Why You Should Never Buy Instagram Followers

Last Updated 3 months by Emily Standley-Allard

It’s quite obvious to anyone these days what an amazing a tool Instagram can be for your business. There’s a lot of companies out there offering tempting ways to get more followers easily by making a purchase. Here’s why you should never buy Instagram Followers and how it can hurt your account. Instagram is the preferred social platform of most social media influencers, many of whom receive a hefty paycheck in exchange for sponsored posts put together from their audiences. With 4.2 billion posts per day, 500 million people using Stories every day, it’s reached an increase of over 80% and year by year it’s growing in video usage. Instagram is overflowing with marketing opportunities – with everything from paid ads to IGTV to product posts. With these numbers, it may be super enticing to buy followers rather than take the time to grow your Instagram account naturally.

The path to success seems simple enough right? However capturing people’s attention isn’t just about sharing an image and collecting Likes and followers. The reality is you need to spend a ton of time interacting and engaging with people – that requires more than an emoji heart and a ‘thanks for following’ note – as well as just liking other users’ posts – but who has the time and resources to do this all day every day? It’s literally a 24/7 job!

Managing a business Instagram account is another task on your to-do list that’s already packed with creating content, deadlines, projects, and multiple to-dos.

Short on time, a big mistake many businesses will fall prey to is resorting to dirty tactics like buying Instagram followers or engagement.

If you’re even thinking of buying Instagram followers or using a service that uses Instagram bots to try and increase engagement, don’t do it. 

But why? You ask. I hear you. Everyone else has 10K, 20K followers on their accounts and I only have a measly 100? I don’t have the time, resources and energy to gather and build an organic following!

How to Buy Instagram Likes

These are 2 recommended methods to grow a fake account – as I said before don’t do it! You will get caught and your account will suffer:

• Create multiple fake accounts and have them like your brand’s content. Then there are services that are there specifically to sell Instagram ‘Likes’
• Subscribe to a services that provides access to Instagram bots that follow or like photos on related accounts; these bots unfollow those accounts lter on to maintain a more natural follower/unfollower ratio. – Resource Sprout Social

Yes they are cheap services and you will see your account grow with increased ‘likes’. But there are problems with these tactics that are very easy to see through and can get your account ‘shadow banned‘ or worse.

Here’s 2 big reasons why you want to avoid paying for Instagram followers:

1. Instagram Bots Are Not Human

It may seem tempting to buy Instagram followers and have bots automatically comment, like posts and auto-follow Instagrammers in your niche. Using Instagram bots makes it look like you have a lot of followers and comments – often in a matter of hours or days.

For example, an Instagram bot could comment “Awesome!” on any post with a hashtag you’ve determined and follow the poster.

The problem with Instagram bots is they aren’t real. They’re robots. You aren’t growing your followers organically with people genuinely interested in your service or product, and you can forget about any chance of engagement.

Many Instagram users are wise to Instagram bots and won’t follow someone who leaves a one-word comment on their post. If they start realizing you’re using bots, they might react negatively towards your brand and cause other users to join in too.

Also in the worst cases the Instagram bots could comment ‘Nice job!’ on a post related to something clearly unpleasant and not calling for that type of response, obviously showing a mismatch between the two.

When it comes to getting popular on Instagram, people may think that the number of followers will attract them to major brands and companies.

Yes, followers do have an impact on opportunities with major companies and brands but post engagement is very important. In fact, some influencer companies won’t even take you on unless you have a certain engagement level first!

The influencer with fewer followers but tons of post engagement may have a better chance of catching a big brands attention.

When fake followers are bought it does not guarantee more likes for the post. It looks sketchy to have a large number of followers but a low like count.

Buying followers doesn’t guarantee brands will sponsor you.

Instagram has shut down a large number of third-party automation sites and apps like Instagress and PeerBoost for violating their Community Guidelines and Terms of Use, so you could even be putting your account in jeopardy by using bots.

There’s technology like FakeCheck.co that can tell if you have fake followers too!

Some fake follower bots can comment under a post to make an influencer seem credible. Depending on the bot, it may even comment on your post in another language. I have this happen all the time.

Imagine having a sponsored post filled with comments full in different languages from accounts that only have 50-10 followers.

The only solution to this issue would be turning off comments on all post. Turning off comments is a disadvantage because having comments mean your followers engage with your post.

The analytical aspect of likes and comments can be confusing but its important to have a sufficient amount of both for credibility.

Related Post

How to Grow More Followers On Instagram Organically

2. Buying Instagram Followers is a Total Fake Out

It can be enticing to beef up your numbers fast by buying Instagram followers, especially when you see how cheap it is – sites like Buzzoid charge as little as $3 per every 100 followers.

Well, first off: if you buy Instagram followers you’re going against Instagram’s Terms of Use.

Instagram monitors fake followers and deletes their accounts so it’s likely you will eventually end up losing paid followers and your Instagram account could suffer.

The Instagram Purge

Many media outlets claim that Instagram is silently deleting fake accounts after the growth of people buying fake followers to cheat their way to make money.

There was an Instagram Purge in 2014 that exposed celebrities and influencers for buying fake followers? A certain famous rapper lost over 1.5 million followers.

His following went from 1.6 million to 260,000! He deleted his account after being roasted by the internet.

Instagram is now constantly purging fake followings and you’ll just end up losing money if you purchase fake likes.

Social Media has given us the opportunity to never outlive the mistakes we made. If you’re a person can be embarrassed easily I wouldn’t advise buying Instagram followers because you will get flushed out!

Other issues with buying Instagram followers include:

• It doesn’t increase engagement because the bots don’t engage with your content.
• It destroys your brand reputation as your audience sees that you have a high number of followers but limited engagement.

There’s no easy way to grow your Instagram followers. If you take shortcuts, you’re running the risk of being banned by Instagram and ruining your reputation.

You’re better off posting engaging content, interacting with people, and using the proper hashtags to attract and retain your audience.

Conclusion

Let’s be real. You simply can’t automate the genuine level of authentic human interaction today’s Instagram users expect from brands.

So how can you get real targeted Instagram growth without spending a ton of time and effort? I use Ampfluence! They only employ the use of humans and No Bots ever!

Sign up for Ampfluence or learn more>>>HERE! 

About socialbuzzhive

Emily Standley-Allard is a nationally published author, content creator, social media and SEO professional. She is a digital content strategist who has helped companies and individuals improve their online presence since 2014.