When it comes to Instagram followers, we all know the recipe: more = better, right? More
followers mean more opportunities to generate leads, engage with fans, and establish brand
legitimacy. Well, it’s not quite that simple. Yes, follower growth leads to business growth. But
it’s not just about the number of followers. It’s about who those followers are. What would you
rather have: 5,000 Instagram followers but 60% of them are fake accounts or bots, or 2,000 real
followers who are die-hard champions of your content and products?
Here’s the actual recipe for success: more REAL followers = more sustained growth for your
business.
Real followers are followers who actually choose to follow you because they like what you stand
for, what you’re saying, or what you’re selling. These are followers who are genuinely
interested in you and your brand. They’re more likely to become lifelong customers and they’re
more likely to be champions of your content and share it with their friends. These REAL
Instagram followers are the foundation of your growth as a business.
This recipe has proven to be successful whether you’re a brand, agency, or influencer. Growing
your base of real followers on Instagram will lead to growing your business.
As a brand, more Instagram followers translates to more brand visibility, legitimacy, and opportunity for
sales. When used correctly, Instagram can be useful at all stages of the sales funnel, helping to
generate awareness, establish familiarity and trust, drive actual sales, and build loyalty over the
years. As you gain followers, you’ll be able to more effectively use Instagram at each of these stages
of the customer journey—your content will have more reach, your leads will find your brand more
trustworthy, your products will be more visible, and your customers will feel more engaged with your
brand after they make a purchase.
As an agency, growing your Instagram follower base is important for establishing legitimacy and
growing your area of influence. Having a strong follower base shows your clients that you create
content that people like to engage with. An engaged follower base can help you establish
yourself as a thought leader in your particular space, which will help you gain more clients.
As an individual or influencer, your Instagram followers are everything. They’re your fans, your
champions, and your business. Growing your follower base with consistent, engaging, and quality
content is the name of the game, and you want to make sure that you’re gaining followers who
will share and engage with that content. More followers mean more opportunity to grow your
following. More followers also allow you to generate more revenue from things like affiliate
sales and sponsorships.
Instagram boasts over 2 billion monthly users and over 500 million daily users. That means
there’s tons of opportunity for you to find your audience and grow it. But you want to be
careful how you go about building your following.
According to some reports, almost 10% of Instagram’s massive user-base could be bots and fake
accounts. Buying these types of followers and likes for your posts might feel tempting as this
has been a common practice by many businesses and individuals in the past. People feel that if
your account has more followers, it will appear more legitimate and trustworthy.
But these practices actually can cause your business more harm than good. One reason is that Instagram is
looking to crack down on fake users and accounts that are buying these users. Instagram wants to make
sure that accounts are not misleading their followers or instilling a false sense of trust in them. If
you engage with these fake accounts or load up on fake bot followers, you run the risk of Instagram
deleting those accounts, which will delete them as followers. Not to mention, in some cases, Instagram
may even put restrictions on your own account for trying to build your follower base with fake accounts.
Another reason is that none of those followers will turn into customers. Since many of these accounts are
fake, they can’t actually provide any value as potential leads or customers. Sure, you might appear more
legit with 20k followers as opposed to 5k and that legitimacy might turn into a few extra real followers
who may have not followed you otherwise. But for the most part, people follow accounts because they like
the content or the product, not because they have tons of followers. You’ll see much more success with
fewer numbers of followers who are really engaged with your product and content rather than a ton of
followers who don’t comment, like, share, or buy.
The last reason is that you lose out on opportunities to learn things about your customers and
fans. Running a successful Instagram account (and business for that matter) requires you to know
who your audience is. Data about what your customers like, who they follow, and what content
they consume and engage with is crucial for building your brand and your product. With fake
followers, you lose out on the opportunity to interact with and learn from real people. They
won’t engage with your content because they are either fake or don’t actually care for your
content, and therefore you lose out on marketing data.
Creating a strategy that looks to build real Instagram followers can solve these problems and
more. Of course, it’s much harder to build your following organically than it is to make a quick
purchase of followers on a fake account. But the effort is worth it, and there are some great
resources to help you out.
Here are some of the top reasons that real Instagram followers are worth the extra effort.
First off, real Instagram followers are real people with real interest in your brand and
business. These followers are much more likely to engage with one of your posts and share it.
That means that one real follower can actually turn into a follow-generating machine. Every time
one of your followers shares one of your posts or likes and comments on it, you get access to
their whole follower base and get a chance to gain some of those people as followers. People are
way more likely to trust something that their friend follows and likes.
Another reason to target real Instagram followers is that they’re more likely to buy your product.
Whether you’re advertising a product through an affiliate partnership or selling your own, you’re much
likely to convert a sale with a lead who chose to follow your account on their own accord.
A third reason to focus on gaining real Instagram followers is that you’ll actually be able to build
legitimacy. Modern day consumers and Instagram users are quick to identify accounts that seem fake or
seem to have an inflated number of followers. With Instagram followers who are actually following your
account because they like what you post, you’ll likely have more engagement on each post which means
when someone new visits your page. People look for this engagement (likes, comments, shares) as a litmus
test for authenticity. Accounts with tons of followers but not a lot of likes might appear fake or
inauthentic.
One final reason that real Instagram followers are the real path to growth for your business is that you
can actually gain insights about your customers and audiences from those real followers. Watching how
people respond to your posts and tracking metrics that measure their engagement can give you tons of
insight on not just what type of content you should be posting, but also how you should be addressing
customer pain points and how you should be building and refining your product. This type of direct user
data is invaluable for businesses, brands, and individuals and having a strong base of engaged, real
Instagram followers is a great way to get consistent, reliable market data.
Like we said, building your base of these real followers is much harder to do, but the payoff is much
higher. And while it may seem daunting to start building your following with only a handful of Instagram
followers, there are tons of tools and strategies out there to help you. Remember to post consistent,
quality content and comment, like, and share other content that is relevant to your brand.
