5 reasons you should avoid buying Instagram followers
Ellie Wilbraham - 2 December 2019
For many businesses, Instagram is a big part of their social media strategy. However, it can take a lot of work to gain Instagram followers. There are an abundance of services out there providing you with the opportunity to buy fake followers but what’s the catch? Whilst taking shortcuts such as buying fake followers might be tempting, this should 100% be avoided and here’s why:
1) Fake followers will not engage with your account
Fake followers will not engage with your account, it’s a fact. When you buy followers, they tend to be fake bot accounts rather than real people so they will add no value to your account.
Consider what’s important, having 10,000 inactive followers or having 100 followers who will actually engage with you and are interested in your content? Numbers aren’t everything; we’d opt for the latter.
2) Your account will look spammy
Fake followers are easy to spot. Their account name is the first thing to give it away, usually a random combination of letters and numbers and they usually don’t have an icon image either. Another big giveaway it’s a fake account is that they often follow thousands of people but only have a few followers in return and they don’t post any or very little, spammy content.
On the rare occasion that fake followers do provide you with engagement and comment on your photos, their comments tend to be automated such as “cool” and “nice post”. Comments like these not only look like spam, but they may also be irrelevant or inappropriate for the content of that particular post too.
3) Fake followers may damage your credibility
20k followers but only 11 likes on your photos? Or jumping from 20 followers to 20,000 in a couple of days? Looks dodgy, right. Activity on your account such as this will look extremely suspicious to your real followers and customers and you may risk damaging your reputation, as well as the credibility of your business.
There is a clear path to engagement and gaining genuine followers, and you’ll be surprised as to how many people will notice when this path isn’t taken. You’ll want to avoid customers questioning the credibility of your account.
4) Instagram removes fake accounts
Instagram monitors and identifies fake followers and removes these accounts from the platform. So, if you’ve spent money buying fake followers, you’re inevitably going to lose them and you’re wasting your money.
5) It goes against Instagram’s terms of use
Not only does Instagram remove fake accounts, but the platform will also actively suspend accounts if they are involved in the practice of buying fake followers because it is against their terms of use.
Buying fake followers is not worth the risk and it would be damaging to the reliability and credibility of your brand if your account was suspended for going against these regulations.
What’s the alternative to buying Instagram followers?
Buying Instagram followers should be avoided at all costs. Instead, it is more beneficial to focus your time and efforts on gaining real followers that will actually engage with your content.
Instead of buying Instagram followers, you should:
- Identify your target audience
- Create engaging, high-quality and relevant content with your target audience in mind
- Make good use of Instagram’s features including stories, story highlights and shoppable posts
- Use hashtags to promote your brand
- Tag other relevant accounts in your posts
- Consider collaborating with Instagram influencers to expand your reach
- Convert your profile to a business account to access further tools and data
- Consider using Instagram ads
If you would like a helping hand with getting your business’s Instagram account up to scratch, take a look at our social media services and get in touch today.
