I’m sure that you heard all kinds of stories about this…

If you are still struggling to grow an audience over the platform than you are probably one of 500 million users that are trying to make it.

But the harsh truth is with the decrease in Instagram’s organic reach and engagement, it became really hard to stand out from the crowd.

Of course, there are ways to fight this out as I list them in this article.

For now, let´s focus on the matter at hand, and get to the bottom of our problem: Is buying Instagram followers a good idea?

1.Instagram Policies

Definitely not!

Instagram prohibits the monetized acquisition of followers.

And I experienced it myself! Although more than 95% of my followers were acquired organically, last year I bought 500 ´fake´ followers to see how the process works with my own eyes.

And let me tell you I instantly regretted it, most of the followers were either bots or fake accounts.

Moreover, both my account reach and engagement crushed.

The cherry on top, Instagram notified me about it and even proceeded to remove automatically all the followers that were bought.

To summarize, if you are using the platform to build a personal brand or long term business, I discouraged you to chose this route.

Instead, just focus on documenting your journey and be appreciative of every follower that you got: It´s a game of quality, not quantity.

That being said, there are still some breaches or ways you could use this service to grow a business.

2. Dropshipping

If you ever experienced working as a drop shipper and used Instagram as the main tool to redirect traffic, then you probably know how hard it is to convert if your page doesn´t have a decent number of followers.

2 Choices present themselves in this case:

• Either buy a couple of thousands of followers that will probably cost you around 12 to 30$ to kickstart your account. The problem with this is that you will need probably also need to create some posts and also buy likes for those to make your account look authentic.
• Or you can search for people that are selling their accounts. So many niche pages are searching for a way out either because it´s too much time consuming or using this pattern as a business model. The prices may vary but a least you will be sure that the account is active within your niche and that you can use their current audience to convert. Bonus, you can always resell the account for a decent amount if you don´t bombard the followers with sales posts. Be sure to follow the same content strategies the previous owner was using and include some promotions for your product in between to retain your audience and even grow it.

3. Mix it up

Photo by Artem Podrez from Pexels

Now you can fly under the radar of Instagram while buying followers.

The secret is to space it up and buy only small amounts every time.

Although this could speed up the process, I would also dissuade you to use that approach because over the long run this can not be reliable and it might even flag your account.

Instead there some organic tools that you can use to automate a bit your processes and optimize your content strategy:

• Kicksta: This platform does not offer to buy followers. Instead, it will help promote your content to your target audience and enhance your engagement rate. Of course the better the content, the more you will gain followers and speed your process
• Hashtagsforlikes: This tool will analyze the latest trending hashtags within your niche and type of posts to improve your account reach.
• Upfluence: It allows you to find the best influencers within your region to execute your promotion
• Socialfollow: helps you grow your Instagram followers without logging into your account or asking for your password. Find out how they do it and why this platform has been kept free forever.

4. Final Thoughts

You surely can still buy followers in small increments to increase your followers and make it look natural but there are still better ways to invest your money especially when it comes to Instagram.

You´re better off buying a real account through a tierce party like Paypal or Socialtradia and if you want to do it on your own, you will find numerous accounts that sell premade packs of content.

As for my opinion, forget about shortcuts and produce content on a scale while staying authentic to yourself or your brand values. Consistency and honesty will pay way more dividends if you invest genuine time in building your audience.