Buying Instagram Likes is Hurting Your Brand in 2023
Buying Instagram Likes
is Hurting Your Brand.
Here’s Why
6 min read
Contents
1. Why Brands Buy Instagram Likes
2. Why You Should Never Buy Instagram Likes
3. To-Do List
Nowadays, Instagram gets more and more attention from marketers as a social network with a wide age range. A lot of brands are trying to bypass the hard work of promotion and start to pay for fake followers and likes instead. This competition went so far that users lose any trust and engagement to watch something new.
If you try to buy likes it’s not only a waste of money but most likely harms your business. When you attempt to fool real users with fake ones, it also puts you into the risk of spam reports and service policy violation.
We’ll review the topic of why brands buy Instagram likes and suggest a few tips to go for the correct way of building your brand. Pay no more for Instagram likes and followers!
Why Brands Buy Instagram Likes
As companies try to stand out among competitors and gain popularity, they race for user engagement rate. This metric usually determines what post goes at the top of users’ feed. User Engagement also gets your content into ‘Explore’ tab, which you find by clicking the magnifier icon in your Instagram app. In ‘Explore’ section people find a compilation of user’s favourite content and posts liked by accounts they interacted with.
Thus, more than half of the accounts are using ‘Explore’ section, which helps new content makers and brands gain a new audience. Shortly, the more likes your content gets, the more people will see it. A lot of brands seek a quick ‘boost’ for their posts to increase engagement. That’s why they pay for likes.
Here’s one of such examples, when services have ‘guaranteed’ quality for $1.47 per like pack, usually bought in bulk from 50 to 10,000 or more. Such services are not even banned in Google and other search engines and have positive reviews.
After you pay for likes, most of the time it would be fake Instagram accounts to do the job. The service has this process automated with empty bot-followers. The service will usually split their activity to prevent your posts look suspicious with huge likes difference. The more you likes buy, the more posts are being split among whole pack.
Sounds pretty smart, right? Though, when you pay for such services, we have a few reasons to make it look pointless.
Why You Should Never Buy Instagram Likes
Ok, now we understand, that in the long-distance tons followers and especially likes have huge value and impact on discovering your page. But now we’re about to review reasons of how your content and account can get a damaged reputation:
Reason #1 – Your Competitors (and Instagram) Can Tell When You Buy Instagram Likes
The social network and analysis tools of your competitors have some marks and patterns. They help to determine whether your user engagement isn’t real, thus you pay for shady services:
- Relation and rate of likes-to-followers or likes-to-comments. This is a red sign showing you pay for likes, as it’s the cheapest activity imitation available. Followers and comments require more actions than just pressing like button, also accounts and comments should look natural. But even natural accounts have the highest engagement rates under 11%.
- As we’ve mentioned, accounts should look alive. That means users with no photos, little posting activity and with no followers on them are pretty suspicious. Also, if they weren’t updated in ages that’s a clear sign of a brand that buys fake Instagram likes.
- If some of these boosting services are following your account, that’s a red mark that you pay for likes. Usually, such services advertise themselves openly even at their Instagram accounts. For that reason, other users can see you create fake engagement and buy your reputation.
Also, as real users get more addiction on likes and followers, Instagram had to find a solution.
Now the new update is coming for a specific list of countries which might increase over time. The update will hide the like count under each post, so now if you buy likes it gets even more pointless. Still, users are addicted on followers count too, but there’s no solution for it yet.
Reason # 2 – Instagram Will Punish You
According to the official Instagram blog post, all accounts with ‘inauthentic’ likes got a ban wave. That punishment included Facebook and Twitter and will go on most likely in the nearest future. Anyone who buys third-party services or apps, whether it’s for getting followers or likes — gets banned.
In case some accounts would repeat these penalties, their profile will get shadowbanned. Shadowban isn’t easy to see at once, most of the time you know this after someone tells you about it. All your content gets blocked and invisible for everyone except your followers.
The next level is an outright ban which means you won’t be able to recover your account or recreate a new one. Imagine losing all your real followers gone, after you pay and waste your cash on bots. The hardest measure is IP ban, so banned users will have to buy VPN to access Instagram. All types of ban come for the app and website. Instagram representatives are less likely to review your appeal tickets.
Reason #3 – Fake Likes Do Not Equal Real Business
Regardless of how numerous likes your posts got, the brand won’t become real after paying fake engagement. Real people create more purchases and brand loyalty, while fake accounts create visibility which is easy enough to uncover. Fake accounts don’t buy anything, while real ones do and can even leave a review of your services. The best result you can get is gain just a bit more followers at the start, but losing their trust in the end.
The negative outcome is much more probable and risky than any chance for a positive result.
Reason #4 – Bots Can Occasionally Make Your Posts Look Awkward
Sometimes you will get comments from fake followers – but they are in a completely different language to your own. You will have no idea as to what they say (unless you use something like Google Translate). You might find that these comments are really ads for sex toys or extremist political groups and get an inappropriate perception of your account.
An occasional problem you may spot is when these generic comments are totally inappropriate for a particular post. For instance, you might make a post announcing the world tragedy or virus pandemic. A fake follower’s “nice post” or “good one” comment doesn’t exactly look good to the other people perusing your account.
Reason #5 – You Get Into Endless Cycle
Finally, when you buy likes on Instagram, you could end up in an endless cycle, where you’re continually pay for followers and likes just to keep up the engagement pace. This means that you’re always spending cash on your Instagram account, but you’re never truly getting any of the real engagement that would lead to long-term growth for your business.
To avoid the ban wave, countless Instagram users have invested in a careful combination of purchased fake likes and followers, intended to make their post-performance ratio seem real. Even if you only planned to buy fake Instagram likes initially to get your account a start flight, you might be stuck paying for extra likes and followers. Until you’re finally caught and get marked as fake made account.
Check This To-Do List Instead
When we criticize something, it’s also time for offering a solution. We have made a list of steps to build a brand’s own way, without relying on some gimmick shady services. You don’t have to buy a fake interest, only real engagement.
1. Review the purpose of your brand’s content
In case you want to catch users attention, you should review the clarity of your content. What purpose does it serve? Educational, Entertaining or Informational? The audience should scroll through the feed and get your point straight by watching or reading a post. Make your content valuable.
Just a few options that might give you an idea of posts types:
Informational: Content that tells your audience about something they didn’t know.
- News – The latest local, national or international happenings in your field, industry or sector
- Research & Analysis reviews – Research in a speciality field that explores a particular subject or area
- Shared Content – Interesting articles, stories other relevant content from around the Web
Educational: Content that teaches your audience how to do something specific.
- How-to Guides – Step-by-step manuals on how to accomplish something
- Tutorials – Teaching materials in the form of a series of photos or instructional videos
- Reviews – Overviews of products or services to help with purchase decisions
Inspirational: Content that urges and uplifts your audience, filling them with emotional spirit.
- Inspiring Imagery – Fashion, food, homes, gardens and travel photos/videos
- Personal Stories – Anecdotes about someone’s life to create feelings of empathy
- Opinions – Strong, thought-provoking perspectives on a particular topic or reviews.
Entertaining: Content that allows your audience to pass its time in an emotionally fulfilling way.
- Entertainment News – Celebrity-focused photos, stories, gossip and other content
- Mental Tests – Quizzes, trivia, and brain-teasers
- Humor – Breaking up the monotony with things that are funny
If the users enjoy your content, you’re making them share it with their friends which tap real likes too.
2. Tag People and Places
Another way to be discovered by real people who aren’t following you is to tag relevant accounts so that you show up in their tagged feed. If you own a fitness studio and you take a group shot after a Zumba class, tag every single one of those people in the photo. You can also post a story with a short review of this studio and tag it. It will populate into all of their tagged feeds.
Their followers (some of who likely have similar interests) will see the post, and discover your studio. This strategy also applies to other brand and real business accounts.
For example, if you’re a wedding photographer, a best practice is to tag the vendors from a wedding in your photos. A photo of the reception, for example, could potentially tag a DJ, wedding photographer, and wedding ceremony staff tagged all in the same photo. It’s good for all the businesses involved: each gets additional exposure and leads to more discovery as if someone is looking through Instagram for a wedding DJ, they are probably also looking for a photographer and a lot of other related staff. If you can share the spotlight and tag others — do it every time.
This is the shoe vendor Allbirds. They tagged user gregory velvet and he left a comment. Suddenly, the post got a bigger reach as some part of Gregory audience saw this post in their feed.
This is a general thing in the social network. Just for your information, 60% of posts on Instagram tag another user. Use also location tags, showing what place you’re attending or maybe location of your service.
As for research, posts with a location or user tag get 79% higher engagement than posts without a tag.
3. Leverage Hashtags
The power of hashtags on a platform like Instagram cannot be understated. However, it’s essential to find the right hashtags for the maximum impact. Apps such HashtagsForLikes are at your service. You can enter any hashtag into the search box, and it’ll give you all the real statistics you need to know about it. This AI-powered tool also finds the right hashtags for you without the need to manually intervene. All you
have to do is enter your Instagram username.
But how do you find the right hashtags to use? The above mentioned HashtagsForLikes can find the most trending and relevant hashtags for your brand and niche. This tool will help you reach your target audience. Here’s what a good hashtag work looks like:
4. Experiment with Posting Times
One tactic you can use to increase Instagram engagement for your business page is to post at the right times. You can maximize your engagements by posting content when most of your followers are likely to be browsing their feeds.
How can you find the right time to post? Well, Sproutsocial already made the global review about best timing. However, your country times still might be individual if the brand isn’t US-oriented.
You can use Instagram’s native analytical review tool to get a picture on when your audience is most likely online. By posting then, you’ll gain more engagements within minutes of posting which count more than engagements gained ages later. Otherwise, you can use even more automated complex system for analysis and posting to your account.
5. Measure and Optimize
The final piece of this guide involves constant analyzing of data and optimizing your campaign. Review regularly what you’re doing wrong or right. Watch the metrics and compare it with your competitors.
So, what can you do?
You could use Instagram’s native tool to track your content performance as well as understand audience behavior. You just need an Instagram business account to do that. But as for watching a detailed competitors analysis and building your own strategy, LiveDune would be a nice addition for your business.
Finally, we have discovered the major risky reasons not to go for a roundabout way. In this fuss for the audience, brands forget about the rules of a game and try to fake the interest. That’s inevitable damage and lost trust for companies, that goes far beyond social networks.
