Social Media Tip: Instagram Follow-For-Follow Pitfalls
Instagram Follow-for-Follow tactics are probably one of the most “well-known” and tactics for growing your Instagram and sometimes Twitter following. On one hand, it seems pretty cool to be able to hit a thousand followers in one week. It certainly looks good even though you know follows are vanity metrics.
If we’re being 100% honest, it’s something we’ve used here at For Her Empire to get our Instagram following from 1–50 followers. It’s also something we’re all guilty of to a degree.
So yes, we know the pros and cons of using Instagram Follow-for-Follow to grow a following. It’s also why we’re perfect for talking about this. Are you ready for the truth bomb?
Follow for follow on Instagram or Twitter is only good for making your social media following look less empty and nothing more.
If you’ve just created a new social media account for your business, seeing a follower count of less than 5 can be a bit daunting, in which case you could use f4f to get your follower count to 20–30 after which it’s time to actually post engaging content, and initiate live social media interactions that would help grow your following.
Here’s the downside to Instagram Follow-for-Follow
The kicker though is that followers from F4F do not actually care about your business, they would not engage with your content, visit your website or purchase anything from you. They are also a lot likely to unfollow you after less than a week, which is a bit ironic given that the agreement was a follow for a follow.
This also sadly means that your amazing product and service offering would not resonate with them, and in the end, you’ll end up with a vanity social media profile. One that looks good or impressive, but nothing else.
It’d be frustrating to have a follower count of almost a thousand and less than 10 likes on your post.
Are we saying it’s impossible to grow an engaging and loyal following from Instagram using Follow-for-Follow?
Nothing is really impossible when it comes to the business world, so yes there is a very very slim chance that if the people you do a f4f with are in your industry or in a market you serve, if your content is relevant to them, and interesting enough they’ll engage with you.
But…
You’ll be putting in a lot of work to get them to engage with you as the basis of your “relationship” with them is not based on having any interest in your business or your amazing IG feed, or your awesome freebie.
There’s also the fact that Instagram algorithms do NOT like this tactic and following a lot of people in a short time is more likely to have your account unable to follow or engage with any IG account for a day.
If you want your IG follower count to look less empty you can use this to get your first few followers and then drop that tactic like a hot potato and focus on a proper growth strategy.
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