Instagram Limits

I love Instagram and have really enjoyed watching it grow as well as seeing and forming the different interactions there. It seems, to me, to be set aside to the other forms of social media and with that I admittedly spend a lot of time on there.

If you have followed some of my previous tips then you will know that I have done a basic guide for starting on Instagram as well as a 7things I dislike about it.

I thought with these factors I would talk about the different limitations that it offers; if you are an active user and want to grow then knowing these are important.

Likes

There is a limit on the number of likes you can perform on Instagram. The current limit is 350 likes per hour.

Lets be honest that the chances are, unless you’re highly active or doing a “like for like”, you won’t hit this limit.

But if you are this active, it is recommended that you keep the likes to less than 300 per hour to avoid getting blocked from using the service. If you have used a like for like tag and then have 400+ likes it is good to just keep this in mind.

Post Deleting

Now, this may seem like a very strange point; why would you be deleting your photos?

I have come across a few discussions and posts that suggest to unify your gallery and with that in mind many people start using a set filter or frame. Once they have unified it there seems to be a temptation to go back through and delete photos that no longer match. If this is the case there is a 10 post deleting limit.

People you Follow

Yes, there is a limit on the number of people you can follow on Instagram. According to my research and Instagram help thread, in order to “reduce spam”, they limit the number of people you can follow to 7500.

I know many people are happy growing their Instagram slowly and organically so for many people this wouldn’t be a problem.  However, if you are actively growing and seeking a larger following or are using an app like Crowdfire to copy followers then this is useful to know.

If you’re approaching that limit, it might be time to go through and determine if there are people worth unfollowing. There may be irrelevant or inactive accounts that you could stop following so this is worth a check.

Follows per Hour

Following the above limitation you also have how many people you are allowed to follow per hour. Again, this really only applies if you are actively growing your numbers.

As far as I can gather you are only allowed to follow 150 users per hour. The good news here is that it will stop you from following anyone, so if you click follow the box goes from white to green and back to white.

(Just a note on the above 2 points: There doesn’t seem to be a limit on how many people follow you)

Unfollows

This is a tricky one as there seems to be a continual change with this since January 2016 already. At one point it was 100 per hour, it then changed to 60 and from what I can gather has now stripped down to 25 unfollows per hour. I'm not sure how long this will last but once I know for sure I will update this!

Hashtags

It was only last month that I realised this existed when a friend could load their photos and when they managed to do it they realised it was because they are using too many tags.

I do use a few but with that in mind I don’t think I have ever exceeding the limit of 30! But, again, it is useful to know if you are a heavy hashtager.

Text

Now, interestingly there isn’t a limitation on the text that you put with each post but I wanted to share a little tip that I found with it.

If you are cross sharing to something like Twitter then it is worth keeping a limit to 140 characters; nothing more frustrating than writing your text and it not coming through fully on another site.

Bio

This final one is for your bio text. There is a limitation on how many characters you can use. I have found that the limit is 150 so choose how you describe yourself carefully.

What happens if you breach any of these?

Well nothing serious happens but you will get a warning message from Instagram to tell you that you are currently blocked from using this service. It doesn’t mean that, for example with likes, you can’t then go and interact through comments; you are just blocked from whichever service you’ve breached.

My tip is to click the box that allows you to send a message and apologise, play ignorance and hopefully through completing their form you are allowed back on within 1 – 2 hours.

Have you noticed any limits that I haven't mentioned?