You might know your Instagram content is good, but imagine how much better it will seem if it looks like 10,000 people agree.
Whether you’re trying to become a social media celebrity or simply looking to spread brand awareness on Instagram, it can seem tempting to pay for your first couple thousand followers.
There are plenty of services available that allow you to buy 1,000 followers for the price of a small Starbucks latte. But of course, if it really was that cheap and easy, everyone would be doing it. So what’s the catch? Is buying Instagram followers legal and safe for your business? Is it a worthwhile investment?
Here, we’ve gone ahead and covered all the questions you might have about buying Instagram followers to give you a better idea of how it actually works. We’ve also explored the pros and cons, so you can decide for yourself if it’s a good move for your brand.
As a quick Google search will reveal, there are many cheap services you can use to buy Instagram followers. For about $6 USD, you can get 500 followers, and for about $10 USD, you can get 1,000 followers.
The vast majority of these purchasable followers, however, are either bots or inactive accounts.
When you buy Instagram followers, you’re paying for a number alone. Engagement is not guaranteed, or even likely.
In addition to buying followers directly, you can also pay services to strategically follow other accounts on your behalf based on your preferences (location, hashtag usage, account type, and gender). Ideally, those followed accounts will then follow you back.
With this option, your followers are more likely to be real people, but engagement is still unlikely. Since you can’t even guarantee these accounts will follow you back, it’s a risky investment. Most accounts won’t follow you back, and even if they do, they probably aren’t going to be long-term, loyal, or active followers.
If your priority is simply to have a big follower count, these services can definitely help you. When your number of organic followers dips, these services even replenish your pool with other followers.
But remember the risks: these followers will probably never like or comment on a post, and if you’re caught with a ton of fake followers, you could ruin your credibility with your real audience.
Think of it this way: would you keep following an account if you saw that most of their “loyal audience” were inactive accounts or bots? I’m guessing not. It could seem deceitful, and lead you to believe the brand couldn’t get authentic followers through good content alone.
You’re buying fake Instagram followers.
The main reason buying Instagram followers can prove to be a wasted investment is because the accounts you follow often aren’t real.
Fake followers are created either because they’re managed by users whose only goal is to get followed in return, or because these accounts are sponsored by services that sell followers — as we discussed in the section above. And while these accounts might offer early engagement, they’ll ultimately become a drain on your Instagram account’s performance metrics (we’ll get to that in just a minute).
You’ll get early engagement that tapers off.
Purchased Instagram followers also provide no long-term value to your profile’s content. The followers you buy might give you views, likes, and comments early into acquiring them as a follower, but the attention they throw you now won’t be there later — when you start reporting on how your Instagram account is performing.
And how helpful, really, are 10,000 followers that don’t engage with you? Engagement is key to how Instagram’s algorithm displays posts to users. Without likes or comments, your post probably won’t show up on your audience’s newsfeeds, and it also won’t show up on any Explore Pages.
Having a lot of followers could convince users to follow you organically, but it’s not a guarantee.
Users might notice you don’t have a ton of engagement on your posts, which could deter them from following you. If you have 10,000 followers but only four likes per post, it won’t take people long to realize something is up.
Without real followers to engage with your content, your posts are essentially hidden from everyone except your inauthentic audience. Plus, your fake followers won’t share your post on any of their channels. And they won’t discuss your brand in real life with friends or family, because, well … they don’t exist in real life (no offense, bots).
Bought Instagram followers can distort your performance metrics.
It’s practically impossible to measure how well your target audience is connecting with your brand if a high percentage of that audience isn’t real. How will you measure posts that do well with your real audience if those bots and inactive accounts skew the ratio?
If you don’t know how well your posts are doing or what your real audience thinks, you’ll never convert your Instagram followers into real customers. And isn’t that the point?
Ultimately, if you pay for Instagram followers, you aren’t paying for quality, real-life followers. You’re paying for a blank number. And since Instagram’s algorithm is largely tied to engagement, not followers, buying followers isn’t a long-term solution. In fact, it isn’t really a solution at all.
Take the time, energy, and money that you would’ve dedicated to buying followers, and focus instead on building genuine relationships with a real audience. If your content is engaging and authentic, your loyal followers will spread the word and engage with your brand without needing any bribes.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buy-instagram-followers
Make A Social Media Marketing Splash with These Tips
When you are creating a social media marketing plan for the first time, you need knowledge to make your efforts pay off. You should focus on trustworthy sources. Fortunately, the following article is loaded with great advice on how you should proceed in social media marketing and how it can work best for your business.
You should definitely think twice before you hire out a company dealing specifically in social media marketing. A lot of those companies run bad businesses to scam amateurs who do not know better. These companies use proxy servers and registration bots to create thousands of accounts on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Your ads will be seen by their fake accounts to ramp up the numbers, while you get no profit from your investment.
Twitter can be an effective way to spread the word about your business. If you learn how Twitter works, it’s possible to have your business seen and followed by hundreds, or even thousands, of people. Learn about hashtags, keywords, and other aspects of Twitter.
Use lists as much as possible. People love lists because they are easy to read and easy to pass on to their friends. When you produce blogs or articles with lists, those who find the information you provide useful are more likely to pass the link onto others via Facebook, Twitter, or another social networking site.
When using social media to market your business or product, be sure that you create a title that will draw people in. A boring title will make viewers skip over your article, thus, your marketing efforts will be for nothing. Also, make sure your title is relevant to your business or the product that you are selling.
Post new content regularly. If you do not update your status at least once a week, your followers will forget that you exist. Perhaps you could post new content on the same day or at the same hour so that your followers have something to look forward to and will think about logging on to see what you have posted.
You can get your followers’ attention by posting something in a format that makes reading easier. For instance, try coming with a list of top 10 tips or writing questions and answers. The visual aspect of your article will make it more appealing and your readers will be more likely to share it.
Before developing a specific social media marketing strategy, figure out which social networking site you want to use. Each social networking site works differently, so it is important that your strategy will work with the site you pick. For instance, on Facebook you can create a poll, unlike most sites.
Interact with your followers on social media as often as you can! If you feel comfortable doing so, you should leave comments on their Facebook page or blog posts. Don’t interject into a discussion that has nothing to do with you; stick to contacting someone only when they are discussing something that is related to your industry or products.
Always remember who your audience is in your social media marketing campaigns and what matters the most to them. You need to post content that is applicable to them and focus your efforts in ways that keep their attention. Your posts should be relevant and of high quality that your followers and fans do not just skip them over because they are not interested.
If you want to start with social media right away, before defining your personal style, as the saying goes, fake it until the point where you make it. Know what your competition does for their social media marketing and mimic it until you know what works for you and your customers. Look at their social profiles, check out their specials and discounts, and read their content.
Use social networks to get people to come to your stores. Keep followers informed about both your online and your live endeavors from special sales to new store locations. Put printable coupons on your Facebook page to lure your Facebook friends into your stores. In order to retain customers on Facebook, you must provide relevant, interesting content that customers feel they benefit from.
In conclusion, continue to learn as much as you can about social media and the ways you can use it to promote your business. The term “social media marketing” covers a lot of ground, so there’s no shortage of information to learn. The advice in this article will be a great start for you, so put it into practice and get to work!
On – 21 Sep, 2018 By Caroline Forsey