4 Reasons Your Business Can’t Afford to Buy Instagram Followers

Over the last few years, there has been a large increase in the amount of accounts purchasing fake Instagram followers. Some feel this phenomena has gained popularity due to the change in Instagram’s algorithm, where posts went from being presented in chronological order to a seemingly random array of photos beginning with the accounts you interact with most. “Supposedly.”

Exposure and engagement began to decrease for all across the board and the desire to keep momentum going outweighed the patience of growing an account organically. After all, Instagram is all about perception isn’t it?

Others feel it had nothing to do with the change of the algorithm, but rather, is simply because there is a big opportunity to capitalize on people who want instant gratification at the click of a button. Therefore, more and more Instagram purchasing companies have popped up. Psychologically speaking, I think purchasing followers has the same effect as any other addiction. You pay for something, see the benefits immediately and get hooked. There’s a certain rush and satisfaction to seeing those numbers rise. 

Regardless of what the actual cause is for the rise in purchasing Instagram followers, I think we can all agree that going down that path is not beneficial for any account on the app, and your business simply cannot afford to buy Instagram followers.   

Instagram’s popularity skyrocketed as soon as people began claiming they could make 6 figures by simply posting content. Dollars are flying in and out of the app and everyone wants a piece of it! It’s simple right? Create some great content, gain lots of followers and BAM you’ll be an overnight social media influencer superstar. 

Eh..it takes a bit more effort than that. In order to run a good business, you need to be liked, established, and have a solid community backing your product or account, or else you’re not going to be profitable. To achieve this, you’re going to need legitimate fans, not fake spam accounts. 

Taking shortcuts such as purchasing Instagram followers not only puts your actual account at risk of being shut down, but it puts the integrity of your brand at risk. If your customers found out that you purchased fake followers, the trust between you and the client is going to be lost. They’ll think, ‘why does this company need to buy followers if they’re actually providing a decent service or product?’ It’ll seem super sketch!

Same goes for influencers. If a company decides to take a chance on you and after collaborating find that there were no results, and essentially your numbers are fake, most certainly they will not ask to work with you again. They may even tell other brands about this experience with you, which will begin to create a bad reputation around your name. 

However, let’s go back to the basic building blocks of any successful business plan. You want to build your brand up organically with a true dedicated following – with people who will purchase your product or promote your brand. Aka groupies. While shortcuts to attain this success are seemingly appealing at first (buying followers), you will eventually suffer the consequences of these decisions in the long-run. Yet, in case you’re still on the fence about whether or not to go through with buying those followers you’ve been dreaming of, here are 4 reasons why it’s really not a beneficial tactic if you want success for your business or on Instagram. 

1. No Engagement

According to PLANN, “Instagram has a baseline of 3%-6% engagement.” In order to find out where you stand, you add up your likes and comments per one post and divide that number by your following. So say your likes and comments per one post adds up to 150 and you have 3000 followers.

150 / 3000 = 5% which is within the average. If an account is severely over or under the average, you can tell there may be something fishy going on.

When you purchase followers you are not purchasing people who are actually interested in your brand or business. You’re essentially purchasing bots which are inactive and will not do anything for your account. If you’re an influencer, as soon as you get bigger and brands think about working with you, they’ll be able to go that next step and see that you have the followers but they’re obviously fake because no one is engaging with your content or your comment section is filled with f4f and emojis. 

A helpful tip for brands: When collaborating with influencers, look past the numbers and check out the type of accounts following the influencer. You can do this by clicking on their follower number and doing some scrolls through. You’ll be able to get a quick idea of how relevant the influencers fans are. Another tactic is to look at their comment section and see who’s actually engaging. Both of these tactics can reveal huge red flags about the users profile. 

2. Spam

When you purchase Instagram followers, this opens a flood gate of spam accounts. Your account becomes a magnet for spam. This creates a seemingly never-ending cycle of inappropriate or irrelevant accounts interacting with your account. Instagram also recognizes these fake accounts and purges them. If they don’t fall off in a purge, they will eventually fall off in large increments because what you don’t notice when you go about buying followers is you’re ultimately signing a contract. Within a buying contract, these ‘followers’ you purchase, are only good for an x amount of time.

For argument’s sake let’s say it’s a year long contract and you’ve purchased 1000 followers. Within this year, it is the company’s job to make sure those 1000 followers you purchased remain constant. This takes into consideration that the fake followers could be purged, reported or just deleted. However, once the year is up, the company you purchased your followers from no longer has the responsibility to bring these bots to your page, so you’ll see very large decreases in your following at a rapid rate.

Depending upon how many followers you purchased, it could be hundreds of lost followers within hours. This of course is very worrisome to watch especially if you’ve established yourself at this point. Almost everyone will notice and get an idea of what’s going on. Not only is your reputation at risk, but Instagram could also decide to shut down your account if it finds you’ve purchased followers. Leading me to my next point…

3. Credibility 

Not only is it against Instagram’s terms of service and could have your account deleted by the app, but having fake followers destroys your credibility as a brand or influencer and in turn will ruin you reputation in the community. Plus, other brands or businesses will not want to work with you. Think of these accounts like empty calories – they do absolutely nothing for you even though they add to the count. 

Even if your numbers look great, other brands are becoming a lot smarter and beginning to utilize tools to analyze who has a legit following or just empty numbers. If you’re set to a business account, some brands may even ask to see screenshots of your reach, which, if you have thousands of fake followers, there will be a huge disconnect and it will be blatantly obvious. 

4. No Income

What’s the point of starting or running a business if it brings in zero profit? No one likes wasting money! However, this is exactly what happens when you purchase Instagram followers! You may think you’re making an ‘investment’ but what you’re really doing is throwing your money into a dumpster and setting it on fire. Yeah your numbers may look great on paper, but not a single one of those accounts will contribute to your ROI. 

It’s much more worthwhile to spend time interacting with your community as opposed to not having a community at all. The dollars you’re spending on fake followers would go a lot further with a social media manager or even utilizing an accelerate growth tool to bring in the traffic you’re searching for. 

At the end of the day, Instagram is there for you to engage with an audience and make an impression on viewers. It’s much more beneficial for the health of your business to have a small but interested and active community, as oppose to a large list of accounts that don’t even know you exist (or for the most part aren’t even real humans). Purchasing Instagram followers may feel like a good idea in the moment, but will cost you so much more than if you just grow your account the right way and play by the rules. Have a little faith in your brand! 

If you’re having trouble finding the time to grow your following and attract the audience your account deserves, reach out to us at Boostly as we’re here to help with exactly that!