Should I Delete Instagram Content? Here’s When [& Why]

Instagram is one of business owners’ favorite social media platforms to promote their products and services.

It presents a huge business opportunity with over 2 billion monthly active users. Therefore, no surprise that businesses post a lot of content on Instagram.

However, not all Instagram posts do well. Some posts perform poorly because of multiple reasons.

And when that happens, many business owners think of deleting the low-performing posts. Some even think of doing the same with spam comments, ghost followers, old posts, and Direct messages too.

In this article, we’ll try to understand whether you should do this or not.

#1. Should I Delete Instagram Posts That Performed Poorly?

Even the worst-performing Instagram posts can sometimes be found by other users if they have useful content and correct hashtags.

And when that happens, such posts may help others discover your account and learn more about your business.

Therefore, keeping your low-performing business posts is better than deleting them.  

#2. Should I Delete Instagram Comments That Are Spammy Or Abusive?

Here the answer is firmly affirmative. You should delete offensive, abusive, or spammy comments on your business Instagram posts.

Because if such comments remain visible on your posts, they will affect engagement and conversation, thus affecting the health of your business on Instagram.

They may even make Instagram algorithms consider your entire post spammy, thus affecting its visibility and discoverability.

So, better to get rid of such comments as soon as you spot them.

#3. Should I Delete Instagram Ghost Accounts From My Followers?

What is a ghost follower? Well, they are fake or bot accounts that follow you but do not comment or engage in any conversation with your business. The only good thing they do is make your follower count look slightly higher.

Therefore, you can keep or delete such followers based on your preferences, as their existence is largely irrelevant to your business. But remember that not most of your followers should be ghost accounts; otherwise, one look at your followers would shatter all credibility in your business.  

#4. Should I Delete Instagram Posts Older Than A Year?

Like ghost followers, keeping or removing older Instagram posts doesn’t make much of a difference to your account. If you want to refer to the posts in the future and use them to promote your products or services, keep them. If you’re going to reshare them at some point in time, keep them. Otherwise, you can also delete them or simply archive them.  

#5. Should I Delete Instagram Direct Messages Received On My Business Account?

If you do not have any link with the customers or leads whose messages you will delete, and the business with them is over in every possible manner, then there’s nothing wrong with deleting their direct messages. It will only create more space in your Inbox and make finding other conversations easier.

On the other hand, if you feel you will conduct business with them again in the future or they could be leads, then it makes sense to keep the conversation instead.  

Deleting Instagram Posts That Performed Poorly

We have already explained above whether or not you should delete Instagram posts that performed poorly.

Now in this section, we’ll try to understand the pros and cons of deleting them and the factors that we should consider before doing so.

Pros And Cons

Pros	Cons
Easy to discover the creative and successful posts	Potentially less exposure and brand awareness because of fewer posts
Better first impression on page visitors
Improved ratio of creative vs. mediocre posts
Easy to understand what works with your audience

Factors To Consider

• Growth and brand awareness
• Discovery of creative posts
• Total number of posts in the account
• The ratio of creative vs. mediocre posts
• Impression on page visitors.

Deleting Spammy And Abusive Comments

We already explained above that spammy, abusive, and offensive comments should always be deleted as soon as you spot them.

But if you still like a comparative analysis of everything, here are the consequences of deleting spam comments and their irrelevance to your business.

Pros And Cons

Pros	Cons
Protects brand reputation	Time-consuming process
Discourages trolls	Reduced engagement
Encourages healthy engagement and conversation necessary for the community	Requires tools or team for constant monitoring

Factors To Consider

• Brand reputation
• Time required
• Amount and quality of engagement (i.e., the share of trolling and toxicity in the comments)
• Amount of monitoring required.

Deleting Ghost Followers

After poorly performing posts and spam comments, let’s now understand the advantages and disadvantages of deleting ghost followers, along with factors essential to consider while removing them from your Instagram business account.

As we explained already in the Basics section, their presence is largely irrelevant to your business unless they comprise the majority of your follower count.

Pros And Cons

Pros	Cons
Awareness of real follower count	Fewer followers
Lower risk of losing followers in future
Less possibility of spam comments

Factors To Consider

• Follower count
• Trust and authority (i.e., accounts with more followers are considered better)
• Possibility of spam.

Deleting Old Instagram Posts

Old posts may or may not be useful to your business depending on whether you want to reuse them or not.

Here are the pros and cons of deleting them and the factors to remember while doing so.

Pros And Cons

Pros	Cons
Easier to find out successful and creative posts	Loss of potential followers
Improved ratio of creative vs. mediocre posts	Loss of potential leads who might have engaged with posts
Filtering and sorting become easier

Factors To Consider

• Number of posts that will remain
• The ratio of creative vs. mediocre posts
• Filtering and sorting
• Potential future followers
• Potential leads who might have engaged with the posts.

Deleting Instagram Direct Messages

Finally, let’s learn about the advantages and disadvantages of deleting Instagram Direct messages and the factors that impact them.

Pros And Cons

Pros	Cons
Less unwanted messages	Seizes potential business opportunities with deleted chats
Frees up space and makes finding useful messages easier

Factors To Consider

• Future business possibilities
• Number of messages and inbox space
• Discovery of useful messages

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrapping Up

So, this was our brief overview regarding whether you should delete various types of useless or less helpful content from your Instagram account or not.

We discussed deleting poorly-performing Instagram posts, deleting spam comments, and removing ghost followers,  old company posts, and direct messages.

We tried to explain every part in detail and hope you were able to understand the pros and cons of everything with essential factors.

If you still have any doubts, please share them in the comments. Also, share this post on your Instagram and social media if you learned something from here.