What can we say, many people come to Instagram for likes, popularity and subscribers. And for some reason the lion’s share of active users still blindly believes in the correctness of the statement: the more, the better.
The number of followers has long been the main measure of fame, but Instagram promotion is not so simple. Some people prefer to be creative and attract new people with cool content, while others rely on less than honest promotion methods. Are boosts useful, and how does Instagram management react to such tools? Let’s figure it out.
What is cheating on Instagram
According to marketers, cheating is a universal evil that cuts coverage and mercilessly spoils statistics.
But if we move away from the lyrics, cheating is one of the methods for promoting an account on Instagram. Usually, when boosting a page, bots and inactive profiles subscribe. Naturally, there is zero sense from them, since these categories are absolutely indifferent: they do not wait for your new posts, do not like or comment on posts. Their main mission is to create the appearance of quantity.
You can gain followers on Instagram in the following ways:
- sponsor giveaways;
- subscribe to the bots profile;
- like time;
- exchange ❤ in activity chats;
- buy a page with subscribers.
This way you attract a non-target audience, which means your reach is automatically reduced.
Types of markups
Main types of cheats:
- Cheating subscribers. Artificially increasing the number of followers. Disadvantages: scammed users may not be your target audience; they are more likely to unsubscribe after a while; such users most often are not active on the page.
- Cheating likes. The process of getting approval for content on social networks. Of course, artificially.
- Boosting comments. Yes, now you can add comments on Instagram. The mechanism is quite simple: on the service you need to place a link to the post, give the performers a task (how many words should the comment contain, are emojis needed, etc.) and indicate the cost of one execution.
- Boosting views. Views are one of the most important indicators of activity, and users want to increase this metric at any cost. Many people use boosting views to increase the popularity of an account and bring a publication to the top. True, if Instagram suddenly discovers that you use third-party services with enviable regularity, your account will be immediately blocked.
Why do people increase subscribers and other indicators
Cheating on Instagram is a common practice. Why? People create pages on social networks to satisfy their ego. They need approval from other users, and likes and an impressive number of followers are direct confirmation of this. And they didn’t give a damn about the fact that most of the fake subscribers are bots who are not interested in beautiful vacation photos or thoughtful quotes under publications.
And for beginning bloggers, promotions are almost the only opportunity to achieve success in the short term (in their opinion). But such popularity is extremely doubtful.
Since many users are still fooled by beautiful numbers, promotions help attract a real audience. If thousands of people are interested in a profile, then there is a much higher probability that the content here is really high-quality and interesting.
Why is cheating evil?
There are at least 3 reasons why you should not resort to this promotion method:
- It’s useless. Boosted accounts give nothing but beautiful numbers. They don’t like you, don’t comment on you, and certainly don’t buy anything.
- Is it dangerous. You don’t want to get banned for unnatural activity, do you?
- It’s not beautiful. Twisted comments with standard phrases hurt the eyes, and if you got more subscribers but forgot about likes, then meticulous users will immediately sense a catch.
Not everyone knows that if new subscribers do not show proper activity for a certain period of time, then your content stops being shown to them altogether!
The effect of “reduced coverage” is especially noticeable after giveaways (when there is a massive outflow of freeloaders) and promotions, since for some reason everyone forgets about a simple but very important rule: it is necessary not only to attract an audience, but also to be able to interest them. What interest can bots and inactive pages have? None. It is for this reason that after promotions, your publications “perish” under the rubble of other posts in the feed.
You can’t fool the graphs, and any promotional action is easy to see in the dynamics of subscribers and subscriptions.
What to do?
Cheating is not a panacea . You can also gain subscribers using more “legal” methods. Here are some effective tips:
- regularly publish quality content;
- use hashtags;
- hold competitions;
- set up targeted advertising;
- attract users from other social networks (if you have promoted accounts on social networks – for example, on VKontakte, TikTok or YouTube – then “pour” the audience from these platforms to Instagram);
- ask your friends to tell you about your profile;
- arrange activities;
- buy advertising from bloggers;
- write interesting texts;
- communicate with the audience, respond to comments and post their content in your story;
- conduct live broadcasts.
Are there any advantages to cheating?
People still pay attention to the number of subscribers and are guided by the principle: if there are a lot of followers, then the content is in demand. Therefore, the main advantage of promotions is increasing interest from the potential audience.
Here are a few more unobvious advantages:
- a sharp increase in the number of subscribers without much effort;
- more active promotion of your posts using smart social network algorithms;
- increasing brand loyalty (for commercial accounts);
- fixed budget;
- dust in the eyes (a profile with 100,000 followers looks much cooler).
Conclusion
Now let’s summarize:
- Cheats are bad, since they are not only useless (in 90% of cases), but also dangerous (no one has yet canceled the ban for exceeding limits).
- This will not help you move to the top and gain your target audience.
- Bots don’t buy anything!
- To collect subscribers, it is better to use safer methods (for example, advertising with media personalities, mass liking and mass following, targeting, competitions and the like).
Work on your account, develop it, test new formats and you will be happy!