Why NOT to Buy Followers

followers

Having a lot of followers on social media does look impressive. Many people decide to buy followers, which are virtually just bots. And although it may look impressive, it can also look unrealistic and obvious for a small business to have such a large following.

We have compiled a list of reasons why NOT to buy followers and ways to grow your following organically.

The Engagement Won’t Last

When you buy followers, it provides no long-term value to your profile. When you first buy them, they will like, comment and view your content, but the longer you have the followers the less they will engage in your content. And tell me this, is it really worth having thousands of followers that are just a number and do not engage with you? You want your content to be noticed, you want your products and services to be purchased, but this won’t happen by purchasing followers. Essentially, your posts are still only being viewed by those that followed you organically, as the purchased bot followers are not viewing anything.

It’s Pretty Obvious

When someone sees that a small business, or personal account has thousands upon thousands of followers, it’s normal to question it. When you buy followers, the accounts that follow you make it fairly obvious that they are bots by having no profile photo, having a username that is only numbers and random letters, and having little to no posts. If you are a business trying to grow your brand, you really don’t want to have the reputation as the company that buys their followers.

It Misrepresents Your Analytics

Many social media platforms analytics and algorithms are based on engagement, especially Instagram. This is why buying followers is not going to help you. It is extremely hard to determine how well the people following you are connecting with your content if the bulk of those followers are bots.

Instagram Deletes Fake Accounts

Instagram has created an update that removes any followers, likes, or comments that come from third-party apps designed to grow a user’s follow count. Even worse than that, you can get deleted too just for buying them!

Buying Followers Can Get You Banned

When you buy fake followers, you violate the terms and conditions of almost every social media platform. The temporary feeling of having a huge following is not worth the risk of having your account banned. Especially if you are a business, having your account banned is something that is definitely awkward and embarrassing to have to explain to those who actually do engage with your posts. As of 2018, Facebook has closed over 583 million profiles that are “bots” and twitter has suspended over 70 million.

Our Experience

Recently, we had a client who’s only interest was to grow their follower count. While it certainly goes against our business morals, Rosewood is always looking out for our clients. So, we bought followers to truly try it out. For $56 USD, we purchased 5000 followers. Sounds great, right? We signed up, gave our Instagram account information and paid the cost. Within minutes we gained 2000 followers, then 3000, 4000, all the way up 7000 additional followers! However, quickly we realized that all of these accounts were fake. Within hours, the Instagram monitors deleted 98% of those bought followers.

So, take this as a free $56 lesson – do NOT buy your followers!

What to Do Instead?

Instead of buying your following that will only land you regretting it, build your following organically. This ensures that the people that are following you are actually interested in your content.

Almost all social media platforms have created an option to posts ads from your account. These are ads that you pay for and Instagram shares for you. Another way to build your following is to keep a consistent posting schedule. Having more content is better! Always make sure you are using hashtags on your posts. This is a super helpful tool that practically all social media outlets have.

An extremely helpful way to build an organic following is to post videos. According to Hubspot, social media posts with video have 48% more views than those without video.

If you are interested in boosting your video output on social media, check out our Videography and Photography page HERE for all of our package details. We have a special running for the rest of January to help kick off your 2020 with a social media makeover!

Building a following on social media is something that Rosewood can help with. Let’s work together to implement a social media plan into your business to gain it the recognition it deserves! Click HERE to contact us and learn more.

Til next time,

Cassandra

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