The Importance of Not Buying Instagram Followers
December 18th, 2014 will forever be known as The Great Instagram Purge of 2014. Well, that was definitely the title it will be remembered as between my friends and I. Seeing how many followers we lost and more importantly, how many followers other people lost. For those who may not know what I am talking about, Instagram announced that they were purging out all the spam accounts in the popular social media app. We didn’t know when but we knew it was going to happen. Happen it did and we all woke up to lower follower counts. As long as you have a public account and use hashtags, spam accounts will find you and follow you. It’s a part of being on Instagram. But some people lost way, WAY more followers than others. One clothing store I follow went from 300K to 86K. Bloggers lost tens or hundreds of thousands of followers in a refresh of the app. So why did some accounts lose way more followers than others? Because they were bought.
There are services where you can buy followers. There are two ways to go about this. You can buy bots which are cheap but are very easy to spot because the username makes no sense and they tend to have little to no photos on their account and barely any engagement (and when they do it also makes no sense).
http://hypez.com/
http://buzzoid.com/
Or you could use a service like Buy Instagram Followers which is a much more expensive option because the company operates real, yet still fake, accounts. You can spend up to $18,000 for 20,000 followers.
Now, why would someone want to buy followers? Instagram is still a big numbers game. If you are an influencer, you would want to have a high follower count because brands will want to work with you and pay you to have their product in front of all your followers. Or say you’re just starting out on Instagram and you’re finding it’s hard to get a following, so you buy a few thousand followers. Ok fine, I understand that reasoning, but I still can’t wrap my head around spending money on something that could go away at the drop of a dime.
I’ve been on Instagram since day one. I knew about the app for months before its release. I've been on this app for so long that I think I should have a much higher follower count. I often wonder what new tactics I have to try to get more followers, but one thing is for sure, I always knew I would never buy my followers. I want to know what the post or the project that made people follow me. I want to know precisely the moment that people took notice. I want to know that my hard work paid off and that’s why people want to follow and support me.
Reasons why not to buy followers:
1 // It is unethical
People are busting their asses to deliver good content and get looked over because someone else’s inflated number got them the job.
2 // You will get caught
Nowadays, everyone on Instagram is a detective. People are always watching. Also, if another purge occurs, it will be obvious you paid for followers.
3 // No return on investment
Any good business owner wants to make money. If you’re spending money on fake followers who can’t hire you or buy your product, what is the point of even doing it?
4 // You can buy a sponsored post
If you’re committed on spending money, invest it in making dope content and buy an ad on Instagram. You’ll get real live followers that way who will actually buy your product.
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Equating your worth with your follower count is easy. We’ve all been there. A number will not give you happiness because it will never be high enough. Look at the connections you've made online. The DMs and emails saying your words helped them. The real live people who hire you. That means more than any number.
