The Problem with Buying Followers on Social Media
Problem:
In today’s climate, social media is one of the most important elements a brand can do for their marketing efforts. As a result, some agencies cheat and will buy followers on platforms such as Instagram & Twitter in order to make it look like they have increased a brand’s followers (organically) and helped enhance the brand’s exposure and reach.
How this negatively impacts your brand:
Buying followers is NOT advisable since they are not TRUE followers, interested in your brand, liking your content or engaging. Although this may be a quick solution to grow your Instagram or Twitter accounts (if you’re a new brand) or just want to quickly grow your numbers this will NOT help you long term and will really come back to “bite you” when you have 10K followers and are only getting 50-75 likes an Instagram post and a few comments (or engagements).
Numbers aren’t everything
Even though having large amount of followers looks good, it is not the most important metric that people look at. Instead of stressing over the number of followers, look into audience engagement data which is a better way to measure how a social media account is performing. Also quality is more important than quantity. Is the brand’s content beautiful, with clear meaningful messaging? Or are they just posting a LOT of content with no concise message and beautiful content? Takeaway: Quality over quantity (i.e. paid followers).
Buying followers is obvious and is not perceived well in the industry
When you buy hundreds of thousands of followers on your social media, it is hard to go unnoticed. Your organic followers will notice that you have been purchasing followers and you might even lose them. It makes a brand look desperate as if they’re cheating rather than building a loyal following the old fashioned way (with regular, beautiful, informative content).
Buying followers leads to other problems…
Buying followers is highly likely to bring other issues such as they will likely bring other fake accounts to your page (which once again will hurt your engagement).
It is against Instagram’s policy
Not only buying followers is against morality, it is also against Instagram’s policy. Once they find out that you have been gaining followers inorganically, your account might get disabled.
It is dishonest
As a business owner you should want to be honest with your customers and show who you really are? Fake followers is NOT honest and sends the wrong message to your real loyal customers.