Written by Caroline Forsey @cforsey1
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Marketer considering buying Instagram followers on a laptop with a credit card
You might know your Instagram content is good, but imagine how much better it will seem if it looks like 10,000 people agree.
Whether you’re trying to become a social media celebrity or simply looking to spread brand awareness on Instagram, it can be tempting to take shortcuts wherever you can in order to expand your audience, including ‘buying’ Instagram followers.
Here, we’ve gone ahead and covered all the questions you might have about buying Instagram followers to give you a better idea of how it actually works. We’ve also explored the pros and cons, so you can decide for yourself if it’s a good move for your brand.
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Can you buy Instagram followers?
Yes, you can buy Instagram followers. There are plenty of cheap services available that allow you to buy 1,000 followers for as little as $10 USD. But you’re only paying for a number. Many of those followers are either bots or inactive accounts, which means they’ll never engage with your posts.
1,000 followers seem like a good deal for the price of a small Starbucks latte. But of course, if it really was that cheap and easy, everyone would be doing it. So what’s the catch? Is buying Instagram followers legal and safe for your business? Is it a worthwhile investment?
The main reason buying Instagram followers can prove to be a wasted investment is because the accounts you follow often aren’t real.
How to Buy Instagram Followers
The vast majority of purchasable followers are either bots or inactive accounts. Here’s how it works:
The Fake Follower Vendors
Buying fake followers on Instagram is much harder now than it was a few years ago. Why? Instagram has been cracking down on accounts that violate their terms of service. What used to be fairly above-board is now an enigma. In order to buy Instagram followers these days, you’ll need to know someone who can put you in contact with a vendor who will actually deliver the bots — I mean followers — they say they will (you’ll also want to choose someone that you trust with your credit card information).
But what happens once you’ve paid for your followers? Assuming the vendor is legitimate (as legitimate as can be for this type of service) you’ll wait anywhere from a few minutes to a few days for your followers to trickle in. The sellers roll out your followers over time so as not to alert Instagram that something fishy is going on. Once you have your brand new automated followers, don’t expect much. These followers won’t do much for your engagement metrics.
When you buy Instagram followers, you’re paying for a number alone. Engagement is not guaranteed, or even likely.
Instagram Bots
Instagram bots are everywhere — you’ve likely come across several of them today alone. There are companies out there who have automated the process of creating bots so well that they can then sell these bots as followers. In some cases, the bots may even assume the identity of a real person, using stolen images and names.
Depending on the service, these dummy accounts may even seem organic, running on automation to share and like the content. Some can even be programmed to produce content. However, because they’re not real people, they will not have an organic-looking following-to-follower ratio. As a result, the engagement they do produce will have little impact.
Without real followers to engage with your content, your posts are essentially hidden from everyone except your inauthentic audience. Plus, your bot followers won’t discuss your brand in real life with friends or family, because, well … they don’t exist in real life (no offense, bots).
Inactive Accounts
However, not all fake followers are bots. There are some companies that sell followers that are genuine accounts.
In this situation, the accounts are created either because they’re managed by users whose only goal is to get followed in return or for the sole reason to offer this service. And while these followers might show early engagement, they’ll ultimately become a drain on your Instagram account’s performance metrics when their accounts go dormant.
After all, if their account was created for the sole purpose of fulfilling sponsorship requests, the real person behind the account has little reason to dwell on the newsfeed, interact with content, or purchase the goods and services being advertised.
Without that interaction, your follower numbers are inflated with none of the value that organic followers would bring.
In addition to buying followers directly, you can also pay services to strategically follow other accounts on your behalf based on your preferences (location, h
