Instagram is a popular social network with a very high monthly user base, operating under Meta (which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp). The popularity of a particular Instagram account is measured by the number of accounts following it and the percentage of activity on the account relative to the number of followers. Whether you want to open an account to promote your business or company, or you want to open a personal account and promote yourself, it is important to be aware of a common phenomenon on Instagram accounts – externally purchasing fake followers. Because the engagement rate carries significant value in Instagram accounts and determines the distribution reach you will achieve with the account, purchasing fake followers will hurt the engagement rate relative to the follower count and is not recommended at all. In this article, we will cover the entire topic of buying followers, the risks, and the takeaways.
Can you buy followers on Instagram?
The option to purchase Instagram followers exists, and there are plenty of services offering followers for your account. There are cheap services that will sell you around 1,000 followers for about $10. But you are only paying for the number, since many of those followers you receive after the purchase are bots or inactive accounts, meaning they will never engage with your posts or stories. An amount of 1,000 followers sounds like a great deal for the price of a coffee and pastry from Aroma, but as you have already realized – if it’s so cheap and worthwhile, why isn’t everyone doing it? Is buying followers for an Instagram account legal and safe for your account? Is it a worthwhile investment? Probably not, and it’s time to explain why.
Why shouldn't you buy followers for an Instagram account?
Fake followers are usually bots or inactive accounts, and therefore, in the absence of activity on your account’s posts, you will appear less on Instagram Explore or in the feeds of your target audience. In simple terms – while the number may look nice to the eye, there will be no engagement with the content. Furthermore, content engagement is the key that enables the Instagram algorithm to display content to users on the platform, so on an account with 10k followers without engagement, content goes nowhere and is viewed by very few people. Here are several reasons why you shouldn’t buy followers on Instagram:
Fake followers harm credibility
Having a lot of followers on an account can convince people to follow too, but it is no guarantee of follower growth. It is important to remember that followers bought from a third-party provider will not like, comment, or share – which will lead real followers to realize that although you have many followers, only a minor percentage of them are active, significantly damaging your account’s credibility. If you have 10,000 followers and 5 likes on a photo, it won’t take long for real followers to identify that the account has fake followers.
Fake followers ruin performance metrics
It is impossible to measure how well your audience connects with your brand and the content you post if a high percentage of that audience is not real. You won’t be able to measure posts that successfully generated audience engagement when the inactive accounts you purchased skew the ratio and complicate the calculation, leaving you without the ability to convert your real Instagram audience into actual customers without knowing whether your content resonates with them.
Instagram detects and removes fake followers
Instagram has updated its terms of service to detect and remove inauthentic accounts from its platform. Additionally, Instagram also removes likes, followers, and comments originating from third-party apps designed to artificially inflate audience size and engagement on the account. By purchasing followers for an Instagram account, you are essentially violating Instagram’s community guidelines, which can trigger an account ban. Instagram aims to preserve human interactions on the platform and protect authentic accounts.
What should you do instead of buying followers?
Instagram’s new algorithm rewards engagement more than follower count and displays content similar to posts users have already seen and interacted with in the past. To encourage engagement on your account, there are many different actions you can take on the platform to engage your audience. By using Instagram marketing methods, you can properly grow your account gradually and, as a result, increase your follower count as well. Whether you are building a well-crafted personal account or a business account, you can use the following methods as a quality alternative to buying fake followers:
- Make your account public – Make your account public so that users can view your profile and content. This way, you can grow your audience organically when your content appears on other users’ Explore pages. To do this, uncheck the Private Account box in the Privacy and Security settings of your Instagram account.
- Post quality content – Publishing quality content including a variety of posts and stories on your Instagram account (videos, images, GIFs, memes, tutorials, story quizzes, Boomerangs, and more) helps you build trust and connection to the brand among followers. Posting consistently and maintaining a unique style will help you differentiate yourself from other accounts. Depending on what your brand sells or produces, you can choose the approach you want to take when writing on your Instagram account; this will help you be funny or witty in the content you post, while for certain businesses, being informative and scientific might be more beneficial.
- Use Instagram Reels – Instagram Reels expands the reach of your posts beyond the audience following your account. This allows you to show content that will also reach users who do not follow you but have viewed content similar to yours. Start by recording a simple video using Instagram Reels and choose popular sounds that people enjoy listening to. This way, you probably won’t see rapid follower growth, but it is important to track the video view counts and watch them rise from video to video.
- Use hashtags – Hashtags are a goldmine on Instagram for finding new audiences. Many Instagram users follow specific hashtags to receive updates on specific topics that interest them. If you use them in the content description when uploading, there is a high chance you will appear in the feeds of people who have never seen your content before. It is not recommended to add random hashtags to your content; you will need to build a hashtag strategy for publishing with your content to ensure you are targeting the right people.
- Build a relationship with users – One of the principles of Instagram promotion is building a relationship with your users to generate as much engagement with the content as possible. Interaction can manifest as a like, comment, share, video view, and more. Every interaction you have with users, or that users have with you, helps Instagram display you in more and more feeds.
In conclusion
Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. The pressure to maintain a certain growth pace can lead many businesses and personal accounts to purchase fake followers to display a higher follower count. Beyond the consequences that could stem from the platform itself, including penalties for buying fake followers, you also risk lower engagement metrics and the danger of losing users who realize most of your audience is not real. It is highly recommended to review what can be done instead of buying followers in order to build and maintain a successful Instagram page.
About the author
Dvir Naaman, 27, graduate of the Digital Marketing course at HackerU College. Experienced in building WordPress websites, paid advertising on Google, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok platforms. Specializes in organic search optimization (SEO) at Fialkov Digital. Has extensive experience in eCommerce and dropshipping and is the owner of Merchant Center – a website aggregating information on eCommerce systems and advanced marketing systems to increase business conversions with an emphasis on eCommerce store sales.
