Is it smart to BUY Instagram followers?
You can grow your Instagram following the honest way- crafting a thoughtful strategy, sharing great content, and engaging your audience. Or you could take the quick and easy path and join the dark side of Instagram marketing by buying followers.
Why buy Instagram followers?
Brands, celebrities, and influencers have been known to pad their social media stats by adding fake followers. Why do they do it? It’s about perception. The number of followers is something that many people look at when sizing up an account. If you’re thinking about buying Instagram followers, it might be because you’re looking for a quick thousand followers to get the ball rolling, hoping that will encourage real people to check out your brand.
How buying followers works
Buying Instagram followers is cheap and easy with many services charging around $3 USD for every 100 followers. But you get what you pay for. In most cases that’s bots and zombie accounts.
Real life case study
Hootsuite, the company behind the leading social media dashboard created a dummy account to test whether or not it’s worth buying followers. They opted for a tool that promised 1,000 “quality” followers for $9.95 USD. Within a day their audience grew from zero to 1,000 followers. They then posted a photo to see how engaged their new followers were. The result was zero – not a single Like or comment. Even months later, not a single follower had engaged.
Is it worth it?
An easy way to measure a page’s engagement is to take the number of Likes and comments the last 10 posts receive, then divide that by the number of followers. Multiply that number by 100 and you’ll have the engagement rate and know if followers are connecting with a page.
Anyone taking a close look at your follower list can spot a stretch of fake and inactive accounts. If you buy followers and your real customers find out, can you expect them to trust you? What’s more valuable to your business: having 10,000 fake followers or 100 real followers who comment on your posts and potentially share them with their own networks?
How to grow your Instagram the right way
Know your audience, engage them, use relevant hashtags, and share great content. Those are the key ingredients of a winning Instagram strategy. Instagram also has various paid advertising options to drive brand awareness, website traffic, product sales, and app downloads.
Fabianca is a Bahrain based digital marketing agency. For a FREE 30 minute private strategy session for your business’ social media management or visit Fabianca.com or call +973 36 188 100.
