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Buying Twitter Followers (Bad Idea)

You've heard it all before, but no one has ever really explained why, and we're here to drill into it a bit further – don't buy Twitter followers.

There are plenty of safe ways to grow your Twitter instead. From free techniques that grow organically and gradually to legitimate paid promotion if you want to grow a little faster. Buying fake followers is a shortcut to nowhere, and will only cause you misery.

Let's dive into the dark world of why people buy Twitter followers, and what the better alternatives are.

Paid promotion vs. buying followers

It's important to note that paying to promote your twitter is not the same as buying followers. Many forms of legitimate advertising and marketing methods exist for social media today. Most notably Twitter ads and featured promotion.

Why People Buy Twitter Followers

For as long as there have been social media sites, there have been ways to inflate your following or friends list.

followers for sale

However, is all that glitters gold?

For years, people have been buying Twitter followers in order to make it seem like more people are invested in their business or interested in following their brand.

But what are all of the motivating factors behind why people buy Twitter followers?

You Look Important (Social Proof)

Let's get real. Brands with thousands of Twitter followers look more important and more credible than brands with a few hundred, am I right?

This is always a driving factor in why people want to buy Twitter followers, especially when they're starting up a new company or Twitter profile.

Followers are considered a vanity metric for a reason – they make you feel good.

Others Are More Likely to Follow (Social Proof)

Another reason is that people are more likely to follow accounts with a lot of followers. Without further investigation, it can immediately give an account more credibility.

A high follower count can be a lot like social proof, making your brand seem even more legitimate, and helping to increase your followers even more.

It's Cheap And Easy

There are tons of sites out there – albeit sketchy ones – where you can go to buy followers. And the process is easy, and it doesn't always cost a ton of money to do so. If you go do a google search for this right now I guarantee you'll find hundreds of sites selling fake followers.

followers for sale

You're Trying to Grow Engagement

At a fundamental level we all know that you need followers in order to get your tweets seen. It's the first step to increasing the interaction on your timeline. But the reality is that broad promotion or buying followers is very unlikely to grow engagement. You need to do very specific things in order to grow that side of the house.

Everyone Does It

Mob mentality, right? Everyone else is buying followers, so why shouldn't you?

Why You Shouldn't Buy Twitter Followers

Let's dive into why you should not, even if it does seem like everyone else is buying followers and exponentially increasing their follower count.

Those Are Fake Followers

Twitter does not allow the sale of followers, so any service offering to sell you a fixed number of followers is most certainly selling fakes. Twitter only allows legitimate advertising and marketing services, and even they have rules to follow.

When you pay $5 for 100 followers, that operator is selling you fakes. They are not real followers. They're not real accounts run by real people, and they're doing nothing to help your business, your reach, or your engagement.

People Can Tell You Have Fake Followers

The worst part about the fact that these followers are fake is that people can tell that they are fake. Anyone who happens to look through the list of people following you will see a bunch of profiles with no profile photo and spammy looking bios. This causes you to lose credibility and could potentially cause you to lose followers or customers in the long run.

(Side note: People can't use twiends until they have set up a profile photo.)

fake account

It Could Be a Scam

Some of these sites are fishy. You could potentially fall for a fake site, send them a bunch of money for a high follower account, and get completely scammed.

Because bots and buying followers are bad social media practices, there's no way to guarantee a legitimate purchase.

These Followers Will Eventually Be Removed

Every so often, Twitter does a big sweep of the old dormant accounts on its platform. When this happens, you're undoubtedly going to see a major drop in those followers that you paid good money for.

Don't lose your money. Instead, invest in getting real, quality Twitter followers who won't have their accounts deleted in a spring cleaning of the platform.

Twitter Doesn't Allow It

Probably the biggest reason as to why you shouldn't buy followers is that Twitter doesn't allow it. Buying followers is against their terms of use, and doing so could result in your account being suspended or shut down.

twitter suspended

Twitter's policies clearly state, "You may not use Twitter's services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people's experience on Twitter.";

Don't risk your entire Twitter profile over a few shoddy followers. Instead, focus on building real, genuine connections with people who are actually interested in your business and buying what you're selling.

Grow an Authentic Twitter Following

You know what this means. You have to put in the work and actually grow your Twitter following the hard way.

Ultimately, you'll feel much better once you generate a loyal following of engaged users. And you can use Twiends to help you along every step of the way.

Twiends™ uses the Twitter™ API, displays it's logo & trademarks, and is not endorsed or certified by them. These items remain the property of Twitter. We do not sell followers, we only provide display advertising. Bots & fake accounts are not permitted on twiends. © 2009
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