How Safe It Is To Pay For Likes On Instagram

Instagram is one of the three pillars of social media. With time, it has raised its bar and set high standards in the genre. Engagement is one of the key aspects of Instagram and for the same, people tend to adopt various measures.

It is a simple phenomenon that states, the more likes and comments your posts get, the more it will be witnessed by the masses. There’s no denial of this fact and the importance of engagement sometimes forces people to buy likes.

Consider this with an example. Let’s say you own a garment shop and post your collections on your page regularly. If your posts get tons of likes, it’ll easily compete with other top posts with similar hashtags and genre. The popularity might help your business account to reflect on the explore page which you find on Instagram by clicking the search tab with a magnifying glass symbol. The bunch of likes will help you in product marketing, and once your posts are getting ample likes and comments, your business eventually grows.

Having Instagram likes is what one could say ‘best for business.’ But at the same time, buying these might work against your idea and torment band value, reduce engagement, etc.

But have you ever wonder, why big brands buy Instagram Likes? There’s no new answer for this except the ‘engagement’ factor which remains the primary metric to make sure your post is seen.

The 'Explore' tab which I have discussed above is used by more than 50% accounts to reach new audiences. This tab is a compilation of posts on related topics to the posts or accounts you have liked or regularly interacted with.

Why You Should Not Buy Instagram Likes?

There are many reasons why one should not opt for buying Instagram likes and followers. Below are some of them.

Instagram Engagement Looks Bad 

This might be hard to believe, but in general, the more the engagement, the less the followers. If you encounter a profile with almost a million followers but its posts get not more than 1500 like, the profile must have a bulk of fake followers.

The engagement decreases with an increase in followers. Accounts with less than 1,000 followers have an average 8% engagement rate, while those with 1,000-10,000 followers have a 4% engagement rate. Those in the 10,000-100,000 range tend to have a 2.4% engagement rate, while those with over 1 million followers tend to see a 1.7% engagement rate.

If your genuine followers discover your likes are from forged accounts, they might stop following you and restrain themselves from purchasing your services. Therefore, earning engagement is still a better practice with materialistic and meaningful content.

 

Instagram Might Deactivate Your Account

Taking a step further, Instagram might deactivate your account as well if they find anything debatable or dicey. You might get a warning at first, but if that’s not the case, Instagram might disband your account.

Both Facebook and Twitter have purged tens of millions of fake accounts. Following the footsteps of its predecessor, Instagram since 2018 started removing. “Inauthentic” likes, followers, and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity. If not an outright ban, partial deactivation of an account can occur. The partial ban is also called shadow banned, wherein, Instagram partially blocks your profile so only people who follow you can see it.

 

Fake Likes (from bots) Do Not Reflect An Equal Business

Organic growth in the number of followers will always aid your business, fake likes from fake followers never result in real business to create brand loyalty. The best thing they could offer is to make your post visible to the masses.

Instagram has a dedicated team to identify spams. This team focuses on drawing fake data and are not afraid to deactivate accounts if there is spam. Since 2014, Instagram has deactivated millions of fake followers (including various celebrity accounts) and the numbers are increasing.

 

Fake Followers Won’t Help You In Earning Money

Fake followers have no interest in buying your product or promote your services. They won’t let you expand your business apart from keeping you in the delusion that your brand is larger than it is.

Instagram’s metric is repulsive since 2014 and keeping a keen eye on activities that violate its policies. Not only Instagram, but even brands are smarter nowadays as they focus on engagement rates as well. 

With Instagram constantly evacuating fake followers and you buying them recursively to keep up with the masses or establish social proof, you are spoiling your money. Many social media agencies have run tests that depict using bots that did not help in selling products on Instagram. 

 

Instead of buying, try these steps to increase likes and followers

• Create meaningful, purposeful, and engaging content according to your customers' tastes.
• Tag people and places. Also, use hashtags wisely to keep your post in the hunt.
• Interact with other Instagram users to increase your exposure and visibility.
• Promote or share user-generated content on your Instagram story or posts. Doing this will increase your brand authenticity and social proof.
• Hosts questions, contests or generate polls regarding your business and tag other users of the same genre so they don’t miss out on participation.
• Emojis are an add-on. Some posts speak louder with emojis. Give it a try.

Conclusion: 

There is no reason to buy likes on Instagram. Purchasing Instagram likes or followers may be tempting especially when you have just started a new account. In order to increase your engagement, you are decreasing it and at the same time losing your genuine followers in a quest to get bots.  

Grow your following organically and most importantly, do not forget to follow Instagram’s Terms of Service to get incorporated into the same.