Some people swear this is the only way to grow a sizable audience on any social media. Others say to avoid it like the plague. It seems more and more common to receive a random message from a stranger that is selling followers. With the outstanding claims that they make, what can you believe? We will debunk 4 myths that people who sell fake followers may claim.

MYTH 1: You can spend $10 to build up a following that would normally take years to build up otherwise. No hassle, no effort, just results.

REALITY: If you buy followers, you receive none of the benefits of social media and having real followers. They won’t engage with or share your content. They won’t visit your website, and they definitely won’t buy your product or service. Using best practices on social media to gain your followers will take much more time, but you can develop relationships, and brand ambassadors that help you advertise by sharing and engaging with your content, and you will be reaching out to real customers.

MYTH 2: When people visit your page to see that you have 10,000 followers already, they will think it is a healthy account with many benefits to following.

REALITY: An account with purchased follows or likes is more transparent than some might think. If you have 10,000 followers and only follow 10 people, you will appear to not engage your followers at all. When people see no engagement or see constant advertising they will not follow, and they will probably also assume that your followers are purchased. To illustrate how people will view your business, consider this. If you had the opportunity to purchase a huge building for your business that was 20 times bigger than what you needed, but was a fantastic price would you buy it? People may see a huge building with your name on it but if there are never cars in the parking lot, it will look like it has been abandoned or is going out of business. There are also many websites that can show you how many fake followers an account has.

MYTH 3: Every profitable business buys fake followers. If you don’t your competition is getting further and further ahead of you.

REALITY: Many profitable businesses ‘buy’ followers but rarely fake ones. If you are willing to spend money to grow your reach, you are much better off promoting posts and your account to get real targeted followers. If your competitors are buying fake followers, you don’t need to worry that they are getting ahead. Your real followers are infinitely more important than their fake ones.

MYTH 4: Buying fake followers is the only way to grow your reach quickly and inexpensively.

REALITY: Unfortunately I don’t have any miracle solution to offer here, but buying fake followers only appears to grow your reach. In reality it only clouds your perception of how many you reach. Now that you have so many fake followers, how can you measure how many real people you reach? You can’t. What if you want to get rid of your fake followers in the future? Some media allow you to block individual accounts, but you have to weed through them one at a time. You might have to start completely from scratch or scrutinize 10,000 profiles to see which are fake.

Would you want to do business with someone who was obviously misrepresenting themselves and their business? Likely you would not. If people see that you have a fake following, likely they will actually be drawn away from your business, not to it.