Fake It Til You Make It: 3 Important Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy Social Media Followers

When it comes to social media, gaining followers in always a large focus for businesses looking to reach out to audiences and help build more of a following around your brand. However building a following on social media can be a time consuming task,  one that can take months and even years to make a significant difference, which is why it can be tempting for businesses to look into buying their followers in order to speed up the process. 

For businesses and even for individual accounts, buying followers is never a good idea, while it can help increase your follower count and make your social media profiles appear more popular, fake followers can be a guaranteed way to damage your social media presence and ultimately your brands reputation. 

There are multiple reasons why you shouldn’t buy your social media followers, here’s a look at some of the most important reasons you should avoid buying followers and stick to building an organic audience.  

Decreased Engagement

Buying fans might spike your follower count and make your business look more popular, but it does nothing for your engagement and definitely doesn’t do anything to generate business. Instead of investing in something that can help your business increase it’s profit by generating leads and sales, you’re basically only paying for your business to look good. If you have real followers, you also have real people who are interested in buying your products or using your services. 

It’s all well and good having a large amount of followers, what really matters is engagement! You should be focusing on getting authentic followers who can interact with your social media accounts, not just look at increasing how many people follow your page for self gratification.  

Can Damage Your Reputation

The entire reason many people buy followers is because it can help portray their businesses as credible and reliable, however the reality is if you’re caught buying followers it can in fact tarnish your reputation and make your business look a lot less credible. If people know you’re buying your followers, then they may think of your business as being unprofessional, unreliable and as though you are deceiving people, meaning they aren’t likely to trust your business, your products or your services. 

These days online reputation matters more than ever before, which is why it’s so important that your brand stays transparent, it’s easy to spot fake followers and it’s inevitable that people will find out, there’s no way buying followers is worth the risk of harming your reputation.  

You’re Inviting Spam

Most of the fake followers you get from buying followers are bots and while many of them just sit there in your follower list, there are still some bots out there who can spam your posts and send you comments spamming your pages and even your other followers, with promotional content for their own services. By having any form of spam on your social media profiles you can instantly damage your reputation and actually find more people unfollow your account because of this. 

If your brand becomes known for spamming people or sending people irrelevant nonsense, it’s very likely that you’ll soon find people both not trusting your social media accounts but also failing to trust your business as a whole. 

Buying fake followers can be an easy way to increase your follower count within hours, however it can be an even easier way to put your reputation at risk, compromising your business and possibly damaging how people see your business in the long run. 

Through social media ads, thought out social media campaigns, encouraging customers to follow you in emails and on packaging and even by simply posting unique posts that can generate more interest, you can find a way to increase your followers authentically, helping you reach a targeted audience who are willing to engage with your brand.