what really happens when you buy instagram followers keep watching to find out [Music] people are always trying to give you free stuff your friends want to take photos with you and rihanna dm's you a heart eye emoji we wanted to know so we tried it out ourselves to find out what life is like with one extra thousand followers keep watching to find out how to buy instagram followers where to buy them and how many gucci bags we got sent after this hey i'm eileen from kutsui's social media team and this is hootsuite's labs where we teach you the science of social media marketing how it works and how to be successful buying instagram followers it's tempting it's easy it's pretty cheap and it's hard not to think whether you should sneak over to the dark side just this once just the swans which is why every few years at hootsuite we run this experiment where we buy some followers and see what's new in the world of fakes and bots but before we walk you through the process remember we're trained professionals with years of experience with a prepaid credit card a burner account and safety goggles once you see the risk you'll understand why buying instagram followers is truly a terrible idea whether you're a social pro building your brand or an inspiring influencer instagram been cracking down on bots for years now which means it's become easier to buy them because you don't have to down an app or hand over your account password on the other hand the chances of getting caught is higher and the consequences are severe still we couldn't stop imagining a life with so many followers so here's what you have to do the first task is finding a service that isn't a phishing scam there are hundreds maybe thousands of sites out there and we'll send you oodles of fake followers for a price and we comb through a bunch of them though we won't list them here we ended up trying to we tested mr insa's free trial offer for 25 real followers a lot of sites try to differentiate themselves by promising high quality or real followers but they're all the same this service was strange because it actually required that we follow 10 instagram accounts including a sandwich shop a hair salon in dubai a baby influencer and a person named brovaper our 25 followers showed up and they were obvious fakes certainly not real by any stretch of the imagination so mr insta is actually just more effort for the same crappy fake followers after that we tested a femoid which offers 100 percent exclusive safe and natural methods famwood isn't any better or cheaper than any other service but so far they haven't stolen our credit card info and that's actually a big plus in the space so after you've found your service it's pretty simple how many followers do you want a thousand fifteen thousand next enter your instagram handle and email address decide if you want to buy some likes while you're at it in theory this is supposed to help you make your followers look less fake but it doesn't work more on that later enter your credit card and bill information and that's it assure your instagram followers increase but nothing else happens um they don't like your post they don't leave comments or click the link in your bio they just hang around looking extremely fake and your number of followers gradually decline but if you're still watching here are three reasons to not buy instagram followers so does buying followers work for 26.99 usc we got exactly what we were promised around a thousand followers and 200 likes on each of the four posts that we specified here are the three reasons why this was all a waste of time and money and a high risk activity that will damage our account in the long run fake followers will hurt your engagement and reach the first people who see your posts are your followers and if your followers are bots that don't engage instagram marks this as unappealing and boring this means in the long term your posts aren't reaching real people that actually care about your brand number two it's a really bad look if you're an influencer brands will notice that followers are fake in fact brands routinely run checks to make sure they're not wasting their budgets on people with fake followers real instagram influencers are out there googling how to get rid of these fake followers meanwhile if you're a brand your customers will notice sooner or later you'll seem desperate at best and untrustworthy at worst number three instagram might suspend or delete your account creating a fake account is explicitly forbidden by instagram community guidelines so bots or ghosts are regularly purged if you bought followers you may get a warning your instagram account might be temporally disabled or instagram might just delete your account entirely here's what to do instead of buying instagram followers rather than spending those 50 bucks on fake followers consider what you can do to grow your account organically upgrade your skills or tech take a photography course buy photo editing software or buy a mic people want great content and that should always be your main focus experiment with ads to reach new eyeballs perhaps run a paid media campaign to share top performing pose to people with the same existing audience this is one of the most effective ways to expand your reach use an scam scheduler to post at the right time at peak engagement you can sign up for a free 30-day hootsuite trial check out the link in the description down below and if you watched this far make sure you give us a thumbs up click that notification bell to know when our next video is live and leave us a comment down below tell us what weird instagram services you've tried or what you want us to try next see you guys thanks for watching [Music] you