You’re about a year into blogging and are growing disheartened by the lack of followers you’re getting on social media. You’ve poured your heart and soul into churning out quality stories every week on your site, into curating a visually stunning Instagram account, into coming up with witty 140 character tweets; yet your following never seems to grow. You’re tired of hearing “the best tips to grow your following” from the social media elite because nothing seems to do the trick. When it feels like you’ve just about left every stone unturned, you find a site that promises 10,000 social media followers for $5. Just like that, you’re faced with blogging’s biggest taboo question: should you just buy your way to success?
Most bloggers will skip over the topic of buying followers because it is surrounded by red tape. Most bloggers would like you to believe that your social media following is directly correlated to the quality of your content, therefore be a better writer/photographer/blogger and you”ll get more followers-easy as that! With a career background in advertising (where brands pay for publicity and following) and public relations (where brands fight for earned following) let me dare to do the unthinkable and address what happens if you were to buy followers for yourself.
First of all, let me preface this by saying that I hold no judgement for people who wind up buying social media followers. As much as we all would like to achieve internet fame organically, the fact is there are just too many great creators out there to allow that to happen. If your mind is set on buying followers, here are a few things to consider before you do:
Don’t forget about your engagement numbers!
If you’re considering taking the plunge and buying followers it’s crucial you remember engagement numbers! Engagement refers to how people are interacting with your content (such as comments, likes, re-tweets, shares, etc.). While working in advertising and planning media campaigns for brands, I learned first hand how companies will value engagement over following any day. Say you purchase 20,000 followers for your Instagram account but have minimal likes and zero comments; this is considered a fairly obvious red flag that your account is not genuine. If you do decide to buy following, be wary about keeping a good follower to engagement ratio.
Expect that this may become a money-sucking habit.
Let’s say you buy yourself 5,000 followers as a “boost” to your social media account for $5. With the added boost, you want to ensure the increase doesn’t look odd, so you then spend another $5 on likes or retweets. Now, you’re worried that the lack of comments looks odd, so you find a website that sells generated comments for, let’s say, $10. Right there, you’ve spent $20 on amping your social accounts. Now, a month goes by and you want your social media account to look like it’s gaining popularity (and unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be doing so naturally) so you go to buy another $5 worth of followers, which leads to the $5 worth of likes, $10 worth of comments and so on, so forth. The point is that buying followers can be like an addiction as you end up throwing money towards the pipe dream of becoming social media famous; just be wary of this!
Consider that you’ll be working with “shady” websites.
Because buying followers is considered “taboo” and frowned upon by the social media networks, then you can expect the websites you’ll be working with to be shady. Complaints I’ve heard include unfulfilled orders without a refund, no customer service, poor quality fake accounts or (if buying followers for Twitter) tons of “Twitter egg” fake accounts. If you’re set on buying followers, do your research and try to find the best option for yourself.
Be wary of the dreaded social media sweeps.
It’s said that every year Instagram runs a “sweep” where they automatically eliminate fake accounts from their database. Last year, some major celebrities even lost upwards of 3 million followers as a result! Now while 3 million followers might be a small dent in the following of Justin Bieber who has 67 million followers, if your account has 50,000 followers (50% which are purchased followers) then you’ll have an awkward day on your hands when you wake up and see your followers have inexplicably dropped to more than half of what it was.
Know that large social following doesn’t mean you’ll capture the attention of brands.
One of the big reasons bloggers buy followers is in hopes of capturing the attention of brands and companies to work with them. Many top social media accounts earn enough money from their posts to live off of, and this is obviously an attractive prospect for people otherwise struggling to get by. It seems easy enough then: buy 10,000 followers and the brands will come running, right? Wrong. While working in advertising, brands I worked for cared less about the number of followers and more about engagement. In other words, while you can buy a following that looks good on your social media account, you can’t fake the comments and genuine engagement people have when interested in your work. That is what brands are looking for these days.
Expect to lose interest in your social media.
When the controversial topic of buying followers comes up, many people have told me the same thing: they lose interest in their social media as a result. What once was a medium for genuine connection and conversation with people from around the world all of a sudden becomes saturated with fake followers. The result? That coveted satisfaction people get when sharing an image that earns comments and likes goes out the window when that attention is now paid for.
Just remember…
whether you decide to buy followers or not is entirely your decision; just remember that there are definite pros and cons to buying followers that should be considered when making your choice.
Your turn! What are your thoughts on buying followers? Is this something you would ever do? Join the conversation below! For more blogging advice, check out my BLOG TIPS.
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Isabelle Collins says
I don’t like the idea of buying followers purely because I feel it’s pointless. All they do is add numbers, you get no satisfaction out of it other than you look popular. Working for real numbers must feel so much more worth it in the long run x
http://www.taintedblues.co.uk/
This is a bit of a confusing topic. I’m pretty tired of reading ‘how to’ guides about social media and they never seem to work for me. So I’m going to assuming that buying followers won’t work either! I’m trying to get back to just the enjoyment of engaging and sharing and get over the fact it’s going to be a slower process this way 🙂 xx
http://www.girlglobalising.com
It definitely is a confusing topic and one not often addressed. I sometimes speak to bloggers who are flirting with the idea of buying followers, so I think it’s good to know all the facts before making that choice. But yes, I agree, at a certain point you just have to gorget about all the “how-to be social famous” and “how-to grow social following” guides and just enjoy engaging and sharing. Get back to basics 🙂
100% agree! I do think buying followers can take away the joy from social media, which before it came this popularity contest, was a way to just connect with other people. While I understand people’s desire to buy followers, I do think you lose something in the process.
I don’t see any true benefit from buying followers. Maybe someone will be happy for a day or two about it - but in the longterm?
Some months ago a company offered me followers in return for a testimonial…. this felt a bit weird because I see personally no value in those “ghost” followers. But the biggest surprise was that the company contacted me for that hahaha
That’s so odd that a company reached out to you and offered followers? Was it fake followers or did they say you would gain followers from them organically by being associated?
Good question, I guess that would have been fake followers as they advertised follower packages on their website. Indeed that as an odd experience!
I love that you are bringing this up! Buying followers is not something I consider, but I do understand that some people will! Building a social media following can sometimes get very disheartening.
— LisaLDN.com
Really interesting post! I’d never considered buying followers, but sometimes get discouraged by the lack of organic growth on my social media channels. Reading this post actually made me feel so much better about my small organic gains!
Kate | http://www.petiteadventures.org/
angloyankophile says
This is a tough one, but something I’m so glad you addressed! I recently started boosting particular posts on Facebook, only because I found that it did help with engagement, but I would be really reticent about buying followers on Instagram or Twitter. I would love more followers (who wouldn’t?!) but would rather put in the work to grow this following slowly and organically, for several of the reasons you listed above.
Thanks! I do think that sometimes even the blogging taboos are important to discuss. I don’t think there is anything wrong with boosting facebook posts since you’re not faking engagement so much as just putting your content in front of people.
I’m glad! Yes, it can definitely be discouraging and frustrating to grow following, especially if you see someone else put out a photo similar to what you shared and they get thousands of likes while you only got a hundred. I don’t know if there really is a magical formula to building a following but I do think small, organic gains are more satisfying.
Absolutely! There is definitely a market here for bloggers looking to buy followers, so it’s good to address it!
Great post! Buying followers is never a good idea. Social media is hard to crack, but usually the formula is: high quality posts/images and frequent posting. I think if we stick with that, we’ll all get where we want to go over time!
Thanks Nikki for posting this article. I have been struggling growing my followers and have sometimes “considered” a fiverr gig or something like that. But you are right, getting engagements is what i really want. I appreciate growing those 3 new likes organically as long as they engage. Now the hard part is to get them to like, comment, and share on my social media and getting comments my blog!!
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Melissa Presser says
Wow, someone told me about this practice but I didn’t think it was real. Then I googled it and omg I couldn’t believe it. I am not on any social media platforms and this is another reason why. My blog is for engagement and community not anything else. I figure if someone wants to partner with me, it will just happen. Thanks for the insight!
Jessica Winder says
Buying followers will never be a great idea to gain some consistent popularity to their posts. Anyway, this article is well explained and written. Great Job!
Jenny Roberts says
it is kinda tough though especially when you just got started a business and needs a boost in social media. But thanks for this insight!!
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Your article is very helpful. It gives me the idea to consider the pros and cons before buying followers. Very eye opener! Keep posting!
Thanks for stopping by and giving it a read 🙂
Aw thank you! I need that reminder to keep on posting. Sometimes it feels like these posts are sent out into oblivion, so these comments are amazing.
So glad you did! thanks for stopping by 🙂