Looking for a way to increase your Instagram followers, some would offer suspicious services like buying fake followers to reach your goals. In this article, we would explain why it’s always better to increase your social media followers in normal ways and not to buy fake followers in order to boost your Instagram page engagement and likes.
Today, most businesses are aware of the benefits of social media and using a platform like Instagram to get more views as well as gaining better insight about their in their marketing efforts. However, there are still companies that could not cope with social media marketing and have problem with getting Instagram followers so they use the most available but not necessarily better option; buying fake follower.
Why we need real followers on Instagram?
Though it is not easy to gain real Instagram followers, you can do simple exercises to build and enhance real and organic followers. If you try to buy fake followers, you will lose the chance of attracting potential customers who may follow you.
Nowadays, customers enter your social media platform to ask questions, get information about your products, or find out more about who you are. In fact, a study from TrackMaven showed that only half of the 500 companies use Instagram to promote their business.
Even if the number was lower, there’s still a lot of competition taking place on Instagram. That’s why it is important to use legal and natural ways to enhance your Instagram followers.
Here we will talk about the disadvantages of buying fake followers in spite of its cheap prices.
1. Branding:
One of the most important goals of an Instagram promotion is branding. Fake followers would just increase your followers count. They would not interact with your page and would not become your customers for sure.
But if the number of your followers increase naturally, you will have a more popular and authentic brand, and the visitors of your site are more likely to change to your real customers.
2. Increasing sales:
The ultimate goal of any business is to increase sales of goods and services. It is clear that fake followers who are cheap and inexpensive, can’t be your real customer. They are in fact a number. So you will not see any increase in your sale. It is also more probable that buying fake followers decrease your sale by damaging your customers’ trust.
3. Customer engagement:
Suppose that you want to buy a service or product from an Instagram page, looking at the number of its followers, you will see a high number which at first glance indicates popularity of the page. But paying more attention, you will find out that the number of post likes and comments are low. Your initial deduction would probably be that the page products do not have the required quality or the brand itself is unknown and not good enough. So you will be discouraged to buy anything from the page.
4. Losing followers’ trust:
Formerly, many people did not realize that there would be fake followers. Instagram users would see the front page of a brand and they were thrilled to see the number of followers of the page. But today users have become more professional and know that pages may have fake followers. They can notice if a page is worth paying attention or not. When Instagram users see a page for the first time, they would not be deceived by the number of followers anymore. They will look at the number of likes and comments and conclude if the page has real followers or not and if is its products have good quality or not.
5. Spamming:
Instagram identifies and removes fake accounts. This is completely true. Instagram removes this accounts in a random period of time and doesn’t specify a time for that; sometimes after a few days and sometimes after a few months.
Explaining what are the disadvantages of buying fake followers, now we would talk about the solutions to get more followers. You can increase your Instagram followers on your own by:
- knowing your audience’s interest and behavior
- starting to engage with desired audience automatically using Instagram growth services
- interacting with the audience when they are most engaged directly
- Posting eye catching content according to their interest
- using influencer marketing
What are fake or ghost followers?
- Fake followers are not real Instagram users
As the name suggests, fake followers do not represent real people. They are, in fact, created on social media such as Instagram by bots or people for following other people and hyping their popularity. However, since these followers are not created by real people or are not authentic, they cannot engage in real interactions and they have no interest in the content. People buy fake followers to ‘appear’ more popular but since these fake or ghost followers are not run by real people, they fail to meaningfully engage with the influencers’ content and do not satisfy the expectations of brands that massively invest in the influence of these influencers and their followers to attract true and relevant consumers and grow their business.
- Businesses and brands need real people and not fake followers to see their content
Brands are now perfectly aware that a large number of followers does not necessarily equal more influence because analyses have revealed that not all profiles with a large number of followers can effectively present the content to real people. These profiles, which use fake followers to ‘appear’ more popular’, cannot present the content and ads to real people and thus they hinder the success of marketing attempts.
For example, assume a company spends money on creating infographics, videos, giveaways, etc. but the content is not ‘seen’ by real people and the potential customer.
How can a company attract more customers if the content it publishes is not even really seen by real people and accounts that are run by real people?! Companies pay influencers to influence their followers and encourage them to buy their products or services but how can influencers that didn’t build their followers organically influence other people?
- Fake or ghost followers on Instagram are bad for your reputation
When you have tons of followers but these followers that are actually robots and inactive accounts do not like the posts or comment on them or they just manage to leave automated fake comments, etc. However, people gradually realize that these followers are fake and it damages your reputation instead of boosting it. Moreover, all these fake followers that are sold by companies at very low prices may get detected and deleted suddenly by Instagram, which will damage your reputation even more!
Instagram Ghost Followers
Instagram ghost followers are the users who have social media accounts and follow active pages. But they are either inactive or do not engage in your page. Instagram ghost followers would be harmful as they decrease the engagement rate of your page. Ghost followers might be normal users or accounts made by a malware to harm your page. It is usual to see ghost followers in most pages. You can delete these accounts to have higher engagement rate. Based on Instagram’s new algorithm, your pages becomes visible to more Instagram users if it has high engagement rate.
As mentioned above, ghost followers do not engage with your posts but they are still followers who increase your follower count. Number of followers is especially important for people like celebrities who want to have as much follower as possible. They sometimes even buy fake followers to seem more popular. However follower count is not as important as engagement rate for Instagram pages who earn money by receiving ads on their page.
Are ghost followers harmful?
Engagement rate is the most important factor in measuring an influencer’s success especially for brands who pay for advertisement. It is important for marketers not to just increase the number of followers but also other factors like engagement rate. For marketers, engagement rate is more important than follower count and ghost followers would highly damage this feature.
To put it simply, consider having a certain number of active followers who engage with your posts, for example, having 20000 followers, your posts receive 1000 engagement on average (number of likes, comments and saved per post) so the engagement rate of your posts would be 0.05. Now you purchase 20000 fake followers for example, followers who will not engage with your posts and are just ghost followers. Your follower count increases. But the number of comments and likes per post remains the same as before. So the engagement rate of your post will decrease to 0.025. With Instagram’s new algorithm rearranging posts in followers’ feed mostly based on the engagement rate of the page, the important of removing ghost followers became more and more clear.
How to remove ghost followers?
There are several ways to remove ghost followers. You can recognize ghost followers by having a close look at their account. Instagram pages with zero follower and posts, no profile pictures and unusual user names with numbers and signs probably are ghost followers (though you may not be sure). If you have few followers, you can remove them manually by going through their pages. However there are also applications you can use to remove ghost followers (just don’t trust all apps and do not give them all the information of your account).
Why should you delete the fake followers on Instagram
A few years ago, everyone started an Instagram account with the aim to increase their sales or their number of followers, and the first solution that came to their mind was buying a bunch of fake or real followers. People including A-list celebrities started paying money for unreal followers but they didn’t know they were making a huge mistake because Instagram terms about fake followers was changing over time; Soon it became a challenge for digital marketers to detect & delete fake followers on Instagram due to harsh punishments that were on the way for those accounts having a bunch of fake followers with them. Today’s story in the Instamber blog is about discussing the ways to delete fake & ghost followers on Instagram.
- Fake followers reduce your account’s reputation
Today interaction and real engagements are among the key factors that Instagram currently values first to boost an account. The problem with fake or ghost followers is that they cannot have meaningful interactions. As a result, they undermine the reputation and credibility of your account by, for example, failing to leave relevant and meaningful comments on your posts.
Therefore, deleting your fake followers on Instagram is a necessity because Instagram has been detecting and deleting these fake or inactive accounts with the aid of machine learning since 2014, and it may also ban accounts with numerous fake followers. Recently
- Fake or ghost followers on Instagram are not good for your engagement rate
In fact, Instagram does not value accounts with a huge number of fake followers as these fake followers reduce your engagement rate. Besides, brands spend tons of money on influencer marketing and if an influencer has a ton of fake followers, it means a fraction of the budget spent by these brands and companies to get their ads seen by real people and to increase their return on investment is actually wasted on fake accounts!
Therefore, if you want to be a successful influencer, you have to avoid buying fake followers, buying existing accounts, buying likes and comments, and last but not least you have to learn how to delete fake followers because they are considerably reducing your engagement rate. Now let’s see what fake or ghost followers are and how we can spot them.
How to detect the fake followers on Instagram?
Now that you know what fake followers are, let’s take a look at some of the signs that show you an account is probably fake and is not run by a real person. Understanding these signs helps you identify and successfully delete fake followers in the next steps.
1. The name of the account contains many numbers or it does not make sense
Sometimes the names of fake follower accounts are composed of many numbers such as “abby125448989” and sometimes the names don’t even make sense. An example of the latter is “xgkdlaoejgg”. You should carefully pay attention to these unusual patterns in the names when searching for ghost or fake followers on Instagram.
2. Fake or ghost followers on Instagram have an unusual number of followings
Another revealing sign of a fake Instagram account is a huge number of followings but a very small number of followers. An Instagram account that follows tons of other accounts is probably a bot.
Besides, fake accounts do not meaningfully engage with the content on Instagram or sometimes have very abnormally high engagement rates. An example of these accounts is a fake account that does not like posts, does not common on posts, or does not take part in the giveaways and contests.
3. Fake followers on Instagram may only have few low-quality posts
Another telling sign of a fake or ghost account is the lack of good-quality content or the considerably low number of posts. In other words, the quantity and quality of authentic and real Instagram accounts tend to grow over time. Therefore, an account that creates a few posts at the beginning and then stops posting is probably run by a bot rather than a real human.
4. Fake accounts on Instagram contain copied info in Bio
Another sign that shows an account might be fake is that the “bio” section is empty or it is filled with very little data. This section may also contain information copied from other sources.
5. No profile photo or stolen profile photo: A vivid sign that indicates a fake Intagram account
On a platform like Instagram, the lack of a profile picture could be a sign of a fake and inauthentic account. Besides, some Instagram accounts are created with photos and pictures of other people or photos from Google or other websites to sound like authentic accounts. These accounts are not run by the people they ‘appear’ to represent and are usually used to catfish other users. Therefore, you should definitely spot and delete these fake followers.
Are cleaner apps recommended for removing fake followers on Instagram?
The truth is that you have to delete fake followers on yout own, and the safest way of getting rid of your ghost or fake followers is by manually removing them. If you’re asking us “How should we delete fake followers on Instagram manually” we declare that it is a time-consuming process, but it’s worth it. That is to say, all those cleaner apps and bots developed for this purpose are either useless or are not safe to use, and some of them are also basically filters. They fail to analyze and track all of your Instagram followers. For example, they can only keep away fake followers from the moment you start using them.
- Cleaner apps are not very efficient for deleting fake and ghost followers
They cannot detect all those fake followers that started following you before installing the app. They cannot accurately identify all the inactive accounts and if they break the Instagram rules in an attempt to identify and delete the fake followers, your account could get disabled by Instagram. Examples of apps that are developed for tracking and deleting fake followers include Cleaner for IG, Unfollow Users Plus, and Unfollow Easy.
Our solution is a combination of the following two effective solutions to delete your ghost or fake followers on Instagram, which is a must and has to be done as soon as possible:
1- Deleting the fake followers manually, and
2- Mitigating the impact of your fake followers, which are going to be detected and deleted by Instagram anyway, by increasing your followers’ engagement rate.
You have to start by scrolling through your followers list. As mentioned, look for account names that don’t make sense or contain many numbers. Examples of such account names include “Samcharmssssss1295327” or “jets891274”. Instagram accounts that have very few followers but have very huge followings could also be fake accounts that are not run by real people. Other examples include accounts with low-quality posts or very few posts as well as accounts with very few likes and comments. You have to detect these followers and delete them one by one. You can also take the following steps to protect your reputation from the effect of fake followers by mitigating their impact on your marketing performance.
What to do after deleting fake followers on Instagram
1. Create sharable content to enhance real engagements
One of the best ways to increase your followers’ engagement is by creating valuable content that might be saved or shared by your followers. For example, post carousel photos that contain valuable information and might be saved by your audience. As for sharable content, create relatable content that might be needed and liked by your audience. These measures will improve your engagement rate and your performance on the platform.
2. Gain more real followers by advertising
Advertising is one of the most effective solutions for organically increasing the number of your real followers. By attracting more real followers that are actually interested in your content, you basically increase your engagement rate. Different types of ads on Instagram include video ads, photo ads, carousel ads, and IGTV ads.
3. Use stories stickers
The stories stickers allow you to increase your engagement rate in various ways. Examples of these stories stickers include the quiz, donation, DM Me, gift card, and location stickers. Use the different stories stickers to interact with your followers and improve your performance.
4. Conduct contests and giveaways
You can increase your engagement rate by running fun contests and giveaways that attract the attention of your followers. For instance, you can run contests and reward the winners with your products. The winners can engage by commenting on the posts or writing the best caption for a photo. However, note that you should give away gifts that your potential customers will like because they will probably join your community of customers in the future.
5. Use a variety of content types
You can also create different types of content such as videos, memes, and infographics to increase your engagement rate. For example, creating fun videos using Instagram Reel is one of the most effective ways of attaining this goal.
6. Use the right hashtags
Identifying the hashtags that bring more followers to your account is a determining factor. Hashtag tracking tools that analyze the performance of your hashtags and identify the more successful hashtags are highly recommended. Examples of hashtag tracking and analytics tools that allow you to monitor your hashtag performance include Pixlee’s Instagram analytics tool and Hashtagify. These tools provide hashtag statistics, allow you to monitor conversations about your brand, and depict the performance of the hashtags you use.
7. Time your posts carefully
Posting content at the right time can massively increase your followers’ engagement rate as well as your marketing results as the end goal. That is to say, you should figure out when your followers are most active and post the content exactly at those times. This will boost your engagement rate while also increasing your authenticity in the eyes of Instagram. But how can you find the right time to post? We suggest that you start using Instagram analytics tools that help you find out the content your audiences like, their engagement rate, what they click on, when they are online, the performance of your different posts, and your strengths. Two of the good Instagram analytics tools are Instagram Insights and Hype Auditor. Now let’s take a look at Instagram Insights as one of the best Instagram analytics tools that will help you improve your performance as an influencer.
- Instagram Insights
This helpful and perfectly safe tool allows you to freely monitor your followers’ engagement rate, analyze your post-specific performance. In order to use this tool, you need a ‘business or creator account on Instagram’. When you are all set, you can easily start using this useful tool by logging into your Instagram account and tapping the Insights button. This tool allows you to monitor your account’s reach and impressions, your account activities, your top posts, the interactions on your Instagram content including all the likes, comments, and shares. It also shows you how many followers you have lost or gained, your audience’s age range, and last but not least the times they are most active.
