Buying Instagram Likes: Good idea or bad idea?

This week, I interviewed Paul Jamil, with the startup Vibbi,  to learn more about quickly growing a genuine, real Instagram following.  

Our services help clients find  up to 10k real followers, so I raise an eyebrow on companies like his that say buying followers is an alternative.  

​I always worried that buying followers might hurt my profile's engagement due to fake followers.  So I asked him all about it...

Before we jump into the interview, let me tell you about the startup.  Vibbi used to be in the the Internet & Technology space and helps businesses increase Instagram views.  They work primarily with large corporate clients.

Matt: How long have you been with Vibbi?
Paul:  6 months

Matt: And what is your role with them?
Paul: I'm the SEO for the startup and help improve it's position in organic search

Matt:  Being in charge of SEO for the company, what do your duties look like? What keywords do you target and why?
Paul: The big terms for us here are ‘Buy Instagram Likes’, ‘Buy Instagram Followers’ etc. We’re good at what we do so we can target the big money keywords. 
Essentially good content, good optimization and good backlinks are the things that we know help us dominate.

Matt:  ​What is the most challenging part about what you do? How do you overcome that challenge?
Paul: Showing people the value of our product. One of the big things is it creates trust and interest. By adding followers and likes you create something that looks interesting and draws people's attention.

Matt:  How can purchased likes help a business get more views? Are the views from fake profile or real people? 
Paul: Our views, followers and likes are high quality ones, with a high rate of retention. We’ve worked with everyone from Fortune 500 businesses to small mom and pop shops. We’ve found our services help make Instagram pages look more popular and created a buzz, allowing these companies to then succeed in the real world. 

Matt:  I've heard that social media companies can ban profiles for having a large amount of fake followers, or sometimes delete fake profiles. Would this put a startup at risk if they buy thousands of fake followers from you?
Paul: It really depends on the quality of the likes or followers. As I mentioned above, ours are the highest end and so there’s minimal risk involved. Lower priced companies use bots and these simply don’t last the test of time. 

Matt:  What are other benefits of buying followers besides "creating something that looks interesting and draws people's attention."
Paul: Likes and followers, as well as views can help make accounts look more popular in algorithms and this helps boost presence on platforms such as Instagram. 

Matt:  What is something businesses on Instagram should be careful with?
Paul: Many businesses on Instagram spend a lot of time being quite generic in the message they put across – it just doesn’t fly. If your account is like 100 others, why would people want to follow it. Find a unique proposition – that’s my advice. 

Matt: Could you tell me an example of how it created buzz? With my experience, having 10,000 followers doesn’t mean anything unless they’re engaged fans, or potential customers. 
Paul: Businesses with more followers tend to look more popular and as such people feel they’re missing out on an account that could be important and offers a lot. Team up more followers with a quality account with good content, so it looks legitimate, and you’ll find you’re far more likely to get more fans.

Matt: What makes yours high quality?
Paul: I can’t tell you the secret sauce, but unlike other sellers who sell low cost accounts, ours are higher quality. A lot of lower costing services use bots on accounts that don’t look real or could instantly be seen for what they are. Ours look real and perform like the real thing.

Matt: Do you have a way to measure popularity? Or, a tip on how the algorithms work with a specific number or goal for aspiring Instagrammers?
Paul: The algorithm utilizes 3 factors
·  Timing: How recently your photo/video has been shared.
·  Engagement: The amount of likes and comments your post generated.
·  Previous interactions: How often the person interacted with your posts in the past.
Of these we can alter two of them through the buying of views, followers and likes. This alongside quality content creates leverage and new likes and views on an account. In turn, this success helps create more success.

Here at Handshakin' we haven't advised clients to buy followers, since we only know of risks and don't' see measurable results. We have several Instagram accounts that we use to market to Instagram users (@handshakinshow, @handshakinpodcast, @handshakin, @pitchbattles etc.). 

After this interview with Paul, I've decided to put one of our Instagram accounts to the test with their service since we are always experimenting to find the best Instagram marketing strategies for our clients.  Both @handshakin and @handshakinshow have around 10k followers, and have been pretty consistent in their growth for several months.  November 2016, I'm going to purchase followers, and will give an update here in February 2017 on any results or problems I ran into.  

Contact me if you'd like to hear about my relationship with Vibbi.  They contacted me from Fiverr, a marketplace where you can order services.  Check ours out here.