Why Buying Followers Will Kill Your Instagram…
Dec 22, 2018As the old saying goes, nothing worth having comes easy.
The same is true when it comes to growing an audience on Social Media...
In today’s current climate, where promoters are looking at artists’ social media followings when making bookings, you can understand why many a DJ has been tempted to add a few 1000 fans. After all, their purpose is to be in the studio making records or out on the road playing gigs, not spending time on social media building a following organically.
What’s even worse is when younger artists, just starting out, see these hugely inflated followings of their idols and feel the need to catch up by whatever means necessary.
“BUT IF EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING THEN WHY SHOULDN’T I?”
Well firstly, you’re not Jamie fucking Jones (sorry if reading this Jamie). Your premier league artists are playing enough gigs and have a big enough following that their channels will continue to grow organically and their posts will continue to get decent reach. The same cannot be said if you have 100 or even 1000 fans.
It's simple mathematics. Instagram and Facebook’s algorithms in the simplest terms, work on the premise that posts with a high engagement rate will be shown to more of your audience and therefore receive greater reach.
Engagement rate is the total number of Likes and Comments on a post divided by the number of your fans.
E.G. IF YOUR POST HAS 50 LIKES AND 10 COMMENTS AND YOU HAVE 500 FOLLOWERS YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATE WOULD BE CALCULATED LIKE THIS.
(50+10)/500 = 0.12
TIMES THIS BY 100 TO GIVE YOU A PERCENTAGE AND YOU HAVE AN ENGAGEMENT RATE OF 12%
So, if you were to then buy 500 fake followers from some shady corner or the internet here’s what happens…
(50+10)/1000 = 0.06
Suddenly you’ve halved your engagement rate to 6%.
THE ALGORITHM THINKS YOUR POSTS ARE SUDDENLY HALF AS ENGAGING AND AS A RESULT STOPS SHOWING THEM TO AS MANY OF YOUR FANS. YOU’VE LITERALLY KILLED YOUR ENGAGEMENT OVERNIGHT.
A similar process occurs when people buy fake likes for their posts. Whilst this may initially give you a boost what do you think happens to those posts that you don’t pay to have likes on? You guessed it, the algorithm views them as being ‘underperforming’ and reduces the reach. This traps you in a never-ending cycle of having to pay for likes on every post. Fine if you’ve got the money but not cool for the majority of us.
GROWING AN ENGAGED FOLLOWING ON SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES TIME BUT THE VALUE OF HAVING REAL FANS WHO ARE ENGAGED WITH WHAT YOU DO MAKES IT WORTHWHILE.
REAL FANS WILL BUY YOUR MUSIC AND PAY TO COME TO YOUR GIGS, THE SAME CANNOT BE SAID OF FAKE ACCOUNTS BORN OUT OF RUSSIAN CLICK FARMS.
If you want to spend money to grow your social following then I’d suggest reaching out to larger influencer accounts within your niche and asking what they’d charge for a guest post. You want to be looking for an account that receives good levels of engagement (use the equation from earlier on in this post to compare engagement levels) and whose content is a good fit for your brand. It’s always worthwhile asking if they do discounts for multiple posts as this can be quite
There you have it, why buying followers and likes will kill your social media and where your marketing pennies could be better spent.
As always Paul and I would love to hear your questions or receive any feedback so make sure that you hit us up in the comments below.
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