From fashion bloggers to food and lifestyle bloggers, corporate houses to politicians, everyone is exploiting the famous Instagram for their own good and profits. Just like there is a target market for each corporate house, there is a target market for Instagram influencers as well, and they call it "Followers". It is a common notion that the greater the number of followers you have, the better your reach is, the more money you make.
While scrolling through your Instagram feed, you must have seen posts like "Earn followers at a price, you'll never get anywhere" with "100% real Instagram followers". Now, if you are a struggling influencer or a new corporate house, these ads might look tempting to you and there is a slight chance that you might fall for it. But we request you to not give in. And when we say that, we have reasons, strong reasons for the same.
1) Engagement ratio with fake followers will be low:The accounts which are not genuine will be a problem when it comes to engaging them to make your page better. They will not like your photos and would never click or swipe up on the links that you share on your status or your feed. An Instagram page works when your followers are engaged. But when the major reason for gaining followers is not getting fulfilled, having those extra followers by shedding money will go in vain.
2) There might be inappropriate comments by bot on the posts: There might be a case when the follower which you have earned yay giving money may write something in the language which you do not recognize. One of the common tactics is that the comments that are made on your post or another person's post are generic. for example, if there is a sad post which you have made, there might be a comment which says "wow nice picture" which ultimately will not look good on your profile when other people visit it.
3) Paid followers spam quite often: When you buy followers, you are opening your account for spammers. If you have also provided your email address, those spammers might also clutter on your mail. Those followers might even spam your earned followers thereby making you lose out on the followers which you have earned by your hard work.
4) Instagram recognizes the fake followers and gets rid of them: Instagram wants to give its users an enjoyable experience. Hence, it puts a lot of effort in finding fake accounts and purges them away. With the experienced experts, they know how to find fake accounts and lock them out. There might also be a chance that those followers might disappear after some amount of time.
5) It might also ruin your brand reputation: Brand reputation is something which should be intact when you have an Instagram account. Hence if you buy your followers and have thousands of them and the likes on your pictures are only 10, then it might straight come to your reputation.
6) Money won't flow in with fake followers: If you think that brand will choose you on the number of followers that you have, you are totally wrong. Brands will not choose you if you are someone who buys your followers. Moreover, money will not flow in from fake followers because they will neither like your post nor promote or buy any product of yours.
7) Potential customers will not trust you: If people suspect that you have brought followers, they will not trust you and will not follow you, thereby losing out on your potential customers and followers.
8) Your account can be suspended: Apart from purging the fake followers, Instagram might also suspend your account if they suspect such an activity. All the hard work which you have done for your account will go into waste.
So the next time you think to buy followers, take your time and ask yourself, whether a fake image portrayal is enough or you need real engagement and results, the choice is yours!
Infographic source: SocialTradia
Author: Alec Ketabi
I'm a social media marketing writer with 5 years experience working with start-up and medium-size companies. I would like to share my experience and ideas with people who have passionate about sales and digital marketing.