Thank you for posting. I am always delighted when people contact me about a question like this from controlling. Without doing this you would not learn from the experience.
When I control, I will send a “check the tutorial” message when people do something wrong that is a common mistake but not interfering with anyone. It could be for things like calling inbound incorrectly, not departing straight out or requesting to take off into a pattern and not doing a pattern.
This is a great tutorial explaining common errors that we see:
So it sounds like you might have called inbound incorrectly.
On a side note, if you got a message “Please follow instructions” that is is usually more of a more significant mistake and “please follow instructions or you will be ghosted” is for when you seem to be ignoring our instructions and look like you are going to interfere with others.
Check this site out for info on how to share your replay and we can give you more specific advice.