How does buying followers work on instagram
Here's What Happens When You Buy Instagram Followers
The Instagram fake follower industry is built on a pretty tempting proposition: spend a little money, and get a lot of followers. Overnight, you can go from a few hundred followers to 10,000 or more. With that boost, profits and partnerships are sure to follow?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. Even though buying Instagram followers is cheap and easy, the hidden costs can be steep. You can ruin your reputation, alienate your real followers, and even lose your account if Instagram notices your deception. If you’re trying to become Instagram famous or build your business, buying followers won’t help you do it.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the fake follower industry and show you what happens when you buy Instagram followers. Instead of scamming your way to success, we’ll also show you how to get more Instagram followers using tried and true tactics.
Or you can watch the video of our most recent experiment where we tried to buy the most expensive followers we could:
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Where to buy Instagram followers
How much does it cost to buy Instagram followers?
Does buying Instagram followers work?
What happens when you buy expensive Instagram followers?
4 reasons NOT to buy Instagram followers
What to do instead of buying Instagram followers
How to buy Instagram followers
First things first: let’s take a step-by-step look at how to buy Instagram followers. After that, we’ll tell you why you should save your money and your dignity.
1. Choose your provider
There are a lot of companies selling fake Instagram followers, so you have plenty of choices here. Google “buy Instagram followers” and you’ll discover a brave new world of businesses with very questionable ethics.
These businesses operate a little differently than they did a few years ago. Back in 2018, Instagram shut down its public API so that third-party apps could no longer post.
This had huge impacts for all kinds of businesses, including the ones selling Instagram followers and likes. A ton of bot accounts disappeared overnight, and third-party services that liked and followed accounts stopped working. When the fake follower industry recovered, a few things had changed: services stopped requiring your login credentials, and started emphasizing that all followers were “real” and “authentic,” not bots.
We’ve rounded up a selection of some of the more well-known retailers below, but we can’t guarantee that any of them should be trusted with your credit card information or your account details.
You’re on your own here!
2. Pick your plan
As you explore the fake follower frontier, you’ll notice that there’s more than one option available to you. Some companies offer a choice between your regular and “premium” followers, and others offer “managed growth.” All of these plans rely on the use of click farms, which exploit poorly-paid laborers who are often working in sweatshop-like conditions. That’s just one more reason to avoid them.
Basic
The most basic options are also the most obvious fakes: they don’t have profile photos or posts on their feed, but they exist — for now, anyway. They’re the cheapest tier, though they’ll be described with the kind of superlatives you see at the farmer’s market: high-quality, all-natural, free-range… actually, that last one might just be for eggs. Since these fakes are so obvious, they tend to get deleted by Instagram pretty quickly. While they last, they won’t like or comment on any of your posts.
Premium or active followers
Next, you have “premium” or “active” followers.
These accounts tend to look slightly more legitimate, with profile photos and posts on their feed. Companies will promise that they are “100% real people!!” but we would take that with a Mt. Everest-sized grain of salt. And like the basic followers, they’re not going to engage with your content in any way.
Managed growth
Lastly, we have “managed growth.” This is the most expensive fake follower service, which may be offered as a one-time fee or an ongoing monthly subscription. Managed growth services offer to essentially operate your engagement strategy, by reaching out to other Instagram accounts to grow your following.
Managed growth services require you to hand over your account details (extra sketchy!) and provide detailed information to a “growth agent” around the audiences and hashtags you want to target. The agent (or their automated software) will then like, follow and comment on your behalf. In theory, this will result in better followers. In practice, it’s just a more expensive way to clutter up your feed and decrease your overall engagement rate.
3. Choose your number of followers
Still interested? Uh, okay! Next, you can choose the number of followers you want to buy.
This is going to depend on your budget, and the plan you choose. The basic fake followers are pretty cheap, so you might be tempted to buy 5,000 or 10,000 at once. Why not? Well, because a huge overnight spike in followers is likely to raise some red flags with Instagram.
For this reason, most companies offer “instant or gradual” delivery options. A more gradual delivery is less suspicious, in theory. But the ratio of fake-to-real followers matters, so think twice before buying a huge number.
4. Throw in some likes or views
Many of these companies pride themselves on being one-stop shops for all kinds of sham interactions. As a result, you can also purchase likes on your posts or views on your Instagram Stories.
In theory, this adds credibility by balancing out the fake followers with fake engagement. In practice, it’s unlikely to fool anyone.
5. Take the plunge
You’ve browsed the options and decided, against your better judgment, to proceed to checkout. Time to hand over your Instagram handle, email address, and credit card information.
Some companies might prompt you to create an account, or they might skip right to the good stuff: payment info. If you’re squeamish about providing your credit card details, you might be able to pay with PayPal or cryptocurrency.
An important note: unless you’re opting for managed growth, you will not be asked to hand over your Instagram password.
6. Bide your time
Most companies promise that you’ll see new followers within 24-72 hours, once the charge on your credit card clears.
The more expensive growth services take longer, because they’re promising to grow your account gradually through targeted engagement or automation. What does that mean for you? That it might take longer to realize that you’ve wasted your money.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Get the free guide right now!
Where to buy Instagram followers
There are a lot of companies selling Instagram followers. And while you could simply stare into the abyss yourself and see what stares back, we’ve curated a few of the options for you.
As in any illicit industry, retailers are prone to changing their names and URLs to try and cover up bad reviews or customer complaints. You’ll also notice that every company’s website looks pretty similar in terms of layout, language and pricing tiers. It makes it hard to tell the difference between them, honestly. But we tried:
Buzzoid: Buzzoid promises the “fastest delivery,” guaranteeing new followers within hours of payment. They also have an “automatic likes” subscription service: for a monthly fee, you can get likes and video views from “real users” on every new post automatically. Getting hundreds of instant likes on a post sounds like a great way to alert Instagram to your shady activities.
Twicsy: Like many of its competitors, Twicsy promises “Real Users, Real Accounts, Quick Delivery!” Twicsy doesn’t offer managed growth, just a choice between “real” and “premium” followers. Though they prominently feature their Trustpilot ratings, there are many reviews from users complaining about overcharging, zero customer support, poor results, and getting banned from Instagram. One review is a modern-day retelling of the fable of King Midas, if instead of a golden touch you were burdened with too many fake follower:
Famoid. We used Famoid for our last fake follower experiment (watch our video below for a more detailed review). But in summary, Famoid promises “all real & active” followers, though in our experience they were pretty obvious fakes.
Kicksta: This tool is a little different.
They promise 100% all-natural organic growth through the magic of artificial intelligence. You provide Kicksta with a list of accounts who have followers you would want (such as competitors or influencers), and they will like posts by those followers. The idea is that after receiving a notification that you liked their post, those users are more likely to follow you.
While this sounds better than summoning an undead army of bots, it’s still not ideal. For one thing, you still have to do quite a bit of work to guide Kicksta’s strategy, which is time you could use to… get more followers! For another, you’re trusting your account and its activities to a third party, which is risky: if their tactics annoy the users you’re hoping to impress, it can work against you.
Learn more about why automation is one of the black hat social media techniques we think you should avoid.
GetInsta: One thing I enjoy about GetInsta is that, like The Gap, they’re always running a sale.
Their other tactic is offering a choice between “instant followers”, who appear all at once, and “daily followers.
” The latter involve signing up for a subscription plan, with the promise of a certain number of followers daily. It’s nice to see creativity in the fake follower business.
GetInsta also has an Instagram caption generator, which promises to “make your Instagram go viral.” I was pleasantly surprised by the moody caption it generated for me, though I doubt it’s likely to propel me to social media fame:
Mr. Insta: Of all the fake follower sites we reviewed, this one had the largest menu of offerings. Itw as the Cheesecake Factory of shady services. It’s also much more expensive than its competitors. In exchange for the big bucks, Mr. Insta promises to “provide the highest and most realistic-looking followers.” This was also the only service that gives customers the option to pay using Dollar General or CVS gift cards.
Social Boost: This service offers only growth management, with a heftier price tag than the competitors and the Etsy-worthy adjectives to match (“handmade growth!”).
Unlike most of the other sites, Social Boost doesn’t promise any specific number of followers. Instead, they promise to target and engage with Instagram users to grow your account over time.
We were curious if buying the most expensive followers available would yield better results, so we tried it. You can read about our underwhelming experience below!
QuickFix is an interactive installation by Belgian artist Dries Depoorter, which sells Instagram followers and likes for a few Euros. Pros: your purchase is logged by the installation, which allows you to become part of the art! Cons: There are only two QuickFix machines in existence, so you can only access this service if you happen to be in the right European gallery.
How much does it cost to buy Instagram followers?
This varies, depending on the service. Most offer a volume discount, so that getting 10,000 followers looks like a better deal than buying a few hundred.
Overall, buying Instagram followers is cheap when you purchase instant follows. Most of the services we reviewed charge around $15 USD for 1,000 followers. Some were more expensive, in the $25-40 USD range.
Growth management services, which use automation or manual engagement to generate followers, will cost more. These services can range from $50-250 USD per month.
Not included in those costs is the long-term damage to your professional reputation and account. More on that below!
Does buying Instagram followers work?
Short answer: no, absolutely not.
Longer answer: it’s true that these services will boost your account with Instagram followers of questionable quality. But like the increase to your height when you convert from Imperial to Metric, it’s an illusion. Even the number of real followers that you have is a vanity metric, one that doesn’t represent a meaningful return on your investment. But if those genuine followers actually enjoy your content, then they’re likely to turn into customers. As our experiments reveal, even the most “high quality” fake followers tend to be random accounts that have nothing to do with your business or niche. They’ll never engage with your posts, become real customers, or spread positive word of mouth about your company.
So, if your only goal is to have a higher number of followers, then these services will help you accomplish that. At least temporarily, until Instagram notices the spammy activity on your account and locks it down.
But if you want to build a successful business, connect with customers, and generate a return on investment from your social media strategy, then there are better ways to spend your time and money.
You don’t need to take our word for it! We bought followers from Social Boost to find out what would happen (watch our video in the intro to see results).
What happens when you buy expensive Instagram followers?
We’ve run a few tests to find out what happens when you buy Instagram followers. In 2021, we purchased cheap instant followers from Famoid. This year, we paid more for a premium growth management service in the name of science. There were a few differences:
The premium service was more work for us
Because the goal of these services is to get “organic” engagement through liking and following other accounts on your behalf, you need to do your homework for them. Our growth agent required us to provide details on influencers, demographics, and hashtags that would help them identify who we wanted to target.
You might wonder: if you’re coming up with this information, couldn’t you use it to like and follow relevant accounts yourself? Why yes, you can! And you should — because you’ll do a better job of it than a click farm worker.
The growth agent also advised us to post Instagram Stories daily, and two or three posts in the feed each week. This is actually good advice! But it’s a reminder that you can’t simply sit back and watch the followers roll in. You still need to put in the work.
We got security alerts from Instagram
These premium fake follower services require your account credentials, so they can log in on your behalf. Because click farms are based all over the world, agents use a VPN to make it appear as though they’re logging in from your regular location.
But, like every other aspect of this experience, they over-promised and under-delivered. We got security alerts from Instagram when they noticed logins and account activity in strange locations, which is a reminder that you’re never going to fool Instagram. They’re bound to notice if something sketchy is going on with your account.
We got security alerts from our bank, too
While trying to pay for our growth service, our credit card was declined and our bank called us repeatedly because they were concerned about fraud. We convinced them to unlock our card, and the first payment went through.
Then… we waited. And despite the fact that a payment showed up on our credit card, our growth service told us that it hadn’t come through. So we paid again, against the advice of our bank, who warned us that we were definitely being scammed. (Don’t try this at home!!)
Because the service wouldn’t start working on our behalf until the payments cleared, we were out $500 USD before they even got started. Finally, the money went through.
The results were not great
Nineteen days after trying to make our first payment, we finally start seeing the promised followers! Drumroll please…
After 19 days, we had 37 new followers. That’s about two followers per day, the kind of growth you could see yourself with just a little bit of effort and no alarming international transactions.
By the time we pulled the plug on this experiment, we’d gotten a few more followers. By week four, we had 335 followers. That’s about $1.50 USD per follower. For that price, you would expect them to be pretty great! But they were inactive, extremely fake-looking, and totally unrelated to our account.
We received some weird DMs
As a self-help book might say, the energy you put out into the world tends to come back to you.
And when you engage in shady practices, you attract shady people. Our DMs during this experiment were pretty colorful, including two offers of psychic readings and one invitation to join the Illuminati.
It’s just another reminder that buying fake followers comes with unintended consequences. Bizarre DMs are harmless fun, unless they’re clogging up your inbox and making it hard to find and connect with real followers.
4 reasons NOT to buy Instagram followers
Instagram can tell.
As with the great bot crackdown of 2018, Instagram is always working to keep the platform secure and authentic. That means they regularly purge fake accounts, and crack down on users who purchase them. If they notice suspicious account activity, they could suspend your account or even delete it permanently.
Brands will avoid working with you.
Fake followers are no secret, and legitimate brands want to ensure they’re not partnering with companies or influencers who use them.
Free tools like HypeAuditor make it easy to find out who is artificially inflating their follower count.
If you’re caught buying fake followers, you’ll ruin your credibility and damage your reputation. Those negative impacts will last a lot longer than your fake followers’ accounts.
Real users won’t follow you.
Even regular Instagram users will notice if your account is mostly followed by fake-looking accounts. Have you ever looked at an Instagram post where the only comments are from obvious spam accounts? It ruins the vibe.
Influencers and companies often buy followers to boost their credibility, thinking that users are more likely to follow an account with 20,000 followers than 200. But you’re not fooling anyone, and the users you are hoping to attract will run the other way.
You’ll mess up your analytics.
If you have a lot of purchased followers, your follower count might be high — but your engagement is going to be really low, because those fake followers don’t interact with your content.
This is off-putting to brands and partners, who care more about high engagement rates than high follower counts. A good engagement rate is typically between 1% and 5% per post. The more fake followers you have, the more those engagement rates are diluted.
This will also make it harder for you to figure out what’s working and improve your social media strategy. If all your followers are genuine, it’s easy to see what content they’re responding to by seeing what posts and Stories get more engagement.
What to do instead of buying Instagram followers
If you want to increase your Instagram following, there are a lot of legitimate ways to do so! It won’t happen overnight, but the followers you earn count for a lot more than the ones you buy.
Make great content
There’s no shortcut here, unfortunately! Audiences are discerning, as are brands. That means you need to post engaging videos and high-quality photos, accompanied by well-written captions.
You also want to ensure your content is discoverable.
Tagging relevant accounts and using hashtags will boost your visibility. Getting on the Explore page is the golden ticket, which is more likely to happen if you post regularly and have an active following. Instagram prioritizes posts that are performing well, so check out our guide for getting more likes on your Instagram content.
Promote your Instagram account
You should make it easy for people to find you on Instagram! If possible, ensure your username is consistent across all social media platforms. That way, someone who follows you on TikTok will know how to find you on Instagram too.
You can also cross-post your best Instagram content to your other social media platforms, to encourage your audiences to follow you to Instagram.
Think beyond social media, too. Your Instagram account should be included on your website, in your email signature, on your business cards, and on any other promotional materials for your business.
Run a contest
If you’re seeking a quick fix, Instagram contests can boost your following fast.
Getting users to follow your account, tag friends, and share your content to their own accounts in order to participate will attract new followers and amplify your reach.
Focus on relationships
Followers don’t just want you to talk at them— they want you to talk to them. Responding to comments, hosting Q&As on your Stories, and sharing user-generated content on your feed are just a few ways to show your followers that you’re listening, too.
Want more suggestions for starting conversations and building relationships? We’ve got a content idea cheat sheet with 29 creative ideas.
Buy ads, not followers
If you want to amplify your reach, advertising on Instagram is a legitimate (and effective) way to do it. Paid advertising on Instagram reaches up to 1.48 billion people, which means you’ll definitely pick up some new followers.
Stay on trend
To stay on top of Instagram, you have to change with the times. Users’ tastes and preferences are constantly evolving, which means your content needs to evolve too.
Here’s what users want to see in 2022.
Looking for more ways to boost your following without bots? We have 35 tips for getting more Instagram followers right here.
Manage Instagram alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish posts, engage your audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.
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Why You Shouldn't Buy Instagram Followers (& What Experts Say to Do Instead)
You might know your Instagram content is good, but imagine how much better it will seem if it looks like 10,000 people agree.
Whether you’re trying to become a social media celebrity or simply looking to spread brand awareness on Instagram, it can be tempting to take shortcuts wherever you can in order to expand your audience, including 'buying' Instagram followers.
Here, we’re covering all the questions you have about buying Instagram followers. We’ve also explored the pros and cons, so you can decide for yourself if it’s a good move for your brand.
Can you buy Instagram followers?
How to buy Instagram followers?
Alternatives to Buying Instagram Followers
Can you buy Instagram followers?
Yes, you can buy Instagram followers. There are plenty of cheap services available that allow you to buy 1,000 followers for as little as $10. But you’re only paying for a number. Many of those followers are either bots or inactive accounts, which means they’ll never engage with your posts.
1,000 followers seem like a good deal for the price of a small Starbucks latte. But of course, if it really was that cheap and easy, everyone would be doing it. So what’s the catch? Is buying Instagram followers legal and safe for your business? Is it a worthwhile investment? And how much do these fake followers cost anyway?
How much do Instagram followers cost?
The cost for Instagram followers can range from a few dollars to thousands of dollars depending on how many you plan to purchase.
However, keep in mind that buying followers is against Instagram's terms of service, so the price you pay could be more than monetary. Buying followers could cost you your Instagram account, at worst, and a decrease in engagement and reach, at best.
How to Buy Instagram Followers
The vast majority of purchasable followers are either bots or inactive accounts. Here's how it works:
The Fake Follower Vendors
Buying fake followers on Instagram is much harder now than it was a few years ago. Why? Instagram has been cracking down on accounts that violate their terms of service. What used to be fairly above-board is now an enigma. In order to buy Instagram followers these days, you’ll need to know someone who can put you in contact with a vendor who will actually deliver the bots — I mean followers — they say they will (you’ll also want to choose someone that you trust with your credit card information).
But what happens once you’ve paid for your followers? Assuming the vendor is legitimate (as legitimate as can be for this type of service) you’ll wait anywhere from a few minutes to a few days for your followers to trickle in.
The sellers roll out your followers over time so as not to alert Instagram that something fishy is going on. Once you have your brand new automated followers, don’t expect much. These followers won’t do anything for your engagement metrics.
When you buy Instagram followers, you’re paying for a number alone. Engagement is not guaranteed.
When you buy Instagram followers, you’re paying for a number alone. Engagement is not guaranteed, or even likely.
When you buy Instagram followers, you’re paying for a number alone. Engagement is not guaranteed, or even likely.
Instagram Bots
Instagram bots are everywhere — you’ve likely come across several of them today alone. There are companies out there that have automated the process of creating bots so well that they can then sell them as followers. In some cases, the bots may even assume the identity of a real person, using stolen images and names.
Depending on the service, these dummy accounts may even seem organic, running on automation to share and like content.
Some can even be programmed to produce content. However, because they're not real people, they will not have an organic-looking following-to-follower ratio. As a result, the engagement they do produce will have little impact.
Without real followers to engage with your content, your posts are essentially hidden from everyone except your inauthentic audience. Plus, your bot followers won’t discuss your brand in real life with friends or family, because, well … they don’t exist in real life (no offense, bots).
Inactive Accounts
However, not all fake followers are bots. Some companies sell followers with genuine accounts.
In this situation, the accounts are created either because they're managed by users whose only goal is to get followed in return. And while these followers might show early engagement, they'll ultimately become a drain on your Instagram account's performance metrics when their accounts go dormant.
After all, if their account was created for the sole purpose of fulfilling sponsorship requests, the real person behind the account has little reason to dwell on the newsfeed, interact with content, or purchase the goods and services being advertised.
Without that interaction, your follower numbers are inflated with none of the value that organic followers would bring.
Demographic Accounts
In addition to buying followers directly, you can also pay services to strategically follow other accounts on your behalf based on your preferences (location, hashtag usage, account type, and gender). Ideally, those followed accounts will then follow you back.
With this option, your followers are more likely to be real people, but engagement is still unlikely. Since you can't even guarantee these accounts will follow you back, it’s a risky investment. Most accounts won’t follow you back, and even if they do, they probably aren’t going to be long-term, loyal, or active followers.
Should you buy Instagram followers?
It’s not a good idea to buy Instagram followers. The purchased followers are likely bots or inactive accounts, so they won’t engage with your posts. This means your posts won’t show up on Explore Pages, or your real audience’s newsfeeds.
It will also make it hard to measure metrics.
Simply put — you'll get early engagement that tapers off over time.
Purchased Instagram followers also provide no long-term value to your profile's content. The followers you buy might give you views, likes, and comments early into acquiring them as a follower, but the attention they throw you now won't be there later — when you start reporting on how your Instagram account is performing.
And how helpful are 10,000 followers that don't engage with you? Engagement is key to how Instagram’s algorithm displays posts to users. Without likes or comments, your post probably won’t show up on your audience’s newsfeeds, and it also won’t show up on any Explore Pages.
Fake followers could hurt your credibility.
Having a lot of followers could convince users to follow you organically, but it's not a guarantee.
Remember the risks: these followers will probably never like or comment on a post, and if you’re caught with a ton of fake followers, that could ruin your credibility with your real audience.
Users might notice you don’t have a ton of engagement on your posts, which could deter them from following you. If you have 10,000 followers but only four likes per post, it won't take people long to realize something is up.
Think of it this way: would you keep following an account if you saw that most of its “loyal audience” was made up of inactive accounts or bots? I’m guessing not. It could seem deceitful, and lead you to believe the brand couldn’t get authentic followers through good content alone.
Purchased Instagram followers can distort your performance metrics.
It’s practically impossible to measure how well your target audience is connecting with your brand if a high percentage of that audience isn’t real. How will you measure posts that do well with your real audience if those bots and inactive accounts skew the ratio?
If you don’t know how well your posts are doing or what your real audience thinks, you’ll never convert your Instagram followers into real customers.
And isn’t that the point?
Ultimately, if you pay for Instagram followers, you aren’t paying for quality, real-life followers. You’re paying for a blank number. And since Instagram’s algorithm is largely tied to engagement, not followers, buying followers isn’t a long-term solution. In fact, it isn’t a solution at all.
Take the time, energy, and money that you would’ve dedicated to buying followers, and focus instead on building genuine relationships with a real audience. If your content is engaging and authentic, your loyal followers will spread the word and engage with your brand without needing any bribes.
Instagram identifies and purges fake followers.
Recently, Instagram has updated its terms of use to identify and remove inauthentic accounts from its platform. Instagram is also removing likes, follows, or comments from third-party apps that are designed to artificially grow accounts' audiences. By buying followers, you violate Instagram's community guidelines and it may trigger a reaction from Instagram's moderators.
Instagram is looking to maintain genuine interactions on its site, protecting real accounts and experiences. Fake activity infringes upon this mission and might result in consequences, so it's better to grow your audience organically.
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Alternatives to Buying Instagram Followers
Instagram's new algorithm rewards engagement more than follower count, displaying content similar to posts users engaged with in the past. To drive engagement, there are many different actions you can try on the platform to get in front of your ideal audience.
By using good Instagram marketing practices — whether you are building your personal brand or a company account — you can better reach the nearly 800 million monthly Instagram users and build an authentic audience.
1. Make your account public.
First, make your account public so that users can see your profile and content.
This way, you can grow your audience organically when your content pops up on users' explore pages, attracting and delighting your target viewership.
You can easily make your account public by unchecking the Private Account Box in your Privacy and Security settings.
2. Give users a reason to follow you by publishing quality content.
Next, publish a variety of posts to your feed: you can post images, GIFs, Reels, videos, Boomerangs, quizzes on your story, how-tos, user-generated content, and so much more. Build trust and excitement among your followers by using high-quality photos, writing catchy captions, posting consistently, and keeping up a unique style overall to differentiate yourself from other accounts. Do your research on which hashtags generate a lot of buzz and which are aligned with your brand — hashtags can be a great way to reach new audiences if done correctly.
Depending on your brand personality, it can help to be funny or witty in your content.
Having an awareness of how your brand is perceived and the trends going around Instagram will serve you when choosing content to post and how to interact with your Instagram community.
Quality Content in Action
HeytonyTV became an overnight viral sensation during the pandemic when he released skits where he plays the role of a school administrator. In a short period of time, he amassed hundreds of thousands of followers who couldn't get enough of his creativity and wholesome, nostalgic humor.
Image Source
You don't have to be a comedian to gain followers, though. Being relatable and providing value to your audience is the number one goal. When looking at the top Instagram posts of all time, the content is engaging and relatable, rallying followers to like, comment, and share these posts.
3. Try Instagram Reels.
Instagram Reels has been known to increase the reach of a post beyond the audience that is following the account. This presents an opportunity for your content to attract people who are already engaging with posts similar to yours.
Start by recording a simple video using Instagram Reels. Include a few hashtags to the caption and choose a popular sound that people enjoy listening to. Even if you don't see an immediate bump in followers, stay consistent and keep an eye on how many views your Reel gets. This will indicate how many people are watching your content.
Reels in Action
Hickory Lane Home uses Reels to show her followers more relatable content that draws the viewer in. As a result, the comments are flooded with relatable responses and amusement that you just can't get from purchased followers.
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4. Use Hashtags.
Hashtags are like goldmines for finding new audiences. Users follow hashtags for updates about specific topics that interest them. If you use them intentionally in your captions, you have a great chance of showing up on the newsfeeds of people who’ve never seen your content before.
But don’t start adding random hashtags to all your content.
You’ll need a hashtag strategy to ensure you’re targeting the right people. Moreover, the sweet spot for Instagram hashtags is 30. That might seem like a lot, but if you have a strategy for how you’ll use them, you’ll likely find more than 30 that would work for you. The key for hashtags is to be intentional with them. The reward will be well worth the effort.
Hashtags in Action
Take a look at the hashtag #dogsofinstagram for example. With over a quarter of a million posts, this hashtag has the potential to reach a wide audience.However, it's a great idea to pair that hashtag with a smaller, niche one like #ridgebackpuppy to reach people who love your particular breed of dog.
5. Engage with other Instagram users.
A good rule of thumb on Instagram is to engage with other users. Whether you like, comment, save or share their posts, every interaction counts for you and them. Instagram’s algorithm favors engagement which means the more you interact (and the more people interact with you) the more likely it will be that your content appears on more and more news feeds.
That means more visibility and growth for your page.
Engagement in Action
GoSimplified does a great job of responding to comments on its posts. This example shows that the comments don't have to be detailed or long, but a simple acknowledgment goes a long way for engagement.
Image Source
Pro Tip: Before you go overboard, remember that Instagram does have a limit to this “rule.” There have been cases where the social media platform blocked users from engaging with content if they liked and commented on more than a few hundred posts in an hour.
6. Use Instagram stories.
The audience for Instagram stories is simply waiting and watching for the next viral video or meme to slide across their screens. What makes stories arguably even better for growth than the traditional Instagram feed is the ability for users to interact with the content in a story.
Polls, quizzes, and questions are engagement magnets — the more people interact with those elements, the more people Instagram will share your story with.
Stories in Action
RMW.Home uses a series of stories to gauge her audience's taste in home decor. Not only does this help her understand her audience better, but the polls are also helping expand the reach of her story and her profile to potential followers.
7. Conduct market research.
Each of the alternatives we mentioned above is native to the Instagram app. However, a solid Instagram strategy begins with comprehensive market research, and there's no shortcut to hearing directly from your audience about what content they want to see.
Market Research in Action
Stephanie Morgan, Founder and CEO at Social Lock stands by market research as an alternative to buying followers and says, "The alternative to buying followers is doing market research on what your ideal customer will resonate with, then posting that content in order to naturally accumulate [a] large following."
Check out her methods for conducting market research on Instagram in the image below.
Image Source
There’s a Better Way to Grow on Instagram
Instagram has been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms for several years and it’s showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. The pressure to keep up and with the growth can make buying followers tempting, but don’t succumb to that pressure. Between repercussions from the platform itself, lower engagement metrics, and the risk of spamming well-meaning users with bot comments, buying Instagram followers is simply not worth the trouble. The alternatives in this article can help you navigate a path toward organic follower growth that will be worth more than 10,000 fake followers could ever be.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
How Instagram promotes
Since the number of followers and likes under posted images is one of the main indicators of the success of a blog on Instagram, this social photo network actively uses their promotion.
This method basically does not bring any real benefit, but it does an excellent job of creating the appearance of popularity, which allows you to receive dividends in certain situations.
Ways to cheat
When asked how to get followers on Instagram, you can offer several options:
- Through my own efforts, actively subscribing to other blogs. If the owner of the account posts interesting photos, then those whom he subscribed to can do the same in response. However, this process is quite lengthy and requires time and effort.
- Hire freelancers with Instagram accounts. In this case, for a fee, users subscribe to the customer's account. The advantage of this method is the presence of live, actually existing users in the list of subscribers. However, there are much more disadvantages: you need to spend money; it is necessary to control the conscientiousness of the performers; as a rule, immediately after the money is paid, these users unsubscribe, as a result, the effect is short-term.
- Use the services of automated services.
In addition to subscribers, you can get likes on Instagram in similar ways if you want to add weight to a particular posted photo.
How automatic cheat services work
There are a lot of such services, and the principles of operation may differ. The easiest way to cheat is bot accounts. They start up on Instagram in large numbers, put likes and subscribe to the necessary accounts. They are quite easy to figure out, so they are periodically destroyed by the owners of Instagram during the next purge. Their value is also low, but the cost is very low.
Another option is to buy subscriptions from real people. By and large, the only difference from freelancers doing the same work is that there is no need to control their actions - the system itself does all this. Likes on Instagram can be bought in exactly the same way.
More sophisticated and efficient services act on behalf of the customer's account, imitating his activities on Instagram.
In this case, there will be no guaranteed likes and subscriptions, however, the process itself is more natural for this application, and subscribed users will remain for a long time. The principle of operation of such a system is similar to independent cheating - the robot signs the customer's account for various users. The choice is made by geolocation, hashtags, and is also possible by competitors' subscribers.
There are also hybrid cheat methods. For example, it is possible to attract real people not for money, but for points, which they, in turn, can spend on promoting their account.
This material is a private record of a member of the Club.CNews community.
The editors of CNews are not responsible for its content.
Buying followers on Instagram: when and why is it needed?0041
Instagram is a social network focused on visual content.
Instagram is a social network focused on visual content. Today it is not only a place where you can see what your friends had for dinner yesterday, it is a huge platform that offers great opportunities for earning. Large corporations, small businesses and popular bloggers: they all make money on this social network, and it's never too late to join them. But for this you need a promoted account. Let's consider in what ways it is possible to cheat subscribers on Instagram, and what is better for a beginner to use.
Outdated methods
Some novice users still believe that methods from the past work. But Instagram doesn't like accounts that abuse these ways (which means those who use it at all). There are several methods that were effective in the past but are outdated today.
Mass following is the connection of a bot to an account that subscribes to the accounts of other users. It is desirable that this be the target audience. Many signed up. After that, a mass unsubscribe occurs, and the account remains with a large number of followers.
Massliking is when an account puts likes instead of following. Many go, watch and subscribe. Masslooking is viewing stories.
The restrictions on these methods are as follows. Instagram itself blocks accounts that show “unhealthy” activity. There are limits that need to be carefully observed, but they are not publicly published anywhere. Another limitation: users themselves are used to the fact that bots constantly watch their stories, subscribe and like them. They do not pay attention to it, and someone even complains about spam.
These methods are grey: rather risky and frowned upon by Instagram. It is not recommended to use them.
Subscribers are the main wealth of the account. Users come in, and if they see that the profile is popular, they subscribe more willingly. There are other ways to wind up subscribers, which are unlikely to be followed by a ban. These include services with mutual subscription without registration. The point is that you subscribe to an account, and he subscribes to you in response.
There are only two problems: in a few days almost everyone will unsubscribe, and you yourself also need to constantly subscribe to incomprehensible accounts and make sure that there are not too many of them.
Paid promotion services
You can find a site that allows you to buy Instagram followers. It is considered that this is not a good way to get paid followers, but in reality there are several reasons why you should use it:
- at first, getting live readers is very difficult, so it’s good if the counter already has a respectable figure;
- when new people come to your profile, they see that you have a lot of subscribers, after which they themselves are more willing to add;
- Instagram has a feature that is only available after reaching a certain number of followers;
- to get a lot of views of a publication, you need to get into the recommendations, for which you need to get a lot of likes and comments in a short time: sometimes it’s impossible to do this without cheating, so it’s easier to buy.
You don’t have to think that it’s worth buying instagram followers cheaply, and you can relax and stop thinking about promotion. But it's a very good idea to consider the idea of attracting such subscribers without tasks "for the masses" as a basis for promotion.
Subscribers are different. The cheapest are bots. The point of buying them is to get the coveted number in the profile. But the effect of such a one-time, and in the future they have a bad effect on the statistics of the profile. You can order good bots with human emulation: they like and comment. Such subscribers are already a good option. Instagram will not be able to distinguish them from real people.
The next level is cheating by live users who are ready to subscribe for money. There are people who make money online. You can buy such subscriptions: the quality of accounts is approximately the same as in the previous version. But the target audience is those very interested subscribers.
This is the most desirable option, but the way to get them quickly often lies through cheating with the involvement of the two previous types of accounts.
Reasonable approach and no haste: acting in this way, it will be possible to promote any account. The idea of buying subscribers within reasonable limits will greatly contribute to this.
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