Instagram is a great platform for anyone to post pictures of their lives or brag about their accomplishments. For businesses, it’s a fantastic place to interact with the community online. If your business page is successful, it will garner followers and likes. If for whatever reason, you can’t or don’t want to invest the time to cultivate a community of followers, you could buy your fans and even their likes. However, you should know the consequences before you do so.

 

Dip in Engagement

 

There are several individuals who look for services that sell automated followers or likes, all for a price. These bots will follow your page and unfollow once you gain enough followers in order to keep those numbers balanced. Bots are easy to catch though, as they often come without any photos or content on their profiles.

Another way to gain likes without putting too much effort is the internet tactic “follow for follow”, where users follow a person for the sole purpose of getting a follow back. This strategy beats the bot problem, but it presents a new obstacle. Your engagement ratings will see a dramatic dip if all your followers are fake or follow just to be followed back.

 

The Purge

 

Instagram condemns the use of fake bots and fake likes, as it opposes the values and principles of Instagram that makes the platform so great to use. If they find out that you’re utilizing bots, they are not afraid of deactivating your account. Even if your account doesn’t get banned, the social media platform will go through purge phases in order to cleanse the bots that may be a part of your following.

 

Engagement Makes Money

 

Let’s play out the perfect scenario for a person or brand who buys their followers and likes on their profiles. Imagine Chocobonobo, our made-up brand, has a 100,000 following where 90 percent of their following is comprised of bots. When a company is looking to sponsor Chocobonobo, they see a pretty large following and likes under its belt. Before making any sort of agreement, they look into engagement statistics and notice the engagement rates themselves are significantly lower in comparison to the average page with 100,000 followers. With the intention of selling to your followers, sponsors will realize that there is really no one to sell to. Followers and likes are a great front, but it doesn’t hide the skeletons in your closet. Bottom line, engagement is what brings in the money, not followers.

Ultimately, buying Instagram likes can be very tempting, but in the long run, we don’t think it’s a replacement for genuine interest and engagement.