Creating good social media content can be a minefield, especially in the sexual wellness industry. Getting ads approved, ensuring your captions don’t include any banned words, creating engaging content that appeals to your audience, and keeping on top of the community, the list is never-ending. 

All that being said, ask any social media manager in the sexual wellness industry what their biggest headache stems from and they’ll all likely have the same answer – censorship! From shadow banning and ad accounts being taken down to accounts being disabled, it’s increasingly becoming difficult to display industry focused content on social media without facing some form of punishment from the big guys in charge. 

First thing’s first, what is shadow banning?

Shadow banning is the practice of limiting the visibility of a user’s social media content without their knowledge, making it difficult for them to reach their intended audience. This is often done by limiting the reach of posts or making content less visible in search results or on newsfeeds. 

Social media platforms claim that shadow banning is used to prevent spam and inappropriate content. However, it has become apparent that shadow banning is often used to censor content related to sexual wellness.

So, what can we do to firstly, avoid a shadow ban completely, but also deal with a shadow ban if we are slapped with one?

The simple answer is – don’t post anything risky or explicit. However, that’s not a reasonable solution, especially when we are here to educate our audience and sell products. The next best thing is to trick the platform by using the risky word in a different variation. Some of our favourites are:

• Sex = Seggs
• Masturbation = Masturbation 
• Lube = Lub3 

Even on the image copy, using these substitute words will ensure your posts still get seen and are not taken down within a second of posting. Here at Little Leaf Agency, we haven’t had many issues with posting our client’s products, however, as soon as too much skin or nudity was involved, that’s when posts started to deal with the shadow ban issue. 

Use hashtags

Another way to prevent being penalized is by using relevant hashtags in the post. If you use a hashtag, such as #Thanksgiving, yet the post is of a sex toy, this will get flagged. Purely because people (including children) will be using this very generic and popular hashtag, and if they do search it, they could come face-to-face with your post.

If you do want to implement a hashtag strategy, make sure the people who will need or want to see your content have access to it. For example if the post is about a yeast infection, this is perfectly okay to use. If people want to search for this specific content, they can. A good, free tool to use to check if your hashtag is safe, is Hashtag IQ. Not only can you see what hashtags and words are banned, but you can also see the performance of hashtags, so you’ll be able to judge whether you should use them or not. 

How can you tell if you have been shadow banned? 

You can usually tell if you’ve been shadow banned purely by looking at the engagement in the post. If you are shadow banned, Instagram won’t show your post on your followers’ feed, or on the explore page and you won’t be able to see it in the tagged post with the other hashtags either. If you have used hashtags on your post, search for the hashtag and see if the post is there. 

If not, then you have your answer. Also the next few posts you make after the shadow banned one will probably be hidden too. If you haven’t used hashtags, you can usually tell by looking at your analytics. If you have noticed the reach and impressions have dropped considerably, then Instagram has probably already taken action. 

What to do if your account is shadow banned? 

The best approach if you’ve been shadow banned, is to first remove the post if Instagram hasn’t already done so. Delete any trace of the post so that it’s almost a fresh start. Also, browse through any previous posts and just ensure there aren’t any explicit hashtags used or posts that could be considered offensive or explicit and if there are, delete them. 

Rethink your hashtag strategy. See if there are any generic hashtags you are including and if so, stop using them immediately. In fact, it’s probably best to cool off on the hashtags for a couple of weeks and let your organic engagement do its thing. In the meantime, think of a strategy that will benefit you and your potential new followers. Curate hashtags depending on the content. There are over 21,000 posts under the hashtag #seggs, so there are definitely ways to get around it!

Honesty is the best policy

Be honest with your audience! Tell them you’ve been shadow banned and that you could use an extra boost. Ask them to like and save your posts so that the algorithm knows the audience likes your content. Or, to take this further, host a giveaway, even better if it’s a multi-brand giveaway, so you can boost your following, and engagement and hopefully see your reach increase. 

The sexual wellness industry has been at the forefront of a growing movement to break down taboos around sex and promote healthy sexual expression, and social media platforms have played a critical role in amplifying the voices of individuals and businesses within this industry.

It has also provided them with a platform for sharing information about sexual health, pleasure, and education, and it is therefore crucial that social media platforms recognise the true value of sexual wellness content and in turn, take the correct steps to ensure that this content is not unfairly censored.

This is not just an issue for individuals and businesses within the industry, but for society as a whole and until some real tangible change has been made, these small steps can be taken in attempts to beat this unfair and backward system.