Should You Buy Instagram Followers?

I was asked this the other day and thought this was a great topic, so here we are. A friend sent me a website and said: “should I do this??”.

It was a website promising 1,000 Instagram followers for $19. It promised “guaranteed results” and “premium followers”, whatever that means.

Now, I’m not knocking on this specific service – it probably would deliver what they advertise, but what good are these 1,000 followers.

After all, if getting 1,000 followers was really that easy, then what’s the catch? Why wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

Here’s the thing – with these services, you’re paying for a number. The location of the follower isn’t guaranteed, and they are most likely not going to care about whatever you’re posting on your page, so they won’t be engaged. These purchased followers are likely bots or inactive posts, and the chance of them being in the same country is slim.

Because of that, buying Instagram followers will distort your performance metrics. It’s next to impossible to measure how well your target audience is connecting with you if a large chunk of your followers isn’t real.

Not only this, but Instagram isn’t stupid – they can easily identify and get rid of your fake followers. You’re also violating Instagram’s community guidelines, which says “Help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares” and “We’re committed to these guidelines and we hope you are too. Overstepping these boundaries may result in deleted content, disabled accounts, or other restrictions.”

What can you do instead?

  1. Make sure your account is public. If it’s private, people can?t see your profile and content, so it can’t grow.
  2. Publish a variety of posts and stories, asking questions, and getting people engaged. Engagement is key.
  3. Use hashtags wisely by using ones that have a lot of traffic but are also relevant to your account.
  4. Try to follow a theme when posting. People like to see uniformity in what you post and what your profile looks like. If you have a brand, try to stick to it.
  5. Use a tool like Canva to build your posts. Canva is a fantastic tool that is free to use that you can build great posts. They have free templates and images that you can use.

Following these tips will help you organically grow your Instagram followers without having to worry about the possibility of your account getting shut down for buying fake followers.

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Stephen O'Neal

My name is Stephen O?Neal (Steveo). I've been doing Digital Marketing for over a decade. I have a degree in Interactive Media, have worked at several different marketing agencies, and have been running my own businesses for over 10 years. I'm a WordPress, SEO, and Google Ads expert. I know what needs to be done to get results.