate, in addition, he can easily create a second profile and follow you again. Privacy settings, as a rule, do not allow you to create any special access rules for a person who is not a friend or subscriber. In this case, the correct and reliable solution to the problem will be to completely close the account.
Almost all popular social networks allow users to close their account completely. Nowadays, the openness of the page and the search for friends are no longer so relevant, but the problems of spam, confidentiality and unwanted acquaintances are coming to the fore. A private profile protects the user from all these factors.
How to close your profile from your computer
You can make your account private using a computer or laptop in just a few clicks of the mouse. To do this, go to the “Settings” menu, select the “Privacy” line. Here you need to scroll down the list and in the “Other” section change the profile status to private.
Next, you just have to confirm your choice. After this, the account will become closed to outsiders.
Welcome from here or how to hide yourself on VK from everyone
Perhaps you are a very mysterious person and want to hide your VKontakte page from all users, even from friends. Here other privacy settings will come to our aid, namely:
- My page is data about information stored in albums, folders and on the wall. That is, you can hide your friends list, music, photos, posts, and so on.
- Posts on the page are comments, other people's posts on your wall, and the like.
- Contacting me is an opportunity to write you messages, invite you to groups and games.
- Stories are all about viewing and commenting on stories on your page.
- Other things are updates, profile type and visibility of your page in search engines.
We need to make all these sections inaccessible to others and then you can completely hide your VKontakte page from prying eyes.
From a smartphone
In the mobile application, the procedure is as follows:
- Log in to your VK page using the mobile application.
- Double-click on the profile below.
- Now click on the gear icon.
- Select the “Privacy” item.
- We set all settings in all sections to “Only me” or “No one”.
Congratulations, you are now the sole owner of the rights to view your own page.
On the computer
If it is more convenient for you to use the computer version of VK, then do this:
- Log in to your page by entering your username and password.
- Click on your avatar thumbnail at the top right.
- In the menu that appears, select “Settings”.
- Now, on the right, click on the “Privacy” item.
- Change all settings to “Only me” or “No one”.
- Ready!
What does a closed page look like?
If the user considers it necessary to hide his page, then when you try to visit it, you will see the following picture.
You will only be able to see your profile photo and some basic information. All other data is not available for viewing (see viewing hidden VK pages).
