How do fake followers affect your social media marketing?
“Our competition has 12K followers, and we only have 3K, we need to get more and fast!” Normally when this conversation happens with our Denver social media company, it involves the next question,
“Couldn’t we buy more?”
While purchasing 1K, 5K or even 10K followers for the price of your monthly Starbucks runs seems like the ideal marketing scenario, in the end, it ends up hurting the reputation and following that a company has built thus far. On top of this, companies find themselves still trying to undo this common marketing mistake years after the purchase has been made.
While celebrities like the Kardashians do use these services to increase their following, they get so much engagement and likes within seconds of their post, that it doesn’t affect them as much as traditional companies and personal brands.
Destroys credibility
A strong, positive digital brand and presence starts and naturally continues with brand awareness, and buying fake followers can kill this reputation. How is this possible? While having a lot of followers could be impressive to potential customers, said customers can review who is following you, and they are technologically savvy.
A potential or current customer could start to notice the engagement levels are pretty low for a company with 12K but no one is engaging with the content. The red flags start to show up.
Would you trust a company with 12K followers, with no engagement and five likes per post?
Instagram shadowban
HubSpot defines shadowbanning as, “is the act of blocking a user’s content on social media sites, in such a way that the user doesn’t know it is happening. If you’re shadowbanned on Instagram, your content won’t appear on anyone’s newsfeed unless they already follow you.”
While companies and personal brands had been speculating about their content being shadowbanned, in 2019 Instagram confirmed that content would be shadowbanned and has been shadowbanned previously to the release.
With the Instagram Algorithm constantly changing each year at minimum, it is important for companies to understand how the algorithm works before assuming the account has been shadowbanned.
Our Denver social media company has heard from clients, “we have been shadowbanned” but there isn’t always proof of this, it is normally just the content and hashtags that are being utilized.
This is how a number of companies get shadowbanned on Instagram. It isn’t always the content that is being posted but the hashtags used.
Preview this list of banned hashtags to ensure that your personal or company pages do not get shadowbanned.
Instagram cuts engagement
Instagram will cut engagement which is qualified as likes, comments on posts, shares, and saves if they have a suspicion the account is buying followers. Engagement on social media is the lifeline of great organic posts and organic lead generation strategies.
Without engagement and organic viewing, the content isn’t reaching any new consumers which means the message is only getting across to a new audience.
Metrics and reporting is skewed
If a company and management need to report their spending and budgeting allocation to a board of directors or C-Suite executives, this will skew all metrics and reporting that has been established.
While the metrics and reporting show a significant increase in following and other metrics, over time, this person will notice their metrics and reporting changing drastically. What would happen if this person reported back to this board or C-Suite team with a drastic decrease and less ROI.
Everyone understands what would happen.
Lasts for years to come
There are marketers and social media marketers out there who take on a new role, even years after the previous employee leaves, and still finds shadowbanned issues and fake following problems.
It can take years to finally level out the marketing metrics and reporting, credibility and other metrics. As a leading Denver social media company, this is why we encourage all consumers to never buy fake followers and this is how it affects it over time.
For more information regarding Instagram marketing or other strategies, contact us today!