One goal of any company is to be seen as a well-established business in the eyes of potential customers. That is one of the reasons why most companies go the route of buying likes and followers. We are talking about the popular “Pay 10k to gain 3000 Real Likes! who wouldn’t be interested in ‘real followers’ with no stress required? Don’t be fooled, for starters—you’re not buying real engagement. Promises of instant growth usually mean fake follower count which can have a bad impact on your brand name.
Many companies buy likes on social media because they feel they will make more money from it, this is so wrong, in fact, businesses could end up making fewer sales. Making sure your interactions are authentic will do your business good in the long run.
Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t buy followers or likes on any social platform;
1. Fake Likes Equals Lower Engagement Rates
The fact that you have 20k likes and 100k followers on your page, doesn’t mean you have engaged that amount of audience. On most social platforms, an algorithm measures the quality of your posts and uses your engagement rate to determine how many of your real followers should see your content, so the only way you can get engagement is through posting relevant quality content, that way, people will engage with your content.
You may wonder how content engagement is measured, it is measured by the percentage of people who saw your post and then reacted to it by liking, sharing, clicking or commenting.
For Facebook, pages that have thousands of inactive, non-engaged users is seen as a suspicious account and so your post will be shown to fewer people. Instagram also finds out these accounts and deletes them. It now becomes better off having a highly engaged page where you can grow real followers than a large one with little to no engagement around your content.
2. You Reduce Your Trustworthiness and Sales Opportunities
As a brand, if you have to resort to buying followers, potential customers will certainly doubt you are trustworthy. You will leave them wondering whether you are also dishonest in areas of your business practices.
Companies with reputable names build their followers organically. This will definitely take time. But you will lose your credibility if you try and take shortcuts. You need to work on building followers that are interested in your services. Share quality posts. Work to get genuine shout-outs from your customers and some of their followers will come and take a look at what you have to offer.
You could even consider running ads, which will increase your reach and hopefully pull in genuine followers. If you have a budget to “buy” followers, it is better to spend that money on advertising and extend the reach of your posts to people who will actually have an interest in what you share. Building an authentic verified social platform requires your money, time and effort. But it’s totally worth it.
3. You Won’t Earn Money Using Fake Followers
As earlier said, buying followers won’t earn you more money, this is because most of these accounts are automated accounts and even if they are not totally fake accounts, they will be people who don’t require your services. Also, remember that customers don’t patronize based on the number of followers alone.
With these platforms continual eradication of fake accounts, the money you use in buying these accounts will be an utter waste of resources.
4. It Harms your Marketing Effort
If you decide to run marketing campaigns, one of the first things to consider is your target audience. One of the best ways to determine this is to look at the demographics of those who usually like your page, to be able to use those attributes to guide you through your content creation and marketing efforts.
Buying followers to increase your fanbase, will automatically alter your demographics. It is impossible to truly understand who your consumers are, it now makes it difficult to connect with your real engaged users.
5. Platforms Forbid It
Most platforms discourage buying followers, they have policies in place that forbids such. You may feel a lot of people are getting away with it, that doesn’t mean these policies don’t exist and you won’t get caught.
In recent times, there are ways to detect whether a brand has purchased fake likes and followers, so assume your potential customers know this. It will be a bad reputation for your business if you are suspended for engaging in such practices.
Finally, as a business, you want to connect with people who need your services to show them what you have to offer and not automated accounts. Buying likes can be tempting and may seem authentic but building your brand using compelling content is the best way to boost your campaigns and build a trustworthy brand. Avoid buying likes and followers and reap long term benefits.
