Why You Shouldn't Buy Instagram Followers
You might be thinking the content you may be putting out on Instagram is good but how does it feel when thousands of people agree and follow/like your content? Ever since Instagram has changed their algorithm from displaying chronological posts to now posts that you interact with the most it's getting harder for businesses, influencers, or just your friends to get the recognition they deserve and is harder for them to gain likes and followers.
As a content creator, it can seem tempting to take shortcuts in order to get recognized including buying Instagram followers. Though looking at that high follower count and likes look good on the profile right off the bat, it can definitely hurt your account and can also get expensive.
Buying Instagram Followers
You can buy Instagram followers from $5 dollars anywhere to hundreds of dollars. However, you are only paying for the numbers and the accounts behind it all are either bots or inactive accounts that will never actually engage with your account and posts.
Engagement Affected
When you go to an account that has over 100k followers and discover that the likes and only have a couple hundred, it does not do much good for your engagement and account as a whole. Purchased Instagram followers do not provide any long term value to your account. The followers, likes, views, and comments you get from purchasing, in the beginning, will not sustain. Think about it, what good does it do when you get 10,000 followers overnight but doesn't engage with you at all?
Engagement within the account is the key to working Instagram’s algorithm. Without the organic likes or comments, your posts will most likely not show up on your actual audience’s newsfeed or even explore pages.
Hurting Your Credibility
While having tons of followers can get users to follow you organically, more often than not they will click away. It is very easy to spot when an account has fake followers and when caught by your actual followers it can ruin your credibility. When you look at it this way, if you were to go on a brand’s website but all the reviews were fake, would you want to support their business? The answer is probably NO! It is misleading and will make you believe that the brand could not get authentic reviews and engagement through good content alone.
What to do Instead
Public Account - If you want people to discover you, make your account public. This way you can organically grow your audience with the content you post. This also allows for your posts to pop up on the explore page to people that are likely to engage with your account.
A Reason to Follow - It’s one thing to post but another to actually curate what exactly you are posting each time. People may follow you for different reasons so it is important that you are building trust and excitement among your followers by using high-quality photos, catchy captions, interesting stories, etc.
Engage with your Audience - As we said before, engagement is key to any account and when you are reaching out to different accounts and creating that connection, it builds a stronger relationship with not only the person you are engaging with but the people around can see it. Use Instagram to its fullest potential by posting IGTV’s going live, and asking your viewers questions to create a buzz about a topic. There are countless ways to connect with them but the most important thing is to keep it organic and authentic.
If your accounts need help with engagement and follower growth strategies, feel free to contact us to inquire about our services!