Steps to Take After Your SMM Client Purchased Followers on Instagram
Purchasing followers may seem like an easy way to build up your following and establish credibility on the 'gram. It's basically the get-rich-quick scheme of socials. As much as we'd love for it to be that easy to reach growth on socials, we highly don't recommend purchasing followers on Instagram.
Here's why, it actually violates Instagram's terms of service and can damage your reputation in the long run. Not to mention, it can come with some serious consequences like getting your account removed or suspended. Purchased followers are often fake or inactive accounts, which means they will likely not engage with your content and may even harm your account's engagement rate. Have you seen those huge accounts with 20k followers, but only 2 likes on their content? It's not a good look!
This goes for purchasing engagement and engagement pods as well. These might seem like an efficient way to manage socials, but the truth is, if they aren't real organic people connecting with your brand on socials, it's not valuable to you. Think of this in a physical format. If you owned a boutique clothing store for women, would you hold a men's only sale? We don't want people in our space, who aren't going to interact and become our clients or customers in the long run. Creating and nurturing relationships with the right, target audience is how we turn those Instagram likes into leads!
Why we are against purchasing followers:
Against Instagram guidelines
Your analytics won't be accurate
May prevent partnerships with other brands
Harm your relationship with real followers
Will affect the algorithm and how it views your account
Many scams in this space, so it might create a financial risk
Won't bring you accurate leads, or even any leads.
But, what if you or your social media management client already purchased followers before you arrived? We all make mistakes! This article is here to help you recover your credibility and get your business's account back on track.
What To Do If You Purchased Followers On Instagram:
Step One: Decide between Removal or Deletion
You essentially have two options when it comes to where to start. You can start over completely, or you can save your current account. To save your current account, go through your current followers and remove anyone who appears to be a bot or doesn't fit within your target market. Some signs of bots are no profile photo, strange username, no name or odd names. Filter out and remove these followers. It is SO IMPORTANT, that you take your time while removing these followers. Bulk actions on Instagram are easily flagged as suspicious activity by Instagram AI detection.
Step Two: Start Organically and Genuinely Engaging
Your organic engagement strategy will start to bring the account back to life again. Start finding real followers who fit your target market and get engaging them. Prioritize genuine engagement with real people, through both inbound and outbound engagement strategies.
Step Three: Stay Patient
The key to this process is staying patient and slowly changing the account around. Know that your Instagram insights will be going in reserve for a while to get back to moving in the right direction again.
In conclusion, we highly recommend against purchasing followers or likes on any platform, as this isn't beneficial for your brand. While it may provide temporary credibility to have an increase in followers or engagement, your followers will start to understand and it can reverse both your credibility and engagement rate in the long run.
