Is Buying Followers Really That Bad?
Social media is a numbers game.
If it weren’t, our follower counts wouldn’t be front and centre on every platform. It’s not ideal, but it’s true. The problem is, these numbers don’t always reflect the quality of the content or its creator, and organic growth can be a long, hard road. That’s why it’s absolutely no wonder that so many people see buying followers as an easy solution.
It’s fast, it’s relatively cheap and if you want to be thorough you can even buy Instagram likes and comments to make your following seem authentic.
Is it really that bad?
The short answer is yes. Yes it is. Ethics aside, it’s the marketing equivalent of shooting out your own tyres. A bought audience is a useless audience and, beyond that, it can actually work to your detriment.
Here’s Why
Terrible for Statistics
In social media marketing you’ll often hear people referring to ratios - both the ratio of followers to following, and followers to likes and comments. Unless you’re willing to buy comments and likes for every single post you put up, one look at your ratio is going to raise a massive red flag. Equally, the efficiency with which social media platforms are able to weed out bought audiences means that you’ll be dropping followers in huge chunks on a regular basis, which isn’t a great look. The analytics for an organically grown account vs. one that has been padded out artificially are like day and night, and you’re not coming out on top.
Useless for Marketing
Posting to an audience of purchased followers is like performing a concert to an arena of piñatas. You’re not building a solid base of people interested in your product or service, you’re not developing relationships with people who are likely to spread the word to their friends and you almost certainly are not hitting your target demographic. Of course, that’s assuming you’re reaching any real people at all, which you almost certainly aren’t. Furthermore, on the occasion that someone real does organically come across your page, the discrepancy between your follower count and the activity on your posts is going to be incredibly off-putting.
Penalised by Algorithms
Inactive accounts will damage your interaction rates, and that in turn will absolutely destroy your standing with the algorithms that decide whether or not people see your content. Once you screw this up it’s incredibly difficult to claw your way back. Your posts will be pushed down the feed and banned from showing up in hashtags, and it’ll become almost impossible for you to reach even the real people who already follow you, let alone a new audience to grow your reach organically. Think you can outsmart the algorithm by buying likes and comments to go along with your followers? Think again. Nothing stands out more than an account whose likes, follows and comments are all coming from different people. There are a lot of incredibly smart people whose literal jobs are to weed out people who cheat the system, and they’re pretty damn good at it.
A Security Risk
Is buying Instagram followers safe? No. When you’re trying to cheat the system, the system isn’t going to be able to help you if something goes wrong. Companies who provide paid-for audiences and interaction are rarely operating above board, and you never really know where your information is going. Particularly if your account is linked to your financial interests or marketing ventures, it’s not worth the risk.
Unsustainable
Buying followers might seem like a good way to get a head start and then continue on your own, but as soon as you stop paying for interaction your stats are going to plummet. The followers you’ve bought are not a genuine audience who are going to stick with you, and if all your likes are bought they’re not going to magically start appearing for free. To rub salt in the (self-inflicted) wound, your account will already have been flagged by the algorithms as spammy or below board, so it’ll be even harder for you to grow organically than it would be for an account starting from scratch who has never tried to cheat the system.
Easily Lost/Removed
Because you’re a) breaking the rules set by the platforms you’re using and b) buying the support of accounts that are technically considered spam, it is incredibly easy for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to go through and get rid of these accounts in one mass cull. You could buy 1000 followers and lose half of them the next day, or have them drop off in lots of 40-60 every day until you’re right back where you started. The algorithms are constantly adapting to pick up on bot-like behaviour, from generic comments to suspicious following activity, and they do not care how much you paid for what they’re removing. That’s your problem, not theirs.
Not Your Target Audience
This one should go without saying, but any followers you buy are completely hollow vanity metrics, not real people who are interested in your content. Marketing to them is useless, and adding these accounts into the mix really messes up your demographics. Say goodbye to using your platform analytics to help you with your strategy or give you any real indication of the people you’re catering to.
Terrible for Credibility
Is it possible to tell when people have bought followers? Yes. Not only possible, but incredibly easy. Whether you’re an aspiring influencer wanting to seem more desirable to followers and brands, or a company trying to boost your public profile, there are multiple programs available that can immediately separate organic vs. paid followers and interaction on any account. Most larger companies routinely use these when working with influencers, and it’s safe to say being caught out as a fraud isn’t ideal. From a business perspective, if people realise you’re faking your social influence it’s likely to damage their view of your brand as a whole, and make them far less likely to trust, purchase from or work with you.
Creates Ad Spend nightmares
In addition to completely butchering your demographics as mentioned above, welcoming a bunch of inactive accounts into your digital life is also likely to skyrocket your ad spend. They muddy the waters, making it harder to create any sort of lookalike audience based on the people that follow you, and broaden the scope of who your ad manager thinks they should be targeting. That’s some expensive inefficiency.
Obvious and Embarrassing
As mentioned, there are so many ways to check whether or not an account’s stats are genuine, and most of them don’t require any fancy software or insider knowledge. There are programs designed specifically to show what percentage of any account’s following and interaction are organic, and even without access to one of those it’s hardly rocket science. All it takes is a ten second glance at your ratios, and even if you have those covered a quick hop over to a platform like SocialBlade will give the game away. Yikes.
It's astounding how many brands still see buying followers as a marketing solution, when it's really closer to a kiss of death for your chances at organic growth and successful outreach. At the end of the day, you can’t buy influence and you can’t buy credibility. You can buy engagement and Instagram followers, but you can’t buy engaged instagram followers. Those are called real people, and if they don’t come quite so cheap.
Let’s grow your account organically with a solid strategy that targets the right people.