Why You Shouldn’t Buy Instagram Followers (& What Experts Say to Do Instead)

Here, I’m covering all the questions you have about buying Instagram followers.

I’ve also explored the pros and cons, so you can decide for yourself if it’s a good move for your brand.

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1,000 followers seems 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 price you pay for Instagram followers can range from a few dollars to thousands, depending on how many you buy and how often you buy them.

I’ve seen a few websites offer different types of followers to purchase (like active profiles vs. bots), and the price differs for each. 

Remember that buying followers violates Instagram’s Community Guidelines, so the price you pay could be more than monetary.

Buying followers could cost you your Instagram account, at worst, and at a minimum, decrease in engagement and reach.

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

Instagram has cracked down on accounts that violate its terms of service, but it’s still relatively easy to buy Instagram followers nowadays. 

You simply conduct a search, choose a vendor whose price range you like, and wait for it to deliver the bots—sorry, I mean followers—to your account.

I won’t link to any here because I don’t think you should buy Instagram followers, but if your final decision is to buy them, then a simple Google search will get you what you need. 

But what happens once you’ve paid for your followers?

Sellers roll out your followers over time to not alert Instagram that something fishy is going on (which is a red flag).

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. Some sellers let you pick a delivery schedule for your followers to arrive.

Once you have your brand new automated followers, I wouldn’t expect much. Engagement is not guaranteed (or even likely), and you’re mostly paying for a number despite having purchased them.

Instagram Bots

Instagram bots are everywhere, and some companies have automated the process of creating bots so well that they can sell them as followers. Bots might even assume the identity of a real person, using stolen images and names.

Some services might offer organic dummy accounts, running on automation to share and like content. Some might even produce content.

But, because they’re not really people, the follow-to-follower ratio will not look organic, and the engagement they produce will have little impact. 

Without real followers who engage, your posts are essentially hidden from everyone except your inauthentic audience.

Plus, your bot followers won’t discuss your brand with their friends or family because they don’t exist in real life (no offense, bots).

Inactive Accounts

Some companies sell followers in the form of genuine accounts managed by real people. Typically, their only goal is to get followed in return, so while they might engage initially, they’ll ultimately become dormant once they get a follow-back or simply go inactive. 

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.

You’re left with inflated follower counts but none of the value that true organic followers will 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.

Here’s how I can put it simply: any engagement you get from buying followers will taper off over time. 

Purchased Instagram followers also provide no long-term value to your profile’s content or your Instagram marketing strategy.

You might get views, likes, and comments early on, but attention does nothing in terms of helping you understand and report on your Instagram performance. 

Engagement is also a key factor in how Instagram’s algorithm displays posts to users. Without likes or comments, real people probably won’t see your posts in their feed, especially not on Explore Pages. 

Below I’ll go over a few more reasons why I wouldn’t recommend buying Instagram followers.

1. You wont know if your content sucks. 

I know this sounds harsh, but it’s true: the worst thing about buying followers is that you won’t know if your content sucks.

Likes from fake followers don’t mean someone likes your content, and comments might not even be related to what you’ve posted. 

If a majority of your followers are bought, there’s a pretty good chance that the content you continue to share won’t meet the needs of or be interesting to your real human followers because fake accounts overshadow their engagement.

You might actually turn your real followers away if they get tired of seeing posts that aren’t relatable. 

With real followers, you can build an effective Instagram strategy that actually helps you meet your goals. You share content, see how followers interact with it and adjust to better meet their needs. The feedback you get from real people on Instagram is what helps you succeed on the app.

2. Fake followers could hurt your credibility.

A high follower count might convince users to follow you organically, but it’s not guaranteed. 

I tend to follow accounts if I like their content, not based on their number of followers. I wouldn’t be convinced to follow an account if I hated its posts but saw it had 1M followers. I’d decide it wasn’t for me and move along. 

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. 

One of the biggest benefits to Instagram is being able to build trust, community, and relationships with your audience.

If people realize you have fake followers, you can damage that trust. You might lose real followers and risk people wondering if they should be skeptical of anything related to your brand/business overall.

3. Purchased Instagram followers can distort your performance metrics.

Tracking analytics is the only way to understand your success on Instagram, but with fake followers, you won’t get accurate measurements of your performance on Instagram.

Any ratios you have will inevitably be skewed if a high percentage of your audience isn’t real. 

And, when you don’t have accurate metrics, it’s harder to run effective social media campaigns that actually draw in users and convert followers. And isn’t that the point?

4. Instagram identifies and purges fake followers.

If you’re buying followers, you’re violating Instagram’s community guidelines, which read: “Help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent…”

If you violate Community Guidelines, Instagram has the right to take action against your account, which can be anything from actually losing your account to getting suspended. 

While it doesn’t really take that long to buy Instagram followers, the time, energy, and money you’d spend on buying them is much better spent focusing on creating an Instagram marketing strategy that helps you interact and build genuine relationships with a real audience.

If your content is good, your loyal followers will engage with you, no bribes necessary.

Alternatives to Buying Instagram Followers

Looking for an alternative to buying Instagram Followers? Look no further than, well, creating an Instagram marketing strategy, and using good Instagram marketing practices. 

By doing both, you can better reach the nearly 2 billion monthly active users and build an authentic audience that gives authentic engagement. 

Here are some alternatives I suggest.

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. Engage with other Instagram users. 

Results from the Instagram Engagement Survey I ran found that, overall, marketers say the most effective strategy for growing your following. Interacting with your audience is also the most popular Instagram marketing strategy.

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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 news feeds.

That means more visibility and growth for your page.

It also pays off: marketers told me that interacting with your audience brings in the second-highest ROI of all strategies. 

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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.

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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.

3. Give users a reason to follow you by publishing quality content.

You really won’t gain followers unless you’re sharing high-quality content.

When it comes to the type of content to post, results from that same survey show that Instagram marketers most often share content that showcases a brand’s products/services, funny content, and relatable/authentic content.

The top three remain the same regarding ROI (which includes engagement). 

Whatever type of content you choose to share, you can do it in the form of images, GIFs, Reels, videos, Boomerangs, quizzes on your story, how-tos, user-generated content (UGC), and so much more.

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Depending on your brand personality, it can help to be funny or witty in your content, especially since consumers say funny content is the most memorable type of content brands can post on social media. 

Whatever kind of content you share, aim to build trust and excitement among your followers by using high-quality photos, writing catchy captions, posting consistently, and keeping up a unique style to differentiate yourself from other accounts. 

Overall, being aware of how your brand is perceived and the trends on Instagram will help you choose content to post and 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.

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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.

My pro tip: Most marketers use organic content over paid content and say that organic content is best for growing your following. Why not leverage their advice?

4. Set a regular posting schedule. 

In my survey, I also asked Instagram marketers for their top recommendation for gaining the first 1K followers on Instagram, and the number one result was setting a regular posting schedule.

This makes sense to me: the more content you share, the more visible you are, and the more visible you are, the more engagement you get, and so on. 

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To drive home the importance of posting consistently, those same marketers said that not posing enough is the #1 reason they’ve lost followers. 

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I understand that reaching the first 1K followers on Instagram can be challenging. It requires patience, as it most often takes 4 to 6 months for a brand to go from zero to 1K followers on Instagram.

It’s not a huge amount of time, but it is enough that I get why the alternative of buying followers is more appealing. But, as I mentioned, those fake followers bring in fake engagement, which doesn’t help you meet your goals.

5. Try Instagram Reels.

In terms of key engagement metrics, marketers told us that Reels shine in terms of getting reach/views and impressions.

This makes sense because Reels are known for increasing the reach of a post beyond the audience that already follows you. 

So, Reels are a great opportunity for your content to attract people who don’t follow you but already engage with similar posts. 

A bonus is that consumers care more that the content they see is authentic and relatable vs. having a high production value, so you don’t need an expensive camera and editing set up to start posting Reels. 

To get started, I recommend recording a simple video, adding a few relevant hashtags, and choosing a trending sound. Even if you don’t see an immediate bump in followers, consistency and monitoring view counts let you know how many people are watching and what people enjoy the most.

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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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 on Stories are engagement magnets — the more people interact with those elements, the more people Instagram will share your story with. Marketers who leverage Stories say they share them multiple times per week (33%) — 14% post multiple times per day.

Leverage their advice to get the most out of engagement when sharing Stories on your profile. 

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. Use Hashtags.

But don’t start adding random hashtags to all your content. You’ll need a hashtag strategy to target the right people.

Do research on which hashtags generate a lot of buzz and which are aligned with your brand. The key for hashtags is to be intentional.

Ideally, I recommend using a mix of broad and niche hashtags to reach your entire potential audience.

For example, a broad hashtag like #recipe can help you gain exposure, and one like #tacorecipe can help you meet a more specific audience. 

The maximum amount of hashtags you can use is 30, and the sweet spot for Instagram hashtags is between 6 and 11.

That might seem like a lot, but if you have a strategy for using them, you’ll likely find more than 30 that will work for you, and you can switch up the ones you use post-by-post. 

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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.

 

8. 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.

We also conduct our own market research to dive deep into Instagram and how it’s used. Here are some high-quality pieces I recommend reading: 

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.

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Can you buy Instagram followers? (& Other FAQs)

Can you buy Instagram followers?

You can buy followers on Instagram. 

But I wouldn’t recommend it. The followers you can buy are typically bots or inactive accounts, and 99% of the time, they don’t engage with the content you share. 

Is it illegal to buy Instagram followers?

It’s not illegal to buy Instagram followers, but it violates the community guidelines you agree to when signing up for an account.

A section of its guidelines says, “Help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent.” 

Instagram monitors for community guidelines violations and says overstepping them can result in deleted content, your account being disabled, or other possible restrictions. Multiple violations can lead to account deletion. 

Will Instagram ban you for buying followers? 

Your Instagram account can be disabled (banned) for buying followers. Instagram wants to be spam-free, and it considers buying followers spammy behavior.

Violating guidelines leads to account restrictions (like losing access to features) or your account being disabled. 

Why would someone want to buy Instagram followers?

Someone trying to succeed on Instagram might turn to buy followers because a high follower count can lend credibility, and brands/accounts/influencers who are seen as trustworthy are more likely to gain followers.

The more followers you have (if they’re real), the more engagement you’ll have, and higher engagement is favored by the algorithm and brings even more visibility. 

How much do you pay for Instagram followers?

How much you pay for Instagram followers depends on where you buy them.

When I search ‘buy Instagram followers’ on Google, prices listed on the top result are $2.25 for 50 ‘real’ followers, or $1.50 for 50 ‘high quality’ followers.

Which I find funny because I would hope that, if I’m buying followers, they would be both real and high-quality. 

Can people tell if you buy Instagram followers?

I think it’s easy to tell if someone has bought Instagram followers because the ratios are off. They’ll have a high follower count, but the engagement (likes and comments) doesn’t match up.

For example, if an account has 10K followers but averages less than 200 likes per picture, it could be a sign that something is up.

There’s a Better Way to Grow on Instagram

Instagram has been one of the fastest-growing social media platforms for several years and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. 

I understand the pressure and temptation you might feel to keep up with growth by buying followers, but if you’ve made it to the conclusion, you can probably tell I don’t recommend buying Instagram followers. 

The repercussions are too great (you can lose your account entirely), and these fake followers don’t help you reach your desired engagement benchmarks.

The alternatives I mentioned above will help you navigate a path toward organic follower growth that’s more valuable 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.