Todd Sumamno
From the time Instagram was first launched to the present, Instagram has brought about many changes and launched many updates. They changed their logo as well. Among the many things that Instagram changed besides updating its policies and features is changing its algorithm. Initially, the algorithm displayed all photos updated on Instagram in chronological order to the users. However, with the changes in Instagram’s algorithm, as an Instagram user, you can now only see photos or posts of those accounts with whom you interact the most. That gives a cause for many influencers, businesses, and brands a reason to complain. Their grievances are that their posts don’t appear on their audience’s feed as often as they should, even if users follow them. Since this also causes a fall in their engagement metrics like followers and reach, they feel unable to grow their business.
Moreover, Instagram is a source of revenue for brands and influencers. Each time Instagram’s algorithm changes, these are the people who get affected the most. Besides that, Instagram is now the go-to social media platform for all those striving to be influencers, content creators, and those who have their businesses. The path to becoming an influencer or brand seems quite simple- grow a substantial number of followers to gain brand popularity and start earning. However, the problem is growing an audience is pretty tough on Instagram because of the competition. Due to this reason, many people resort to buying Instagram likes and followers. In this article, you will know if buying Instagram likes is worth it.
Ways people get Instagram likes.
Most people use the following two ways to gain fake Instagram likes, and followers fast. However, these ways are completely unrecommended. Mostly, these influencers or brand owners.
▪︎Create several fake accounts and like their brand’s content through those accounts. These accounts do not provide any real engagement to your brand in any way. You would also find many services on the web which sell engagement metrics for different social media platforms, including Instagram likes.
▪︎Influencers or business owners may subscribe to a service on the Internet that gives them access to bots on Instagram which like or follow unrelated accounts. These bots later unfollow those accounts so that your account has the “ideal” follower to following ratio.
As mentioned earlier, getting more likes or followers does not help you gain any engagement from the audience and is quite tedious as well. If you opt for the first way, you can’t improve your interaction with your audience either. Yet, influencers or brand owners on Instagram opt for services that help them gain likes, even though they are from fake accounts. You will come to know why the first method is so bad as you keep reading.
The second method of getting likes on your Instagram account works on the principle of reciprocity or the “follow for following” rule. The unrelated accounts that the bots follow generally have no idea that those accounts will unfollow them soon. The bots unfollow these accounts a few days later of following so that the account owners do not suspect any illicit activity. That, in itself, is quite unethical. If this happens a lot, people may start suspecting your account and lose trust in your brand.
Why is it a bad idea to buy Instagram likes?
There are numerous reasons why you should not buy any engagement metrics: likes, comments, or followers for any of your social media accounts. Here are three main reasons why buying Instagram likes is a terrible idea.
1. You will not get any real engagement for your brand: Firstly, if you are an influencer or a brand owner on Instagram, you must know that engagement rates start reducing with more followers that you have. That is because the algorithm realizes that many people are already interacting with your account. But suppose you come across an account with a million followers yet find only a few thousand likes on each picture they post. That is an obvious sign that they have bought Instagram followers, and the best chance is that those followers are all fake accounts. On the other hand, if you find an account with only a thousand followers yet getting close to a million likes per post, you can understand that they have bought Instagram likes. Thus, you can understand that these fake followers only boost the number of likes or followers but do not give your brand any engagement value at all.
2. Instagram may detect unethical behavior and may suspend your account: Since Instagram has updated its policies. It has become stringent regarding any illicit activities. For example, if you use bots to boost your brand’s engagement metrics but not to a great extent, Instagram may let you off with a warning. But that happens only the first time. Soon, Instagram will start removing the likes and comments coming from fake accounts and may suspend your account. The bots that use Instagram’s algorithm, Instagress, and Archie, have a very no-nonsense attitude with all accounts on this social media platform. Instagram encourages all its users to post and engage with accounts they like in real-time. It is against anything not happening in real-time, that is, if anything is being automated likes or followers. Jessica Zollman, Instagram’s former evangelist, said that Instagram had a team to identify spam and suspend any account against the guidelines.
3. Fake followers won’t boost your sales: It is quite natural that the bots who boost the number of likes on each of your posts would not buy any products from your brand. That is because they are not even real people. Real, genuine followers who like your brand engage with it, and if they like the products and services you offer, they will invest in it. Thus, they would ultimately boost the sales of your brand. That would not happen if your buy Instagram views, likes or followers. Likes from bots or fake followers do nothing for your brand besides making it seem bigger than what it is. Even though you may fool people initially by showing you have a big brand, this trick is not foolproof. People who observe closely before following your account will soon see that your account seems spammy. You will thus, lose the trust of the customers you already have. It is always better to have a small but active audience who engages with your brand than a large, spammy one with no real value.
How can you boost your account naturally without buying Instagram likes?
You know quite well now that you shouldn’t buy Instagram likes. But, you might be questioning whether Instagram likes even matter. The answer is yes, they do. That is because the Instagram algorithm takes likes into account as the number of likes shows the public that your audience is genuinely interesting in your brand and the content you are producing. So, now that you don’t have the option of buying Instagram likes, here’s how you can boost your account naturally.
1. Use a trustworthy growth service for your account: You should consider investing in a trustworthy Instagram growth service for your account. A service like this would help you focus on getting likes and followers organically, thus boosting your engagement and revenue.
2. Be regular and active on Instagram: You probably have heard of this a lot, but staying active on Instagram will do wonders for your account. If you think about it, how often you post impacts the chances of your audience liking and engaging with your content. Thus, if you want to boost the engagement metrics of your account, you must stay active on Instagram and post regularly without fail.
3. Quality is king: Naturally, people want to follow accounts that post quality content and engage with these accounts. If your content is average, people will scroll past it. Moreover, your captions are also very important to hold your audience’s attention. Posting unique content would give you a better chance to hook the public interest.
4. Schedule your posts: You should always plan what you will post in advance. That means that you also need to create your content in advance as well. Following a set schedule and posting at a specific time every day is an excellent way to boost engagement and engagement metrics overall. Following a schedule would also help train your audience to expect content from you at a specific time, and they would vest more trust in you.
Conclusion
You thus know that buying Instagram likes is not worth it and how you can grow your account organically. These organic methods would help boost the engagement metrics of your account naturally, and you will yield results in no time. However, everything is a matter of patience and hard work, so you should be serious about being an influencer or your brand to achieve success.
