Growing your social media presence takes time and effort, and it can be tempting to succumb to the concept of ‘buying followers’ to speed things up. However, this does more harm than good.
Here are five reasons you shouldn’t consider buying followers for your social media accounts:
1. This is not your real audience.
These followers are not your customers or clients, if they are even real people. They will not be spending money on your products or services and they will not be engaging with your content. The goal of your social media presence should not be to have the biggest following; it should be to connect with your customers regularly so that you are top of mind for them.
2. Your engagement will decrease.
Adding followers that don’t interact with your account results in your overall engagement rate decreasing. On some platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, this will work against you. Having a low engagement rate tells Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm that your followers aren’t interested in your posts. This means the chances of your posts appearing organically into your followers’ news feeds will decrease.
3. You become a platform for spam.
Once you start incorporating fake followers into your community, those fake followers can target your genuine customers with their own spam. If your brand becomes known for spamming followers with irrelevant nonsense, you will begin to lose your real and genuine followers.
4. Your reputation gets jeopardized.
Your online reputation is everything, as one of the pillars of a great brand is transparency. Being discovered for buying fake followers can be humiliating for your brand and can result in your real customers losing trust in you.
5. It goes against the terms of conditions.
Buying followers is against the terms of service of almost every major social media network. These companies have strong policies against ‘fake followers’ and will actively delete or ban accounts that use services to buy fake followers and likes.
Buying fake followers cannot only destroy your brand, but it can also put your entire company at risk. Getting banned from popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, will mean you can no longer access major marketing channels.
Social media brand building takes a lot of time and effort, but if you have a strong strategy in place, and work hard to gain followers organically, you can still be successful amongst your strong competitors.