Is Buying Instagram Likes is Hurting Your Brand? Here’s Why..!

Buying Instagram Likes: Instagram is a top social networking site with an extensive community. It was introduced to upload photos and videos, but now it has been a massive platform for social media marketing and advertising of brands and businesses.

Be it an established business or a start-up, everyone is using Instagram for the promotion of its products. In this situation, having a large number of followers or likes can substantially increase your brand’s popularity.

You have probably come through these types of ads: “1000 followers for $10”, 100% Genuine Instagram Followers”, “Grow your Instagram Followers,” etc. These advertisements may look very tempting if you are a struggling influencer or a newly established business craving for online attention. 

Lately, Instagram changed its algorithm from displaying the posts chronologically to now displaying the posts with maximum engagement or likes. This is the reason why most of the influencers are looking for buying fake followers. 

No matter how quickly your account followers can grow with such fake followers, you should never resort to such practice as it can deeply hurt your brand image.

Although the popularity and engagement can have short term benefits, fake followers will definitely have a severe impact on your long term business plans.

Current Algorithm Used by Instagram

Under Instagram’s new algorithm, a significant factor that is considered to place a post on top of the feed is “User Engagement.”

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So, the factors like the total number of likes and comments on the post, how quickly a post engages the users, the popularity of the hashtag used are highly essential to track. These factors are also known to make the content go viral.

How to Buy Instagram Likes?

We don’t recommend buying Fake Followers because of its inherent disadvantages yet for information we have listed two popular methods to grow face followers quickly:

•  You can create multiple fake accounts and invite them to like your content. There are certain companies that also sell fake Instagram likes. This method is quite tedious and does not increase engagement.
•  You can subscribe to any service provider that provides fake Instagram bolts. These accounts will follow you and like posts on related accounts. 

How Can You Detect Fake Followers?

1. Look through the user profile

General signs of a fake follower include blank profiles without any profile picture, few or no images shared, and there is no intelligent interaction.

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2. Look at the Engagement

If there is a small like to follower ratio, comments that are not relevant to the post or spammy comments, chances are that the followers may be fake.

3. If any “Buying Followers” service follows the account

If any “Followers Buying” services follow your account, it is a dead giveaway that you buy likes and followers.

4. Use Tools

There are various efficient tools that are available online, which will help you to check if there are fake followers or purchased likes.

10 Reasons Why Shouldn’t Buy Fake Instagram Likes and Followers

Although Instagram followers can aid you in starting an instant brand promotion, adding an unusual count of “Fake Instagram Followers” is a big ‘NO.’ Look at the below mentioned some of the most apparent reasons stating Why Buying Instagram Likes is Hurting Your Brand:

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1. There is no Engagement from Fake Followers

You will not get any genuine engagement from fake Instagram followers. These accounts are not even people, but merely phony bot accounts. There is no engagement that you will receive from such statements, and this is very important for anyone who fancies being an influencer. 

If you are an influencer, brands will check out your viability before they decide to work with you. Your followers don’t engage with you or your content, there will be hardly any brand that will collaborate with you.

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If you are operating any brand’s account, fake followers will never engage with your content. Neither they will look into any of your content.

2. Mismatched Engagement as Compared to Real Accounts

Generally, as followers go up on Instagram, the engagement rate goes down. Accounts with less than 1000 followers tend to have an 8% average engagement rate.

Study shows that, Those with 1000-10000 followers have a 4% average engagement rate. 10000-100000 followers will get you an average 2.4% average engagement rate, and when the followers go beyond 1 million, the engagement rate is reduced to 1.7%. 

This is an important benchmark to detect fake Instagram likes. Also,  if your ratio of likes and comments is not in proportion to the followers, it is a red flag that is visible to collaborating brands. Buying followers and likes can push the engagement beyond the prescribed limits and make your account questionable.

3. It Will Make your Business Look Shady

Buying likes proves that you yourself don’t trust your brand enough, and you are confident enough that your brand can not attract real followers. In such a case, it is evident that if you don’t trust your offerings/products, people will also not trust you.

Your business will look suspicious with the presence of fake likes, and this will turn off the existing and potential customers. They will avoid doing business with you, and brands will refuse to collaborate with you.

4. Inappropriate Bot Comments

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Fake followers are not even real people operating the account; many times, they are just bot accounts. There are chances that you can get an inappropriate comment from such accounts.

You can get a comment that is not at all relevant to your post. These are usually generic comments such as “Nice Post,” “Cool Pic,” etc. which may not be related to the content.

Also, you can get comments that are in a completely different language to your own. These comments, if received in large number, is a signal that you have purchased fake followers. 

5. Instagram Can Suspend Your Account

There are a lot of steps being taken by Instagram to reduce fake accounts that create an unethical environment on the platform. Fake accounts can anytime be purged by Instagram, which means that your followers can disappear at any time. This will impact your long term credibility on Instagram.

6. Fake Followers is Against the Terms and Conditions of Instagram

Buying fake Instagram means breaching the terms and conditions of service. Due to this, Instagram has full authority to suspend your account out rightly. If you are suspected of engaging in such dodgy practices, it will harm your brand image for the long term.

7. Brands can Blacklist You

Brands usually do detailed research of your account before making any collaborations. There are various tools available that aid them in this process.

They can highlight any suspicious activity that is going on in your accounts, such as purchased likes or comments, it can be easily identified. From a brand’s perspective, it is a failing grade due to which your account can be blacklisted. 

8.Fake Followers will Destroy your Credibility and Follower Relationships

If people notice that your Instagram account looks unusual in any manner, they will start having doubts about the genuineness of the account. Brands that hire you, certainly look at the quality of engagement you have with your followers. 

Having fake followers can cause poor credibility in the long run. This can result in weak brand collaborations and no real followers.

 9. You Don’t Earn Money Using Fake Followers

Fake followers will never spend any money on your product. They will never even refer your product to anyone. So, if you are maintaining a brand account, there is no use of purchasing fake Instagram followers as it will not turn into any revenue for your business.

For an Instagram Influencer, fake followers can result in no brand collaborations. Brands do not prefer to work with unworthy accounts. This will result in a negligible monetary outcome.

10. Fake Likes Never Result in Real Business

Fake likes on your post just can make your brand look popular that it actually is. Apart from this, they will never get you into a real business. There will be no genuine reviews of your product and no purchase history, and this will make the product look suspicious.

All these factors can result in poor sales as customers will always check the reviews before making any purchase. 

What Can You Do Instead of Buying Instagram Likes?

A research conducted by Instagram states that nearly 60% of its users discover new products through this platform. User interaction on Instagram is several times higher than Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

So, instead of relying on cheap practices to raise your followers, create a long term strategy to increase brand engagement organically. There are much better ways to promote your Instagram page, and the results will definitely be fruitful in the long run. 

1. Create Strong Content

Work hard to create content that informs followers about new products, educates them about doing something specific and unique, inspires them, and fills them with energy and spirit and, most importantly, entertains them so that they pass their time in a fulfilling manner. 

2. Use Hashtags

Use your hashtags wisely as they help in increasing the visibility and engagement of a post. Also, instead of using some common hashtags, go for the more specific ones. This will narrow the scope and increase the visibility of your post.

3. User Engagement

You should interact with your followers regularly, as this will increase your exposure and visibility. Take out some time daily to engage with users.

4. Get Your Business Account

Switch from Instagram personal account to a business account so as to unlock various tools that are accessible only to a business account. These tools are quite necessary when you build your Instagram Marketing Strategy.

5. Run Ads

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You can try out marketing with Instagram Ads, which can significantly boost your follower count. Also, you can personalize your Ads and choose people as per the demographics who can see your ads. This can create brand awareness and reach- your product can reach in front of people who have never heard of your brand.

Conclusion

Don’t fool your audience by buying likes or followers to establish your social presence. Use Instagram as a platform to build genuine relationships with your followers and engage with them.

Buying followers, no matter, however tempting it may look, is a hazard and will do more harm than good. Once detected, it will cost you more money and partnership losses in the long run.

So be yourself, grow your followers organically, and with genuine efforts and follow Instagram’s Terms and conditions to create a long-lasting, creative, and entertaining account that your followers love to watch.