User names on Instagram are actually the most important characteristics of your Instagram accounts since they define your content and purpose on Instagram and people on the platform would know you based on your Instagram username and would remember that name to interact with on Instagram.
In this article, you will know why it is a bad idea to change your Instagram username.
Why should you not change your Instagram username?
As I mentioned above, your Instagram username is the way people would know you and get to interact with you on Instagram. It is somehow your recognition on the platform. You might be thinking of changing your username because it has been old or it does not seem interesting to you anymore and you don’t like it or any other reasons on your mind, but you need to know that this is a HUGE MISTAKE!
Based on all the reports Instagram users have shared from their experiences of changing their Instagram usernames, and my personal opinion, this can be a very harmful move for your Instagram account, and you might regret changing your username in the future. Below I am going to tell you some reasons why we think this is a bad idea to change your Instagram username:
1- You will lose followers and engagement
One of the main reasons that you should avoid changing your Instagram username is because you are going to lose followers if you do so. You might be wondering why? I’ll explain more about it. Imagine you are running a meme page with a lot of followers and you suddenly decide to change your Instagram username without thinking about its consequences and only because you have a cool new username on your mind for your Instagram account. So you easily change your username right away, and you are happy with your decision. The day after that one of your, let’s say “loyal followers” which I mean a follower that has been following your account since a long time ago and has always been active on your account and interacts with it often, want to show one of your funny memes to her friend. She searches up your username, and she gets the error message “user not found.”
She would come up thinking you might have deleted your Instagram account or it has been disabled for some reason and that’s when she forgets about your account and follows similar accounts and starts interacting with them and finally she now loves those accounts more than yours.
2- Your followers might not recognize you
This has happened to so many of us on Instagram that out of blue we see an account on our Instagram feed and we take a look at its username, and we wonder “When did I just follow this account?”. That’s what exactly happens when you change your Instagram username. Your followers might see a post from you on their Instagram feed, and they will not recognize that it’s the account they love its memes and videos, because the username does not seem familiar to them anymore so they’ll decide to unfollow you and this way you will gradually lose followers on your Instagram account.
3- You will not appear on google or other search engines for a short time.
It is normal that on the first days you change your Instagram username it is not going to appear for a short time on Google and other search engines until Google gets to know your username and analyses it. This would take a little time.
4-You will lose the contents you have linked to your Instagram
It is very normal that you want to share your Instagram account and profile on your other social media accounts, as we all do. And you might have even shared some of your photos and videos all over the web in different websites and social medias to get more people to know your Instagram account and see your posts and to promote your account. You need to keep in mind that after you change your username on Instagram, those links will be dead! What I mean is that they’d be completely useless since they included your username’s URL which is not the same as it once was so no one will be redirected to your Instagram profile from those links you have shared on your other social media networks and maybe sites on the web.
Still, if you do not have a lot of followers and losing a few of them is worth having your favorite username, then go ahead and do it.
After reading the above reasons for why you should not change your Instagram username, if you still are not convinced and want to change your Instagram username, try to consider these tips before deciding to change your username:
- Try to find all the things you have linked to your Instagram and change the URL of your Instagram account that you have shared on your Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Search for your desired username and make sure it is available and not taken.
- If you have supplied any marketing content such as business cards, flyers, promotional products for your Instagram account, you need to think of changing and editing your Instagram username if written on them and replace it with your new Instagram username.
Conclusion
After reading the whole article if you decided to change your Instagram username anyways, thinks very carefully and a lot on what you want your new username to be and find the one that you think you’d never want to change again and would never get old regarding what your content is about, and also double think of all the consequences changing your Instagram username might have for your Instagram account.
