The photo-sharing app is no longer a humble platform to make friends, but it is a lucrative platform to earn money and become famous. However, the stroke of luck is not easy to find when the market is highly competitive. With the Instagram world inching competition to the next level, everyone is scrambling hard to stand out in the saturated world. Since the numbers give a fake illusion to the success on the platform, many people are striving day in and out to raise the numbers higher.

But is the number that rules it all? NO. And this is why you should reconsider any alternate ways that do not increase views naturally.

Alternate ways to increase your numbers

The numbers don’t grow overnight (until you have gone viral, of course!). It takes years of painstaking efforts, patience, and tactics.

There are many ways to cut short the efforts, pain, and wait.

  • You can buy them! Yes, though money may not buy you everything, it can surely bring you tons of followers with just a few clicks. And the best thing, it is at a nominal fee. Buying Instagram, followers, likes, shares, and views have never gotten this easy. Thousands of websites across the internet guarantee you followers with few easy steps. Visit the website, browse through the package they offer, select the one fitting your demand and budget and proceed to buy.
  • Choose service providers that mass follow other users through your account. A general strategy to increase numbers is to follow someone. This makes you noticeable to them, and if they like your content, you can get a follow back. Instead of you manually searching, the app/ website searches popular usernames depending on the niche you have entered or the common keywords used in the post. The app sends the request to them from your account in large numbers. After a few months, they delete them to maintain an ideal ratio of the followers-following count.
  • You can manually follow a large number of accounts or create many fake profiles that increase your main profile’s engagement.

Similarly, many more loopholes may be used as strategies by many Instagrammers, but when you realize that these are just wasted efforts, you would question your plans.

More than just numbers

Though it might seem to the general public that a number of followers matter the most, it is not. The engagement rate is what actually rules the area.

Engagement rate implies how many people engage with you directly (by comments, likes) or indirectly. Engagement rate gives you the actual picture of your account’s growth and the resultant profit it will make as an advertiser.

Popular businesses and brands want to promote their product. Promoting sees results only when they translate into business. It would be a waste of time and money to invest in accounts with a large number of followers but with little to no engagement. More the engagement your account yields, the higher it gets paid for sponsored content.

Reasons to reconsider buying

The top reasons that find their way here are:

  1. No engagement:

    The fake followers brought by you make up almost little to no engagement. They just inflate the numbers giving your profile a heads-up but no interactions. Since most of the brands look for engagement, the numbers have little significance to them.

  2. They bring little organic growth:

    The websites claim that the numbers give you leverage and help you increase the organic growth eventually. However, there are very bleak chances for the strategy to bear fruit. Most of the users hardly find any organic growth, and most of the time have to depend on the fake followers again and again.

  3. They won’t bring the money:

    The investors actually look into the engagement (apart from several other factors) and then invest. The investment, sponsored content, and advertisement are what make you an Instagrammer and fetch money. A fake following adds a very little part to except for decreasing your engagement ratio.

  4. You can get scammed:

    The third-party services online are a potential source of losing your money. The investment may seem small and unassuming; however, regularly investing in them makes you lose a large sum of money. Moreover, most of the sites provide you fake followers, which get deleted by artificial intelligence. Thus, you get scammed of your money without getting any visible change on the numbers. Moreover, the fake accounts alert the artificial intelligence, bringing you under the scanner.

  5. They are visible:

    It is not usual for accounts to increase the numbers by thousands in a few days. Hundreds? Maybe yes. But not thousands, especially if you are at a nascent stage and considerable work needs to be done. Since the followers you buy come in chunks, the numbers fluctuate instead of a gradual organic rise.

  6. They are way too obvious:

    One look into your follower’s section is enough to strike off the imposters. They have so obvious names as if they want to stand out and scream ‘yes! I am fake’. Generally, they seem like a random bunch of alphabets typed in. This is a huge alarm raiser to anyone who looks through your follower’s count.

  7. You are always under scanner:

    Following any unethical way means that you have the possibility to be held liable under the rules. Though there are no police here, the algorithms of Instagram are vigilantly looking out for malicious third-party activities and delete contents and accounts that are deemed unfit by Instagram. No platform promotes its users to make avail of the benefits like automation and fake followers to dramatize the counts. There are many instances where the number of followers of popular celebrities reduced overnight when artificial intelligence deleted several fake accounts.

  8. Rules can always change:

    A platform runs by its own rules and regulation. This means if things are grey today, they can become black if the platform decides so. Till now, Instagram takes no exaggerated actions apart from deleting the fake account. But this does not mean that it cannot do so in the future. Always look out for changes and up-gradation made by the platform.

  9. Credibility issues:

    Once red-flagged, an account loses the credibility and trust it has gained over other people. Though you might have worked hard to build it, your tireless efforts get frowned upon by questionable eyes. If you can fake the numbers, it is quite easy to fake other aspects in the virtual platform.

  10. Ethical reason:

    Buying with money what you could not get by your works is a direct link to the capitalist world that our world is slowly changing into. The rich get richer. The money makes you cross over the efforts and compete against people, leveling you with them all because of few dollars. Moreover, you are using the money to cloud over people’s judgment and make pique interest in your accounts.

This may be enough to deter your decision and look for ways to increase your growth organically.

However, there is a reason why people strive hard to increase the numbers. It is because it grants them visibility (although short-lived). The whole point of the numbers is to garner visibility in the virtual platform. The more followers you have, the more likes your post gets, more chance you have to feature in other people’s feeds. Thus, organically spreading out your content. But when it translates to the practical world, it is hard to find success stories that owe their credibility.

Key to success- patience

Though many steps come in a while, perfecting your profile to be consumer-oriented, the real virtue that shines out is patience.

Nothing comes easy nor fast. You might have to wait for months or even years for your account to take off, even when you work under all aspects. Listening through the stories of Instagrammers might ease your worries about the waiting period.

Instagram is like a virtual sports arena. You need to keep experimenting with styles and approaches till you find one that matches best with you and your audience. However, learning basics gives you an upper-hand in combat. Knowing the resources and how to utilize them will help you adapt and try things at your convenience. Learning from the competitors is also a great way to begin. Know about the area you need to work on and put in your ideas to build the perfect profile you want.

Conclusion

Instagram is a challenging world to survive but not so tough that you cannot make it. Sticking to the right path will help you enjoy sweeter fruit in due course of time. Therefore, all you aim to be an Instagrammer, utilize the right resources to chart your success story instead of investing in buying the success.