When trying to build up your social media presence, it’s very tempting to cheat when building up your numbers. After all, when people check you out your ‘follower’ or ‘like’ count immediately forms part of their assessment of you, doesn’t it? So what’s the harm in buying followers if it’s going to give a good impression?
People who work in social media know how difficult it is to grow a following, it takes time and effort; you need to build a rapport and interact with your followers. However, if you have inflated your numbers by buying followers (most of which will be bots) you will effectively be shouting into the abyss. All of the analytical tools available to you will serve no purpose as ‘a bot’ will rarely see your post, some ‘bots’ are able to ‘like’ a post, but even if this is the case, it’s still skewing your numbers. You cannot gauge what works and what doesn’t if you’re not getting an accurate picture.
Imagine you announce a new single and it only gets nine ‘likes’ but you have 10K followers, that’s not going to give a good impression to bookers or promoters that might be checking you out. It will make them sceptical about your ability to get numbers through the door, especially after the Threatin episode.
It’s also now possible to buy established accounts, this is sold (literally) as having the benefit of real followers. They might be real, but chances are they won’t engage with you and again will skew your numbers.
In a nutshell, the only people you’re harming by cheating in this way is yourselves.