Marketing
Read Time 4 Minutes

We bought 10,000 instagram followers. Here's what happened.

Published on
September 17, 2020
Contributors
Written by Scott Lancaster
Entrepreneur & Branding Expert
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Should you buy fake instagram followers?

We did the one thing that everybody in the social media world looks down on.

We bought fake social media followers.

why?

Because science…

Maybe not science. But we did want to find out if a bigger following would impact the growth

and engagement the account could generate.

The (not so) dark web

We found a sketchy looking website which promised us they could provide us with 10,000

followers in less than 24 hours for no more than 50 great British pounds.

Hesitation set in for a second.

We asked ourselves, what would our current followers think?

Then we took some time to balance the pros and cons (roughly 20 seconds) and whilst swiftly

reaching for our card and securing our new army of thriving fans.

It was only a matter of time until we were insta-famous.

Sure enough, they arrived.

We'd made it.

We were once a simple page with a few thousand followers. Merely a grain of sand on the beach

of Instagram. But now, we were a force to be reckoned with.

To cut a long story short, the followers quickly began to decline.

Massively.

Either the new (fake) fans that had begun following us had got cold feet. Or our original

followers were onto us.

Either way, it wasn't good.

So here are 3 key reasons (from the many) why you should NEVER buy followers or subscribers

for any social media account.

Follower counts don't mean shit for brands

We use social media to be social. Not to engage with brands.

To buy followers for your business to make your account look better will not (I REPEAT, WILL

NOT) help you towards any form of business objective.

Unless your business objective is to p*&s money up the wall. In that case, fill your boots.

But I can certainly think of better ways to spend £50.

If you're interested in learning how to launch a digital business (step by step), click here to learn more about our Digital Launch Fast Track course

It screws up your accounts data

Although Instagram and Facebook do limit the amount of organic engagement you can achieve,

it's still nice to know how effective your content is at engaging with your audience.

If your follower count goes up significantly with fake followers, but the followers who engage

with your posts stays the same, you're going to look pretty bloody stupid when only 20 people

are liking your posts out of the 20,000 that follow you.

Just aim for 1000

It's far better to have 1000 people who truly love what you do as opposed to 100,000 who (quite

frankly) don't care less.

In his famous article, 1000 True Fans, Kevin Kelly explains that you don't need to have millions

of followers to make a comfortable living.

Instead, focus on just finding 1000 people who truly love what you do, and focus on serving

them.

Don't fake it

So the next time you're worrying about how many followers you have, just remember no one

cares about 'the number'.

What they care about are the experiences you provide them, the value you can deliver and how

you can help them.

Focus less on numbers and more on how you make people feel.

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