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If you have been on social media lately, chances are you have seen these kinds of posts: ‘get Instagram followers’, ‘get genuine followers’, or ‘pay _ amount of money for 100 followers’, and so on. Think about this – you have opened an account, but you are struggling to grow it beyond a few followers. This prospect of suddenly getting new followers is a good prospect right?
Well, the truth is – not really.
These ads can be very tempting, especially when you are still at the stage of struggling to gain influence in your niche. However, the long term damage they can cause to your account makes them a major risk to get into. If you are wondering why, read on to find out some reasons why.
Why do you have an Instagram account in the first place?
There are numerous reasons you may have an account on the platform, although the main reasons could be any of these three – and they will determine your own approach to the situation.
First reason is likely that you wanted to connect with friends and family and see what they are up to (which is the most common reason), as well as showing them the things you are doing. If this is your case, then buying followers does not make much sense, just because you want to have bigger influence. If you are buying followers, you do not know any of them, and so have no reason to engage with them. They also do not have any reason to engage with you, because they do not have any interest in your content.
The second reason is that you are a business, and are seeking to establish your brand as well as grow a loyal consumer base. There is therefore no reason to buy followers, since they will not buy from you anyway.
Third reason is because you are an influencer. Still, buying followers does not make sense because you cannot influence them to do anything, so all it does is ruin your credibility.
What all of these scenarios inform you is that it does not make sense to buy followers, and anyone can spot them as long as you know their characteristics. At the end of the day, you will not achieve much with them.
Reasons why you should stay away from buying followers
They will not engage with you
If you believe that such accounts will engage with you and your content, you are mistaken. They will not have any genuine interactions that a real user would have, and most of the time they are not even real people at all. The best you can hope from them is maybe a ‘good job’ comment.
If you find anyone that fancies themselves as an influencer, then you need to note this carefully – they must have real, genuine interactions with their audience. If you are a business and thinking about working with an ‘influencer’, then ensure you examine their validity first before you pay them to promote your brand or products.
Influencers should also be able to do their work right – influencing people’s opinions on things, and engaging with them as much as possible. In the same way, you cannot call yourself a brand and have no interactions with your followers – bought followers will never see the things you post.
Engagement levels are mismatched (compared to accounts managed by actual people)
In case you may be wondering how to spot fake accounts, it is actually not that difficult. When you are dealing with a real account, they will have some similarities in their engagement patterns. The bigger their account is (in terms of followers), the less engagement they will have with each of their followers, and there are general guidelines on the levels they should have according to this metric.
If you are dealing with an account that has average engagements that vary too much from the average, then that alone raises many questions about the validity of that account. This also includes cases where engagement levels are too high, and this includes influencers as well. If you are a brand, they will bring very little value to your own marketing efforts.
In a similar way for instance, if you decide to buy 50 Instagram likes from autolikesig.com, you need to be careful when doing so. Otherwise, it will increase the statistics of your engagement levels beyond acceptable averages, and this will make the account seem fake.
In addition, you can also spot suspicious accounts by using the ratio of the comments they get per post to the likes they get on average. The ratios may not be absolute, but if you see the account has a lot of likes and very few comments, then that is a mark of buying likes.
You notice very many inappropriate comments on posts
The bots on Instagram algorithm do not only like statuses, but also comment on certain occasions. These comments tend to be generic most of the time. However, you may sometimes see a comment on your post that is a completely different language to your own.
In these instances, you have no idea what to say, and in many cases, the comment is for an ad of an inappropriate product, such as extremist political gatherings, or a sex toy. Their comments also tend to be really generic and even in the wrong places, for instance when someone has posted about the passing on of their grandparent and the bot comments something like ‘nice job’.
You will have a lot of spam comments
If you have very many bought followers, chances are high they will spam your comments many times – especially when you open your account to them by giving them your email address, or they can access it if you indicated it on your profile. When they begin to spam your followers, they will become annoying and your followers will unfollow you.
Final thoughts
These three and many other reasons are legitimate enough to help you stay away from these sites. They will not add value to you, and chances are high they will become annoying as time goes on.
