Why You Should Never Pay for Your Social Media Followers
Are you anxious to grow your social media following?
Have you considered paying for your followers?
In this article I have outlined 4 reasons why you should never pay for your social media followers.
In December 2014, Instagram made the bold decision to delete millions of fake accounts from its platform. This move is now known as the ‘Great Spam Purge.’ Because most of the accounts were fake or ‘bot‘ accounts, the social media giant made the move in an effort to improve the experience of its 100 million active users.
The following statement can be found on Instagram’s website: We’re in the process of fixing an issue that incorrectly includes inactive or fake accounts in follower/following lists. We want to maintain the best possible experience on Instagram, so we do our best to remove spam, fake accounts and other people and posts that don’t follow our Community Guidelines. As we remove these accounts, some people may notice a decrease in their follower/following counts.
The average Instagram user is probably relieved to know that their not being followed by spammers. But, companies, social media influencers and celebrities earn their online klout by being ‘liked’ by a large amount of people. Some who fall into this category lost millions of followers with the purge. For example, Justin Bieber, lost about 3.5 million followers, hip hop star Akon lost 56% of his Instagram fans and Ma$e, lost 1.5 million followers.
Social media marketers, bloggers and brand ambassadors make money from sponsored posts due to a large follower count. Some of these social media users depend on fake accounts to build a psuedo-following. But their gamble to use these ‘bot’ accounts caused them to lose a hefty number of followers as well.
Instagram’s decision proves that paying for followers is a risky investment. Despite this fact, this practice has emerged as big business in recent years. With the goal of appearing more popular, many companies promise users the opportunity to buy a bunch of followers (mostly bot accounts) on social networking sites including Twitter, Instagram and Vine. Although, paying for your followers can be a very tempting and easy way to build your social media presence, it’s certainly not worth it in the long-run.
The Downside of Purchasing Fake Followers
1. Engagement is Lost – Social media marketing is all about engaging your audience in interesting and authentic ways. This engagement should always be centered around two way communication. When you have a host of fake followers who are not fully engaged, the communication is one-sided. At this point, the opportunity to engage your audience is lost.
2. Your Message Gets a Limited Reach – Social media is about building an army of followers who become passionate about your brand. An ideal campaign will encourage your audience to share your message with their networks. When you’re able to build an active following of people who fall in love with your brand, they will do the heavy lifting for you and begin to promote your brand across social media platforms themselves. When you buy followers or fans, you aren’t getting people who are interested or willing to engage with you. You lose the opportunity for your brand’s message to be seen, heard and shared with real leads and prospects.
3. Your ROI is Not Actualized – Content marketing doesn’t just stop at great Facebook messages and Infographics. You want this content to be converted into sales. People buy from brands that they know and trust. If you’re not building relationships with real people you’re just spinning your wheels. The real people your messages reach don’t know who you are. If you have followers that aren’t sincerely engaged with your brand, they don’t have any value to your company. This means no return on your invested time. Plus, the money that you used to purchase the fake followers is down the drain.
4. Loss of Integrity and Reputation – Not only can your account be suspended or deleted when you pay for fake followers, the number of followers will ad no value to your company. One of the main goals of social media marketing is to build trust among your followers. People will eventually find out that your followers are fake. You can lose trust as this practice will give the impression that you have done something under-handed to build your social media presence.
Patience, consistency and authenticity are in order when it comes to growing your online presence. Take the time to follow the right people and engage with them on a consistent basis. Be creative, share trending topics and build a network with people in your community and industry who are interested in what you have to say. Social media marketing is a marathon, not a race and quality should trump quantity when you are using it to grow your online presence.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://rnm145.p3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Shantha-Headshot-1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Shantha Wetterhan is a certified social media marketing manager and digital content strategist. She is also an avid blogger and lover of all things social. She uses her passion for effective communication to engage and inspire audiences.[/author_info] [/author]
I’m so naive, I didn’t even know it was possible to “buy followers!” This is great information though, thanks for sharing! 🙂
Welcome Heather!
Definitely agree with all of these! I think there are a couple accounts that follow me right now that advertise x amount of followers for a certain amount of money, and I’ve just really never understood it. I value the engagement and I like knowing that real people are following me because they genuinely like my content. If that’s not there, what’s the point?
I read somewhere (I forgot the source!) that even buying ads doesn’t get you the fan base you want. The study showed that it was FB who was buying the likes for your ads!!
Mmmm…very interesting Agy! I do suggest that you save those ad dollars only pay to promote a special event, service or item. There’s a much better ROI if you do it that way.
I’ve always been intrigued by the concept but never did it myself and now I’m really glad I never bought any. Some of these consequences I never thought about, but they’re all true!
Yes they are Miranda :).
I completely agree with all of these strategies. I am a new blogger, working on building my following so far. I have a pretty small amount of people following me on each social media platform, and I am working towards growing that. I find that transparency is key when it comes to people liking your content. You shouldn’t have to pay or beg people to like or engage with your posts. If it’s genuine, it will!
You’re absolutely right! Being genuine and authentic is the key to getting people to engage :).
Wow, interesting post. I hadn’t realized that celebrities might have so many spam followers. I don’t think I lost anyone when Instagram made those changes, so I take that as a good omen. Who would want ghost followers that don’t engage your content? Might as well have 100 solid followers that you have a good reciprocal relationship, than 1000 that you do not.
Yes Jennifer! I’ll take quality over quantity any day.
Integrity is everything to me. If my blog ends up growing, I want to be able to proudly say that hard work pays off. If you pay to make it grow, it’s all fake, what’s the point?
Yes, Em! You are so right.
I loved seeing the ‘fake’ users removed from Instagram. I’d really love to see FB and Twitter take charge with that also.
That would be awesome!
Hahaha… stupid celebs. Definitely want my followers to be genuine!
hahah…thanks Sarah!
I couldn’t agree more! It’s much harder to build a genuine following,but I’d rather do it that way than have a bunch of bot accounts with no activity or interaction
Thanks Tianna!
These are very good points! It is much better to do things the right way. God bless! 🙂
Thanks Angel!
These are excellent points! I think integrity is the big one. Integrity and authenticity. Why would I want a bunch of followers who aren’t genuinely interested in what I have to say??
You are absolutely right Erin!
But what abput highly targeted FB ads? It seems they would help engagement, etc.
Yes, FB ads are helpful. If you have a special event or promotion, by all means invest in FB ads. That is much different and more effective than buying fake social media followers and likes.
I guess I am naive…I didn’t even know you could “buy” followers!! 🙂 Thanks for the tips!
You’re welcome Jaimie!
So true! I’m always super annoyed when I get spam followers on twitter who are trying to sell followers.
They can be super annoying Erica :).
This is so true! I especially love the last point!
Thanks Lauren!
My goal is to constantly connect with real people. They need to implement this on Twitter cause it is the worst.
Absolutely Kimberly!
I say this all the time. Fake followers will not spend money or engage with your brand, so what’s the point? Unfortunately, too many companies are interested in looking like they have a large following, thinking this gives them credibility. Those poor folks just don’t understand the ‘social’ in social media. And they don’t realize we can check and find out if their followers are fake. Great post!
Thanks so much Kemya!