We get it — building a following on Instagram is not easy. You need followers to gain followers: The more followers you have, the more reliable and trustworthy your brand appears and the larger your reach becomes. Given this information, you may be tempted to buy followers on Instagram. However, you will realize why this is a bad idea once you understand the true value of social media marketing.
4 reasons you should not buy Instagram followers
You may have seen the ads that promise “500 Followers for $5” and have been tempted to click. After all, what do you have to lose except $5? A lot, actually, including your reputation. Below are four ways buying followers on Instagram — or any social media platform — can hurt you.
1. Your engagement rates will suffer
Paid-for Instagram followers are not real people. Rather, they are Insta-bots, inactive accounts, or fake accounts. What this means is that when you purchase “followers,” you are really just buying a number. If these new “followers” engage with your posts, it will only be for a short while. Once your new-client status wears off, engagement will cease, which will throw your follower-to-engagement ratio off. Engagement is crucial to Instagram’s algorithms. Once the platform sees that you have 10,000 followers but a less than 10% engagement rate, it will stop sharing your content on followers’ feeds.
2. Your creditability may suffer
Consumers are a lot smarter than brands give them credit for, and they can tell when a brand has built a fake following on social platforms in much the same way platforms themselves can: by looking at engagement. When people see that your average post garners only a handful of likes and comments despite your seemingly high number of followers, they will know something is up. Once users get a whiff of something suspicious, they can develop an automatic distrust of your brand.
3. You may lose your account
Per Instagram’s terms of use, fake accounts are strictly prohibited. Though your account is legitimate, the fact that your following consists of mostly fake accounts could garner negative attention from the platform. Initially, you may receive a warning to purge your fake followers. If you do not heed the warning, Instagram may temporarily disable your account — or worse, suspend it indefinitely.
4. You may struggle to gauge your actual performance
Finally, buying followers may make it difficult for you to accurately measure the performance of your efforts. As your number of followers grows, you may struggle to determine whether engagement comes from a real fan or a bot. If you cannot tell how your real audience feels about your posts, you will struggle to cater your content to their interests, which can make it difficult to convert followers into paying clients or patients. This defeats the purpose of using Instagram at all.
Grow a genuine Instagram following
The bottom line is that paying for followers is not an effective social media marketing strategy. Though it may take time to do so, growing an authentic following is the only real way to realize the full benefits of SMM. To gain traction quickly and authentically, reach out to our online marketing team today.
Doctor Genius, located at 16800 Aston Street, Suite 270, Irvine, CA 92606, provides a range of services for practice success. We seek to meet our clients’ needs by providing a variety of marketing, SEO, practice optimization tools, and coaching to transform the healthcare experience. Though we work to provide the most accurate information, the content found on this website is solely intended for entertainment purposes. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that the information provided is entirely correct. You may not use the information on this site to cure, prevent, or diagnose a perceived medical issue. If you have healthcare-related needs, please speak directly to a healthcare professional. Never self-perform medical treatments discussed on this website. All images displayed are also for entertainment purposes only, and personal experiences may differ. Please note that the business tactics mentioned on this site might not be applicable to your industry or practice.
