Is there a legal way to buy active Instagram followers?

Want your brand to be noticed on Instagram?

Want to up the traffic to your website?

Or maybe you have aspirations of becoming an influencer.

You can grow your Instagram the honest way, through engaging in your audience, through posting high-quality content and using analysis to hit your key demographic or you can buy Instagram followers.

The idea that – it is illegal to buy followers is a total misconception. Buying followers do violate Instagram terms of service but it is easy to avoid getting banned by purchasing high-quality followers from a reputable vendor. Buying followers is not illegal and more than likely it won’t get you banned from the social media platform.

Why Buy Instagram Followers?

The purchase of Instagram followers is not something just done by start-ups and wannabes. Politicians, celebrities and high profile brands have been known to pad their follower count with fake followers. Brands like Pepsi and Mercedes-Benz has been accused of beefing up their numbers and even hip hop mogul P Diddy has been caught buying followers. In the world of Instagram models and influencers buying fans is as commonplace as hiring a photographer.

The reason Instagram users do this is that they believe many people judge the size of an account before following and it is a common metric used by brands to measure their marketing efforts. Recently models and actresses have been cast or booked based on not their talent or looks but the number of Instagram followers.

Buying a few thousand followers to start your account is a great way to encourage people to check your brand out. The process of buying Instagram followers is cheap and easy to do.

How do you Buy Instagram Followers?

First of all, it is important to be able to tell the difference in buying followers and Instagram automation.

Instagram automation is the act of allowing a robot to like and comment on your behalf, this is the type of practice that will lead to your account being suspended.

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Buying followers on Instagram is a different type of service. You link your account to a service provider, make a payment to them and watch your audience grow. A quick search on the internet will bring you to a large list of companies that often this follower buying service. Some companies offer the service cheaply but in this business, you get what you pay for. Using a company that offers the service very cheaply could result in your account being followed by bots and zombie accounts (once real account that has been taken over by bots due to inactivity or a hack).

Some more reputable companies charge upwards of $1,000 for 10,000 followers but these followers will be legitimate active accounts who will naturally interact with your content and account. 2016 data notes that companies average $2.95 for 100 followers and $250 for 50,000. If you choose the less favored option of using bot automation fees will range from $2.99 a day to $99.99 a month.

Other accounts that may be lower priced will follow users on your behalf in hopes they will return the favor, not ideal if you don’t want a cluttered feed full of strangers. You’ll be asked what kind of accounts you want to follow based on your location, gender, and age. This bot will then unfollow anyone that didn’t follow you and try again with new accounts.

Make sure you check up on a site and read their reviews before investing in buying followers from them. Some companies will create bots that will unfollow your accounts days or weeks after you pay a lump sum, meaning your money has been wasted.

Why Shouldn’t You Buy Instagram Followers?

The issue with buying Instagram followers is not just an ethical issue. These followers are nothing more than a number on your profile. They won’t like any of your posts and the will not leave any comments, meaning your post may get lost in the new Instagram algorithm.

If a loyal follower or a journalist notices you have a collection of fake and inactive accounts following you, it will totally lose your credibility. This is especially risky if you are a brand or business, as a discovery like this could make you lose all integrity. As a small start-up, this might not seem an issue but it may be in the future when you are a bigger company. As an influencer, if a brand looks closely at your profile and notices it is filled with fake followers and bots they, more than likely, will not want to work with you.

Also read : Is it wise to use free Instagram followers bot?

When you choose to buy followers to think to yourself, what is more, important having 10,000 followers that are inactive accounts or 100 real followers who comment on your posts and are actually interested in your content?

If your profile, for example, has 500 followers it is not ideal to suddenly buy 10,000 followers. If your real followers see this they will be suspicious, if they discover a month old account with six or seven posts has that many followers it will immediately set off alarm bells.

Instagram has a team of employees whose entire job is dedicated to detecting fraudulent activity if they do detect an issue your account will be flagged and suspended – or worse completely terminated. Opting for a smaller scale purchase, like 100 followers at a time will lower the risk of your account being flagged. Since 2014 over a million fake followers have been purged from accounts, this is why the follower account for your favorite celebrity may have dropped suddenly.

In the latest Instagram algorithms, having a large number of followers is not beneficial because the social media site will reward posts with high engagement not posts from popular users. Your post will only see 10% of people but the quicker people like the post the more likely it is to appear on the feeds of your followers. The algorithm believes that content that is quickly liked and interacted with is good quality and will show it on more feeds.

The worst case scenario is that Instagram bots could result in a PR disaster for your company. These bots will leave fake positive comments on your posts, comments such as ‘Love It’ ‘Wow’ and ‘Great Job’, this is great if you’re posting a new product but it will seem very mismatched if your post is the somber announcement of the death of a celebrity or a personal tragedy. An over enthusiast bot commenting ‘Love it’ on you marking the death of David Bowie can look very distasteful and will obviously show you are using bots to gain followers.

Similarly, if you have an Instagram bot liking posts on the behalf of your company they could end up liking some unsavory content. Say, for example, you set up your bot to like things posted under the fitness hashtag, people may post inappropriately sexual content under the tag, bots aren’t smart enough to know what is and isn’t the correct content for the tag. Others can see what your account has liked so be very careful when using bots as they could land your company in hot water and ruin your reputation.

Do Followers Matter?

Ethics and legalities aside, does your follower count actually matter? Unfortunately, yes it does. Instagram users are more likely to value quantity over quality and brands are likely tom check how popular you are within a certain demographic.

Having a large amount of Instagram followers can lead to you making money without really having to try. Find a website that offers an affiliate program within your industry and you could receive the commission for promoting brands and featuring codes in your captions.

Actually in reality followers don’t matter as much as engagement, especially if you are a brand trying to sell products. Imagine you have 20,000 followers but 15,000 of them are brought and you want to sell an item there is actually only a limited audience. Those followers add zero value to your company because they won’t comment or like your posts, they are inactive accounts who won’t read your content and will spend no money on your service.

Instead of caring about your follower count care more about your content, that is that will bring in the value. Gain followers through high quality and unique content that will make consumers care. Brands are now starting to invest and notice smaller influencers with 1000-5000 followers because they will have a higher engagement count than a large account with millions of followers.

If you are a business you need to worry less about how big your following is and instead worry about attracting ideal clients. It is an important part of the business to attract the right type of client who will actually engage in your content, buy your products and care about your services.

It all comes down to your choice and values. Would you rather have 300 loyal followers who you know will purchase your items and visit your website, or would you rather have 30,000 followers who are either inactive accounts, bots of people who followed you in hopes of an extra comment or a follow back?