6 Effective Ways To Clean Your Instagram Account

As a creator, you have two jobs: making content and consuming content. Are we right or are we right? In the madcap rush to do both, we bet, you overlook one #thng: the clutter in your Instagram account.

Go ahead. Browse through it now with new eyes. We’ll wait.

Is your Explore feed a jumble of useless photos, reels, and videos that give you zilch inspiration? Does your bio even match your creator journey? Are you following accounts you never, ever, ever interact with?

If you nodded to even one of these questions, you have your answer. Your account is bloated, and you need these simple ways to clean up your Instagram.

1. Update your bio ASAP

Your bio is the first thing people see, and you need to make it kicka$$ (tips here). So, go to Edit Profile and make sure you change it along with your name, username, and links. Any other personal info you give, like email, update it. All of it shows the current you. Not the creator you were 6 months back or 1.5 years back. Also, freshen up your profile picture if it’s been the same for ages.

2. Spruce up your Explore page

The second way to clean your Instagram account is to pay attention to the Explore page. For a creator, it’s the best place to find trending music on Instagram or new accounts to follow. But the kind of suggestions you get on the Explore page is based on your search and activity history.

To keep it simple: with time, those suggestions suck lemons and do you no good. So, give your account a cleanse. Scroll through the Explore page and any post you don’t love or find useful, mark it as “Not Interested in This Post.” Instagram Gods, aka the algorithm, will show you fewer posts like it.

Another way to clean the Explore page is to clear your entire search history. Go to Profile, then Settings, then Security. Tap on Clear All on Search History.

3. Mute stories or posts

No one loves dozens of Stories that make the line a dot. Yet, we all follow accounts that persist in doing so. Our suggestion to clean up the clutter? Mute their Stories, so they don’t come up in your feed. Inversely, if you follow an account with great Story content but meh feed posts, mute their posts and keep the Stories active.

FYI, you can always unmute them later by going to the account’s profile and tapping the Following button.

4. Unfollow accounts with zero interaction

Part of being a creator is engaging with your community. You need to double-tap, share, and comment on their content too, ’cause it’s a give and take. So, our next tip to cleaning up your Instagram account is to look for profiles you haven’t interacted with for ages.

• Go to your profile
• Tap following
• On Categories, select Least Interacted With

Unfollow all accounts that you think are filling your feed with junk. Remember, there is so much content and too little time to waste on profiles that add no value to you.

5. Review your feed

The first four tips for cleaning your Instagram helped you. The next few lean towards your followers. To make it as an influencer, your feed should show the strongest content. So, take a minute and review the photos and videos you posted way back when 50 Shades of Grey was a #thng.

Are they blurry? Do they paint you in a harsh light? Do they accurately represent you as the creator you are now? If not, consider either archiving or deleting them.

Archive or delete posts that don’t match your creator persona

• Go to the post you want to remove from your feed
• Tap the three dots
• Select delete or archive

When you delete a post, you completely remove it and all the likes and comments it has received. You cannot recover a post once it’s erased. Archiving also removes the post from your feed, but it retains the comments and likes you may have got on it. Plus, you can still view the post by going to Archive in Profile settings.

6. Limit the audience on Stories

We’re big believers that creators should be genuine, authentic, and keep it 💯 with their community. But there are some #thngs you don’t want to share with everyone. For that, use the “Close Friends” option. It’s a fantastic way to keep your Instagram clean, as it limits who gets to see your Story.

• Go to profile
• Tap the sidebar
• Go down to Close Friends
• Add people to the list
• Choose Close Friends when you next post a story

Psst: no one else can see who else is on your list of close friends, or request that you include them!

(credit: Instagram)

Clean your Instagram account: the final straw

Our last advice on how to clean your Instagram account is to restrict or block profiles. Creators get bullied and harassed every day. But it is in your power to cultivate a community that’s all positivity.

The first option is to restrict by going to their profile, then menus, and then restrict. Such accounts won’t be able to comment on your posts unless you first approve them. FYI, you can always un-restrict them in the future. The second and more severe option is blocking. It completely shuts down an account from interacting with you.

That’s it, folks!

Those were our tips to keep your Instagram clean and improve your experience as a user and as a creator.