We often come across questions like “should I buy followers on Instagram?” and “is it a good idea to buy Instagram likes?”
In general, people who ask these questions are looking for ways to quickly increase their reach and improve their business results. We’ll address some of the issues with buying Instagram likes.
Will I get noticed if I buy Instagram likes?
The short answer is definitely not! It might seem like a good way to increase your brand’s visibility and get more followers, but this won’t lead to better business results. Actually, not only will you spend money on something that doesn’t work, it could even end with Instagram deleting your account.
Here’s why it’s a terrible idea to buy likes and followers, and what you should be doing instead. ?
Everyone will notice something fishy is going on
Have you read up on Instagram’s Community Guidelines? Well, one of the guidelines is that you should have authentic interactions. This means that you shouldn’t be:
- trading fake user reviews,
- purchasing likes, comments, or followers,
- or posting repetitive content that spams people’s feeds,
Instagram deletes profiles if they violated its Community Guidelines. However, even if Instagram doesn’t realize something is suspicious, other brands will.
Brands that want to collaborate with other brands or influencers use tools to figure out who is worth their time. For example, they will track down the average number of comments per post, your historical Instagram follower data, and how engagement has changed with time. If they see that you went from 200 followers to almost 5,000, then they will quickly realize what’s up. People who buy likes forget that real people won’t care about everything you post. It’s a red flag if someone’s posts have more or less the same level of engagement every single time.
They have other tools at their disposal, too. For example, they can use tools to see if you have fake followers or bots following your account.
Basically, this won’t work out the way you intended!
Having more followers doesn’t guarantee more engagement
The Instagram algorithm determines what your followers see on their feed. If your content is especially engaging and they regularly interact with it, they’re more likely to see it at the top. Chronological order won’t be coming back any time, and that’s for sure. But how are these related?
Let’s say that you buy likes for some period of time, and maybe you even bought followers to get those likes. These could be accounts that will like your content for some time, and then they’ll disappear. Instagram’s algorithm is going to notice a sudden drop in engagement, and your profile is more likely to go down in their feed.
Even worse, since you might have around 5,000 followers and potentially 10 comments, the algorithm will realize that your content just isn’t interesting to anyone that followers you except those ten people who commented. Such a waste of time and resources!
The number of likes isn’t linked to acquiring more leads
When you’re running a business profile on Instagram, one of your goals is to increase your customer base. That’s not going to happen when you’re paying for fake accounts to like your content. You paid them to like your content, not to purchase your services. You should put yourself in your follower’s shoes. Why should they purchase something that doesn’t have many reviews, has almost no comments talking about it, and they can’t see other people wearing it? If anything, they’ll suspect that there’s a scam involved.
You can increase sales with social media in other ways other than purchasing likes. Still, it’s not that easy. It will take long-term planning and work to make sure you get and maintain your followers’ interest. You can do that by providing better social customer service, creating an Instagram shop so your followers can directly purchase from you, and reposting your followers’ content that features your brand (with permission, of course).
Instagram is going to hide likes anyway
You should have heard by now that Instagram is going to hide likes. As the owner of the profile, you’ll still be able to see the number, but your followers won’t.
At the end of the day, you won’t be impressing anyone. What they’ll see instead is that other people they follow liked the post, too. That’s going to be more interesting for them anyway because it’s reassuring to know that you and your friends are interested in the same things.
What should you do instead of buying likes on Instagram?
Glad you asked!
We could actually talk about this all day, but you’re probably looking for a quick explanation. We’ll cut to the chase.
Learn more about your audience
This is such a no-brainer. Knowing more about your audience’s interests, demographics, and activity will help you grow your business.
Already have an Instagram business account? Great, open up your Instagram Insights for free Instagram analytics. You will see some basic demographic data about your audience such as:
- Gender,
- Location (city and country),
- Age.
There are more demographics that you can check in Instagram Insights, but you might not see the relevance in all of them. Some of these demographics will help you prepare content that fits your audience better. Gen Z and Gen X won’t enjoy the same content a lot of the time, so you should take that into account. You should start saving all of the data that Instagram can provide and track any noticeable changes.
Unfortunately, Facebook hasn’t created an Instagram reporting feature that will create reports or save data for you. It’s not easy to save historical Instagram data, but there are ways to get around that.
Sotrender can be used as an Instagram analytics tool or alternative to Instagram Insights. You can connect your account to the application and analyze your Instagram data over longer, customizable periods of time. Even the graphs are interactive, so you have the chance to get specific data that interests you.
Interactive graph showing historical follower demographic data
I decided to exclude a few countries in the graph so that I could check follower growth in specific countries. To check for a specific demographic, you just have to click on the legend labels.
Oh, and if you want to know what you posted on a day when your number of followers changed dramatically, just click on the graph and the post will come up!
Now that you know how to collect this information, you can use it to create better content and engage your audience more! ?
Find the right hashtags to find the right audience
Improving your reach to get more followers is your goal, right? There’s actually a very simple way that you can do that.
Properly using hashtags in your posts results in getting more followers that are interested in the specific hashtag. If you use a relevant hashtag, there is a better chance that users will follow you and interact with your posts. On top of that, the Instagram algorithm won’t favor your posts or account if it notices that you’re constantly adding irrelevant hashtags.
So, what should you keep in mind when picking a hashtag?
- The popularity of the hashtag matters. If you have better engagement, you can use more popular hashtags because you still have a chance to stand out.
- If you have a smaller account or lower engagement rates, use a hashtag that’s been used fewer than 50k times.
- Just because you can have 30 hashtags doesn’t mean you should.
We recommend checking out our post about using hashtags on Instagram for better results. You will get an in-depth but simple explanation of what to consider when coming up with a hashtag to use on your posts.
Interact with your audience and find out what they want
So, you’re ready to get concrete answers about what you should post to get more followers.
The first thing you should do is start talking to your audience in a productive way. There are plenty of ways to get to know more about their interests. You can…
- ask them about their preferences in an Instagram Story. Use polls, quizzes, sliders, and questions in Instagram Story creator to get answers out of your audience more easily and in an organized way. Try out a “this or that” type of story where you ask them to choose between two products, content, or people that they’re interested in.
- upload a post asking them for feedback in the comments or to DM you (this could potentially take up a lot of time in comparison to the Stories).
- ask them whether any of them are interested in joining a focus group over Instagram DMs. That way, you can have highly interested users communicate between themselves and you. Ask them questions about specific products, what you could do better with your customer service, and what they wish to see more of. There’s a reason why so many market researchers work with focus groups so often.
All of these types of responses and interactions will eventually improve your relationship with the ones that already follow you, but it will also help you get more followers. Your followers are more likely to share your content now that it’s more relevant to them, and it might be relevant to their friends, too.
Save your marketing budget for something that matters
We hope we managed to convince you that there’s no need to buy Instagram likes. There are so many other things that you could do to get more followers and foster an active following. Just remember these key takeaways:
- buying likes won’t improve your profits,
- Instagram likes will disappear in a short while so nobody will be impressed by the number of likes your post has,
- and nobody will trust your profile because you’re doing something disingenuous.
Find ways to authentically talk to your followers, and they’ll have a reason to advocate for you.
Good luck and happy posting!
