Private or Public?

Setting your account to private is the easiest way to control who can see your posts and information.  It also lets you select who can follow you and you have to approve every request.  There are many advantages to keeping a profile private.  Peace of mind is number 1 knowing that you have control over the followers.

​

Setting your account to public makes it easier for you to share and interact with the Instagram community.  When people search, they will see your content, view your stories, and be able to share your posts with other people.  This allows content to grow faster and bring in more visitors to your profile.  Things like hashtags are useful to get more attention.  But do you want more attention? Public accounts let anyone follow you and if you get a lot at one time, you may not be able to filter out and block the negative followers.

​

Followers

Having a lot of followers can be good and bad.  Good because a lot of people will see your content and be able to enjoy what you are sharing, give their feedback with comments and likes.  Bad because in the mix there will be fake accounts, and "creepers" that are not good attention that you want.  Be on the look out for telltale signs that "creepers" are keeping an eye on you. First, the name is a name of a person and has a number at the end, this is usually computer generated name.  Look to see if the sub info has the same name or a different name (example IG name is Stan 4293 but the name says Frank Smith).  This is a flag, and you should block.  Second, click on their "following" tab and look to see if they are following hashtags.  How do the tags make you feel? If I see flexiblegirls, gymnasts, youngmodels, it's an instant flag and I block the account.  If you get creeper feel from what they are following, just block out of caution.  Also look at the following list of accounts.  Are they all girls, all young, or some with not nice profile images? Another flag you should use to block them.

​

We spend a lot of time screening the followers of our account and try to block as soon as we suspect someone is not a dance dad following to support their dancer.  It is better to have a small safe community than a large creeper following.

​

Saves

What is a save? You can look at the insights for your post and see how many people liked, commented, shared, and saved your post.  Some images you can tell are attracting "creepers" if you have a significant increased number of saves.  This allows someone to go back to your image or your account without being noticed by following or liking a post. Our suggestion is to delete the original post which breaks the link to your profile.  Unfortunately there is no way to see who has saved a post of yours or why.  We do save a post from time to time for inspiration, so your saves may be legit.  But depending on the pose (maybe a tilt or extension) it most likely is a creeper.

​

​