At times it can be tempting to buy Instagram followers, especially if you’re close to a major milestone like 10,000 and getting the swipe-up feature.

But like most things that sound too good to be true, buying Instagram followers is at best a waste of money or at worst a recipe for disaster.

Buying Instagram followers is actually against Instagram’s rules, so if they suspect you’ve done so they could shut down your account. Who wants to have a large following that doesn’t engage with you anyway?

That defeats the purpose of social media, and while there are plenty of Instagram hacks to get more followers, buying them shouldn't be something you resort to.

At the end of the day, the number of followers you have on Instagram doesn’t really matter, although it can be helpful for a number of things. Your follower count can help you:

  • Get the swipe-up feature when you hit 10,000.
  • Have social proof when negotiating brand or influencer deals.
  • Know how many people you could be reaching with your Instagram posts and the messages you’re publishing.
  • Have some sort of authority in your industry, when compared to your competitors.
While all these things can be helpful, they don’t necessarily push your bottom line forward.

That said, growing your Instagram following is a great goal and it can be important for any of the reasons we mentioned above.

But it’s not worth straight-up buying new followers. Organic growth is always better, and if you don’t believe us yet, here are five reasons why.

This is what can happen if you buy Instagram followers 💁🏻‍♀️

  • 1. Lack Of Engagement 💁🏼
  • 2. Losing Your Credibility 👎🏽
  • 3. Warped Instagram Analytics 📉
  • 4. Missing Your Target Audience 🧐
  • 5. You Could Get Banned ❌
  • How Do I Grow My Following? 💁🏻‍♀️
  • Important disclosure: we're proud affiliates of some tools mentioned in this guide. If you click an affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (you pay nothing extra).

    1. Lack Of Engagement 💁🏼

    If you want to be noticed by the new Instagram algorithm, engagement is key. The algorithm will favor your posts and stories and show them to more of your followers if it notices engagement from your followers.

    This can come in the form of comments, direct messages, engagement in polls, and responses to Q & A’s.

    Often when you buy followers - you won’t get real accounts. You’ll likely get ghost followers or bots that won’t interact with your posts.

    This means your account will begin to decrease in the eyes of the algorithm, and your posts will be shown to less of your followers.

    Yes, even the real ones.

    Instead, if you grow your Instagram following organically, you’ll generate real followers who are actually interested in you, your brand and what you have to say.

    They’ll be eager to see your newest post, watch your Stories daily and participate in any polls or engagement stickers you use.

    They’re as excited to follow you as you are to have them as a follower.

    2. Losing Your Credibility 👎🏽

    Credibility is key when you’re trying to be successful on Instagram.

    You need to be credible to everyone, including the algorithm, your existing followers and your potential followers.

    Instagram users are smart.

    They’ll start to notice if you have 10,000 followers but typically only have 20 likes or 4 comments on each post.

    👉🏼 They’ll know that something’s up, and they might even feel like you tricked them, which can certainly hurt you.

    How you are perceived by your audience is critical, because their perception is their reality.

    Buying Instagram followers can be seen as inauthentic, and it can hurt your reputation if your followers begin to suspect you of that. It can also hurt your organic growth.

    But if it's the way you wish to go then we suggest using a legit platform like BuzzVoice.

    When potential followers do happen to come across your account, they’re going to begin to scroll through your posts.

    If they see the disconnect between follower count and engagement rate, they’ll likely scroll away.

    If you’re an influencer, you can also risk losing brand partnerships if they discover you have fake followers.

    Brands pay for views and followers, and they trust influencers because of the relationships they build with their audience.

    If an influencer has an audience full of bots, they are essentially providing false advertising to the brands they want to partner with, which is unethical.

    Your engagement rate is one of the best indicators of how well your Instagram page is actually performing.

    Follower count doesn’t matter if your followers aren’t engaging with your posts. If you’re not sure what your engagement rate is, check out this engagement rate calculator 👈🏽

    Simply put in the username of your public account and the calculator will generate your engagement rate.

    3. Warped Instagram Analytics 📉

    Your Instagram analytics are a goldmine of information that can help you to optimize your strategy and show up better for your audience.

    Image Source: Later
    You can see demographics, locations, times they’re active and what kinds of posts they like to engage with most.

    All of this is critical not only to your success on Instagram, but you can also use this information to inform other business decisions, both on social media and offline.

    When half of your followers are fake, though, it’s difficult to measure your performance.

    As we mentioned, most of those fake followers won’t engage with your posts. Even if they do, they’re not truly interested in your account and the content you’re creating.

    You won’t get any accurate insight into what your followers really want to see from you.

    You lose the ability to see how well you’re connecting with your target audience.

    When you grow your following organically and have real followers who came to your page on their own, you can see how well you’re resonating with them.

    You can see whether they like quote graphics or photos better. Maybe they love seeing behind-the-scenes posts but don’t care so much for your posts about shipping your products.

    Watching your analytics gives you insight into your target audience and helps you to create a business, brand, and product that serve them.

    Having fake followers distorts that and hurts your chances of optimizing and really growing your following on social, as well as your brand overall.

    4. Missing Your Target Audience 🧐

    Let’s go a little farther talking about your target audience 👥

    Chances are the primary goal of your Instagram account is to act as a marketing tool to eventually drive back to your website or otherwise sell a product or service.

    Or maybe you’re an influencer and you sell things directly within Instagram. Either way, the eventual end goal of your Instagram account is to attract and nurture potential customers.

    Fake followers that you purchase will almost certainly not become customers.

    There may be a few exceptions, but by and large, fake followers will be empty accounts, bots, or people who aren’t actually interested in your brand.

    This is one of the drawbacks of social media. People can easily become caught up in the numbers and want to continue pushing to grow their follower count.

    When you focus on the quantity instead of the quality of followers, though, you’re losing the opportunity to find and attract accounts that are actually interested in your brand.

    👉🏼 These are the accounts that will eventually become customers.

    Quality, organic followers will lead to more sales. It might take time, nurturing, and a lot of free value and information, but some of them will eventually convert to paying customers.

    What is the point of marketing on Instagram if your followers aren’t interested in what you’re selling?

    If you’re spending time and resources investing in your Instagram account and creating meaningful content, you’re wasting that effort if your posts aren’t going to real people.

    Instead, you could devote some of that time to organic outreach and growing your Instagram account with real followers and you can have a much more stable strategy.

    5. You Could Get Banned ❌

    Yes, we mentioned this before, but it is really important so we’re circling back to it. Buying followers violates Instagram’s community guidelines.

    If they identify your followers as fake, your account could be banned.

    You’ve put time and energy into building this account and creating content on a regular basis.

    Don’t let your desire to increase your follower count interfere with that and ruin what you’ve built.

    Instagram can ban your account if it sees suspicious activity like an abnormal spike in followers, mass liking or following or ghost followers.

    There are plenty of ways to identify an account as a bot. Often they follow far, far more accounts than they have following them.

    They might not have a profile picture. Their username is an indiscernible mismatch of letters and numbers. They haven’t posted anything, or if they have, their posts don’t seem to make much sense.

    If you’ve bought followers and you suddenly see many accounts like this following your page, you’ve just purchased bots.

    If you notice it, Instagram probably will as well. The best thing to do at this point is to cancel your order.

    Try to get a refund, but if you can’t, just count it as a lesson. Then, go through your Instagram account and delete any of these fake followers.

    In fact, even if you haven’t purchased followers, it can be a good idea to set aside some time to go through and scrub your follower list every so often.

    While it might hurt to watch your follower count drop, especially if you’ve worked hard to grow your page to where it is today, remember that ghost followers won’t engage with you.

    They won’t purchase from you. They aren’t going to get any value out of your incredible content.

    All they’ll do is sit there, inflate your follower count and hurt your engagement rate, and no one wants that.

    So have we convinced you yet?

    Do you agree that organic growth is always better than buying Instagram followers? We hope so.

    But now you might be wondering, “how do I grow my following?”

    How Do I Grow My Following? 💁🏻‍♀️

    Well, we’re glad you asked! 👏🏼

    The best way is by engagement marketing.

    It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s one that will benefit you in the long run by helping you attract real followers who want to not only see your account and learn from you, but potentially want to become customers.

    Begin by making a list of other Instagram accounts whose followers you’d like to have.

    👉🏼 These could be competitors, complementary brands, influencers in your industry, or any other accounts that are similar to yours.

    You could even do this by choosing hashtags that your target audience would use or follow, but make sure you pick a smaller, niched hashtag that doesn’t have 500,000 posts or something crazy like that.

    Then, begin by going to these accounts and going to their follower lists. Select a follower and scroll through their feed.

    Like a few posts and leave a real, genuine comment that’s longer than four words (no, emojis don’t count).

    This will show that account that you’re interested in them.

    They’ll see that you engaged with their posts and might come to your page to check you out. If they like what they see, they might choose to follow you.

    💡
    Remember: Because this is an organic process, it will take time, and there will be an awful lot of accounts you engage with that won’t come and follow you.

    People make the choice on their own to look at your profile and see if it’s one they’d be interested in following.

    Please don’t follow someone just to unfollow them later after they follow you.

    That is a spammy tactic that often frustrates users, and it can hurt your Instagram reputation.

    You also want to be in this for the long run. Engagement marketing can’t be done overnight. You have to only go after a few accounts each day. If you comment or like too many accounts, Instagram could flag your account as a potential bot.

    Instead, consider creating a spreadsheet for your most ideal followers. Then you’ll remember to follow up with them every few days.

    Otherwise, pick a handful of accounts and leave a few comments and likes a day.

    Conclusion 💁🏻‍♀️

    Now you know five reasons you should avoid buying Instagram followers and rely on organic growth instead.

    And, you’ve got some key tips on how to create an organic engagement marketing plan.

    Have you ever purchased Instagram followers before? Or have you relied on organic growth all along? Let us know in the comment section!