7 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Buy Followers
Now that you know the importance of having a large engaged audience, you must be thinking why not invest a part of your marketing budget in buying followers.
As we told you before, public engagement with your profile is more relevant than a large number of followers. What we still do not tell you is that you can lose much more.
You doubt it? Next, we show you 7 reasons to convince yourself that buying followers is not a good deal.
1. Phantom audience
If you have a business on Instagram and other social networks, surely your ultimate goal is to get more customers, right? Well , followers only become customers when they really exist .
The problem with buying followers is that you are actually paying just to change the number that is displayed on your profile. This number corresponds to a lot of fake profiles, created for the sole purpose of following people who acquire the “follower pack”.
In practically all offers of this type, the follower packages are made up of fake accounts, inactive and probably hosted on servers in other countries, which have nothing to do with your organization’s profile.
The result is that, when you decide to send a message to your followers, promote an offer or simply look for some kind of interaction, you will be talking to an empty crowd, full of profiles that do not really exist.
2. Little engagement
When we see a large profile with a large and engaged audience, it is common to see thousands of “likes” and comments on the posts. That means that the profile has a real audience that follows the publications, generating an extremely strengthened engagement and ready to be worked on.
By buying followers, you are acquiring only a number on the profile and not all the benefits that a large organically acquired audience brings.
That is, your posts will probably still have a low number of “likes” and comments. Also, real followers may get discouraged and not interact with your profile, as they will see that your posts are not attractive, even though you have a large following.
On the other hand, low engagement can harm the performance of your profile in the Instagram algorithm whether you are using cool fonts in your bio and it is really impressive, for example, because this social network considers that a profile is relevant based on the interaction of the public with the publications.
A relevant profile for Instagram can be recommended to people who are interested in the same topics that this profile publishes. And if the “ghost audience” does not interact, the chances of being recommended to real followers are practically nil.
3. Risk of suspension
Few things are more ignored than the famous “terms of use”. And on Instagram it is no different. It is very difficult to find someone who has read the terms of the application before creating an account.
Among several guidelines and rules, the Instagram document makes it clear that the platform is against any spam practice. In addition, the terms also make it clear that Mark Zuckerberg’s network works continuously to eliminate all the fake profiles present on it.
All this means that, if you have ever bought followers on the network, it may be that your profile is in the crosshairs of Instagram. Among the penalties, there is the possibility of suspension of your account, which would cause you to lose all your work.
Do you know what the worst part is? That you accepted the terms, even if you haven’t read them. Then there is no use for you to be sorry.
4. Fluctuation in the number of followers
As we just explained, Instagram is on a constant crusade to remove fake profiles, mainly those used to inflate the number of followers.
Therefore, if you buy followers, you will be able to realize that the size of your “audience” is constantly changing and always decreasing.
This occurs because, as we said, the platform is constantly excluding and suspending fake user profiles, which are the “stuffing” of follower packs.
Rather than seeing the number of followers of your profile constantly decreasing, you run the risk of entering a vicious circle, in which you will continually buy new packages, as a way to compensate for the loss of deleted profiles.
In addition to being an endless story, you spend money that you could use to conquer an organic and real audience
5. Damage to the image of your business
Social networks, especially when they are for business, work from a credibility filter. And that goes far beyond the number of followers. In other words, an organization that is on Instagram has an image to watch out for.
So, if your real and engaged audience discovers that you artificially increased the number of followers by buying packages, the image of your organization will be severely damaged.
And on social media, where everything revolves, almost literally, around the image, if you lose the public’s trust, you may never get it back.
If your real follower (and potential client) suspects that you are lying on your profile, with a false number of followers, it is very likely that they will start to doubt any information you post.
The result of this is obvious and tragic: followers who distrust a brand will hardly be its customers.
6. Non-existent sales
Let’s be objective: if you have a business on Instagram or any other social network, your intention is to get customers and increase sales, right? That is why it is so important to concentrate efforts on building a committed and real audience that can consume your products.
When you buy follower packages, you are only acquiring a number on your profile, which does not correspond to the reality of your audience. The result is simple: none of the new “followers” will buy your product.
So, having an audience of 5,000 committed followers who interact with your brand is worth more than an army of 100,000 “zombie” profiles that are there just to make a number.
7. Damage to metrics
Business profiles on Instagram have a great advantage compared to personal profiles: the ability to analyze audience engagement data.
With an artificially inflated number of followers, projections of “likes”, comments and other forms of public engagement lose meaning, since they do not correspond to reality.
Therefore, the simple act of buying followers affects even the use of Instagram and other social networks as means of analysis and audience segmentation.
