Last week Instagram decided to crack the ol’ whip on fake/spam accounts and delete them altogether.

We marketers do love us some big numbers, so when the whip was cracked and the follower counts dropped, how much did they drop by?

By the Numbers
Here’s how it looked for the golf resorts in my database after I used average growth to account for any new fans resorts may have gained while the spam-dump was progressing:

On average, golf resorts with fewer than 1,000 followers before the purge saw a decrease in their fan count of about 1.8%. Resorts that started with more than 1,000 followers saw a dip of about 4.6%.

What’s interesting is that compared to an analysis I did of all resorts, golf resorts saw a much bigger gap between these groups and a lower overall average.

Not Bad, Considering…
Yes it hurts (a little) to lose fans, but considering these were fake accounts to being with, it shouldn’t hurt too bad.

Also keep in mind that based on how quickly golf resort follower counts are growing on Instagram (about 10%/mo), by New Years Day nearly every golf resort should have just as many followers as before the purge.

A small price to pay for a cleaner list.

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