Based on my experience with clients who have done this
If you're considering buying followers to grow your account on social media, I want you to ask yourself why?
Is it because you think it builds credibility with your brand? Or maybe you think that more people will buy from you if you have X amount of followers? Is it because you think buying likes will increase your engagement?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you're not alone. Most people that aren't in the marketing world are still under the impression that the amount of followers you have on Instagram or the number of likes you get tells people how "good" your brand is at social media.
But in reality, and any social media expert will tell you this, the number of followers don't have as much significance as they once did.
That's mainly because of the invention of buying Instagram followers or likes. That's people these followers that you're buying are low quality followers accounts fake accounts made by bots, or profiles that can't benefit from your products and/or services.
If that didn't convince you, keep reading are four reasons why shouldn't buy Instagram followers or likes. Read about one of my clients who was maintaining a steady below average engagement rate & what I had to do to solve it.
#1 Instagram will deactivate your account if they catch you. Instagram has been cracking down on bots and ensuring that Instagram is an authentic platform
They also mention they look at accounts potentially engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, or when we see the majority of someone's followers are in a different country to their location, or if we find signs of automation, such as bot accounts.
#2 Followers do not mean sales.
High quality followers (leads) do! The only way to build this is to create great content for your ideal audience, supporting your followers, and engaging whenever possible. Growing your followers list is a slow process (especially when done organically). But when people naturally follow you, the relationship building process begins there.
#3 You're getting "fake" engagement from bots. This doesn't actually measure true engagement, because there isn't a human behind a bot. Therefore, you don't know what kind of content your audience finds value in because part of your audience are bots.
I had this experience with one of my clients.
I noticed her engagement rate that was extremely low. I knew I was creating high quality content that her audience previously engaged with, so I knew there had to be a deeper problem.
I downloaded the Followers Pro+ app and paid $0.99 to see a list of the people who have never engaged with her account (likes or comments).
Turns out, it was over 2,4o0 of her 2,600 followers. This showed me that it was highly possible that the social media manager(s) before me paid for her followers.
To confirm this, I then downloaded the list on Google sheets, and went through each account to determine if we should remove them as a follower based on if they're a "qualified quality follower" Some of them hadn't posted in over a year, others were profiles that were not related to her brand, and others would never become customers of hers because she runs her business in a local market.
If you has the thought that this would take a while, it does! If you don't have 5+ hours to do this yourself, leave me a message on my contact page with the words "qualified quality follower" and I can do this for you, and guide you on next steps.
#4 "Follow for unfollow" is unethical and distasteful and is not a good image for your brand. Anyone that is on social media often will notice that you did this.
Summary
There are no benefits from purchasing your way up the social media latter other than the pretty number on your feed. Buying followers does more harm then good for your business, and if you hire a professional Social Media Manager they will have to take the time to do a Follower Cleanup and remove some of those followers.
If you're having issues with engagement, you likely need a follower cleanup. Whether you'd like guidance on how to do this yourself from start to finish, or you need help completing this, send me a message so I can help!
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