Instagram is a social media platform that can help you generate income. It is possible if you become an influencer with a decent number of followers. Such people are more likely to get sponsored messages from the brands. Brands and companies not only pay an influencer but also send a free sample of their product to review. It may sound easy but reaching this point on Instagram can be a bit challenging.
This is because businesses and influencers find it harder to gain followers and likes since the app has changed its algorithm. It used to display photos chronologically but now it displays photos from those pages that you mostly interact with. If gaining followers and likes has become this difficult so are there any shortcuts to go with?
Buying Instagram followers
Whether you want to become an influencer or want to promote a brand of your own, one option is to buy Instagram followers. This is more of a shortcut way to expand the audience. Initially, a person may feel that a decent number of followers is the only limiting factor holding him back. Let me tell you beforehand, followers are never a limiting factor but the engagement rate is.
We’ll get to this point in a while, but first, let’s ?
How to Buy?
If you are a regular user of social media, you must have come across an ad or a post that says, ‘Buy Instagram followers’. Such pages offer multiple packages such as one thousand followers for as less as $10. They ask you to deposit the amount into their account and soon after that; you tend to receive notifications from your Instagram. Getting to see an increase in followers is no doubt a sigh of relief. It feels unrealistic but luckily the spent money did not go waste. Well, let’s see if the deal was truly worth it?
Use of fake followers on Instagram
If you deem that these followers will also interact. Well, this is not the case. It makes sense that buying followers does not boost engagement because these companies have separate offers to boost likes and comments. In fact, how can a bot account like your post? These fake followers do not engage as they can’t buy products. Their only function is to make your brand look larger than it actually is.
Measuring Metrics becomes Harder
If your account has fake followers, you won’t be able to analyze the real performance of your account. You won’t be able to track an increase or a decrease in your reach. It limits you to estimate average engagement rate, as you need to know an authentic ratio between followers and likes. So measuring metrics becomes harder and social media management loses its value.
Fake followers to Boost Real followers
Sometimes people get fake followers to give a bit boost to the account so that more real people can be convinced to tap that follow button. The irony is that instead, a person with fake followers loses credibility. This is because anyone who glances at the follower ratio can make an easy guess that most of the followers might not be real. This guess turns into surety when he goes through the list of followers. These new followers often have unreal names with random alphabets and numeric digits. They do not have any display photos or any kind of content on their profiles mostly. Although, some profiles do have a few posts that show random photos.
Fake followers to Attract Brands
So the brands that you are looking for, would never invest in you with those fake followers. Brands management incorporates software and tools to check the authenticity of your followers. If we look through a brand’s partnership perspective, why would a brand want to invest in a person that couldn’t even get a few real followers?
Beware; Instagram can suspend your Account
As per Instagram Community Guidelines, buying fake followers is considered fraudulent so there is no contradiction to the fact that buying Instagram followers is against its policies. Recent day Instagram algorithms can detect and delete fake accounts and bots instantly. Not only that but it can also ban accounts with such followers without any possibility of recovery. Sometimes the platform can impose a shadow-ban on the account where followers will not be able to see posts or won’t be able to find by hash-tags.
Instagram wants to make its platform more attractive for people especially celebrities, where they can post stories and share photos to interact with their fan following. It only wants real users to spend their time on this app so fraudulent accounts are strictly unwelcomed. The platform purges fake followers on regular basis so eventually; the money spent on such activities to grow in numbers would be lost.
An Alternate Method
Another method is based on the rule of reciprocity that is commonly known as follow-for-follow. At least this option can earn you real followers, but engagement is still unlikely. There is no guarantee that you are going to get a follow back from these accounts and even if they follow you back, they are not going to be long-term. Neither they will be very active.
How to grow Instagram Organically?
As mentioned previously, that the path to success is to grow a large following. It would help you in becoming visible to brands that want to invest in influencer marketing. Wait for your turn and sign the deal as soon as any brand approaches you.
Now the question arises, if none of this works then how can you grow your Instagram? Before, I answer this question; let’s try to understand the algorithm of Instagram.
Understanding Instagram Algorithm
By 2016 Instagram feed became much smarter. Since then the platform has been showing you the posts that you will find interesting, from accounts that you interact with most often. Whenever a person uploads a post, Instagram shows it to a small percentage of his followers to collect feedback. If people respond to it, “only” then the post appears in feed of more people. If the post exceeds a certain number of interactions and goes viral, it may even end up landing on the Explore tab.
Now you know, more the people interacted with your post, the more it will appear in the feed of other people. So, to work accordingly, all you need is a genuine audience. The logarithm works in opposite direction for fake followers, as they won’t interact with your post. Consequently, anything that you’ll post would be ranked as worst in terms of interaction and thus would never get to appear on the newsfeed of the real audience.
Keeping this in mind here are some tips to grow your Instagram organically:
Optimize posts and Stay Consistent
The pivot point is to know your target audience. You must know that what do they need and deliver it consistently. You won’t get a dime if you don’t stay consistent, so make sure to stay consistent. You may use any tool such as ‘Hootsuite’ or ‘UNUM’ to plan your posts and stories, engage followers and measure results. Also, try to collaborate with other influencers or bloggers.
Stay with the Trends
Keep yourself up-to-date and post content accordingly. You may take advantage of trending memes to entertain your audience. Keep an eye on the most important Instagram trends. Post videos, images, GIFs, quizzes and boomerangs on stories. It is a visually-focused platform so work on the visual aesthetics of your profile. Do whatever it takes to entertain your audience. Give them a reason to follow you by posting quality and unique content. Writing quality captions can also do the trick. Use appropriate hash-tags under each post as they are a great source to reach a new audience.
Convert to Business Profile
I would suggest you convert your Instagram account to a business profile. This would also make your account public and thus users can see your content. If everything goes fine, your content can also end up on explore pages where more and more audience will be engaged. Business account incorporates tools that are vital for your promotion.
Test some ads
If you plan to spend on fake followers, then save that money and spend it on Instagram ads. I would only suggest you to go for marketing via Instagram ads if you are really willing to spend some bucks. You can choose an appropriate ad campaign objective that would help your ads to reach many users that would like to know more about you.
Honest Opinion
With that being sad, I see no advantage of buying Instagram followers. Not only you’ll violate the terms and policies of Instagram but also hide your own content from everyone except your inauthentic audience. Note that fake followers are bots and inactive accounts and they won’t be discussing about you or your brand in real life with friends and family. You tend to lose credibility as well. Instead, go for authentic ways discussed above that might show a slow progress but are worth the effort in long-term.
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