Instagram has grown into a platform with numerous uses, including a thriving marketing platform that can boost your sales, create visibility and reach a wider target audience. And with Instagram being a dynamic environment, you may need to find ways of ensuring that you are on the same competitive level.
Gaining followers on Instagram doesn’t happen overnight but rather has to be done over time in building up an audience. And even though you can use alternative methods such as defining your target audience, using keywords, posting quality content, and engaging your audience, there is a shorter way of obtaining followers in an instant.
With the world embracing credibility and authenticity from brands on social media platforms, it’s critical to understand the importance of doing things the right way. According to thesmallbusinessblog.net buying Instagram followers may have advantages and disadvantages.
With that being said, you must consider the pros and cons of buying Instagram followers before deciding on taking this shortcut.
Advantages
1. You May have Increased Visibility
Getting seen on the explore tab is key to growing your followers and getting the attention of your target audience that hasn’t followed you. When you buy followers, you enhance your visibility and increase the odds of being seen in other people’s feeds.
In addition, you’ll get more engagement from your existing and potential followers, who will patronize and share your products or services. Eventually, it’ll help in your lead generation goals and brand awareness. This perspective proves that buying followers may be the easiest and fastest way to attract new people to your page and content.
2. You May Gain A Larger Following
Having a larger following on Instagram comes with its perks, such as getting more followers who will spread the word about your brand because of brand recall. It may also entice your target audience and pique their interest in following you if they see that you have amassed a large number of followers.
This is where buying Instagram followers comes into play because it can instantly boost your brand’s credibility and popularity. Building your brand identity through this will help you land a spot in the Instagram community.
3. There Will Be Improved Engagement
Engagement metrics monitor how frequently your followers interact with your content. And to calculate your engagement rate, your likes and comments are summed up per post then divided by the number of your followers.
With improved engagement, your content will be able to reach a larger audience and improve your brand awareness. The increase in engagement can be achieved by having great timing on your posts, using the right hashtags, holding contests, and omnichannel marketing.
However, these alternatives may take time to gain the effect you need, slowing down your progress. For that reason, buying Instagram followers may be the fastest way to improve your account’s engagement.
4. Your Reputation Will Increase
Your Instagram reputation is one of the most crucial factors in building, growing, and ensuring trust in your Instagram account. You can hugely benefit from collaborations and partnerships with a great Instagram reputation.
Your reputation increase will come from the followers you’ll gain after they look at the engagement on your page. It will also get more businesses wanting to associate with you for your reputation. So, buying Instagram followers can speed things up to rev up your reputation in the community.
Disadvantages
1. You Run The Risk Of Being Shadow Banned
Being shadow-banned means getting your content blocked from being viewed without knowing it happened. According to Instagram’s regulations, you may get shadow-banned if you are found with fake, bought followers, and Instagram bots that can be weeded out as they violate their terms.
And by being banned, your visibility will decrease, making it hard to reach your target audience, and your engagement rate may also drop. In addition, it may cause stagnation on your Instagram page or lead to negative growth in general.
Apart from buying Instagram followers, using numerous irrelevant hashtags may cause a red flag that may lead to being shadow-banned.
2. It May Be Pricy With No Promise Of Return
Depending on how many followers you want, the range of prices may go up or down depending on the number you hope to gain. However, these followers may comprise Instagram bots and inactive accounts, which don’t necessarily increase engagement.
And without engagement, your account may not be visible to your target audience, thus slowing down its growth. As a result, all the work you place in gaining your real followers may go down the drain with the rest of the bought followers.
3. Your Performance Metric May Be Dissolved
Your performance metric is an important factor when you may need to track the engagement level and the Instagram data. With dissolved performance metrics, you may not have sufficient access to see the unique accounts that have seen your content.
In addition, the dissolved performance metric may mess with the data of your engagement rate, which indicates the reception of your audience to your content. The problem with a dissolved engagement rate is that you won’t be able to determine if you are posting the right content that your target audience can enjoy.
In addition, you won’t be able to build a stronger relationship with your audience if you don’t know the number of likes and interactions you get from the views of your story. Moreover, you may also fail to ascertain the best time for you to post, which can most likely affect your audience engagement.
4. Your Credibility May Be Damaged
Destroyed credibility can greatly affect an Instagram brand, and in some instances, it may lead to the irrelevance of a brand or account. As a result, if you have been building a page for a long time, you may lose all the hard work you placed into growing it.
Once your audience realizes you bought followers, they may have trust issues regarding what you have to offer. The target audience may feel betrayed and unfollow your page, causing negative effects down the line.
Bottom Line
Instagram is a great marketing tool that can increase the number of your followers and reach your target audience easily. However, growing the numbers can be hard work, and you may be tempted to buy followers instead.
Before deciding, ensure that you go through the pros and cons of buying such followers. If you choose to buy them, you may have a wider audience, increased visibility, improved engagement, and reputation. However, you may also spend a lot of money for nothing, if it ends up with damaged credibility, a dissolved performance metric, and a risk of being shadowbanned.
Always keep in mind that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to take the shortcut but you should also be aware of the consequences that come with it so that in the end you’ll never have regrets.
