Why are celebrities accused of buying followers?

Social media is a race, think a long marathon, and the people who go the farthest in followers are the winners. While not everybody may think like that, there's no denying that big numbers can work magic for your career. Almost everyone has wanted more followers at some point in time.

Celebrities are naturally bound to have many people following their Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages. The social media world is deeply intertwined with the real world, and popularity in one place pretty much guarantees popularity in the other as well. So, people who start as bloggers, YouTubers, and Instagram influencers often become celebrities in their own right.

Growing an audience isn't all that easy, though. Infact, true viral successes are sporadic, and for most people, it takes a couple of years to get their foot in the door. It's a really competitive market out there. That's one of the reasons why buying followers is such a prevalent practice among celebs and influencers.

Why buy social media followers?

Some might say the mega-famous celebrities don't have any need for fake followers since they already have many real ones. The answer is - No, the competition continues even at the highest levels. With a greater following comes more authority. Politicians running for presidents, such as Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, have been accused of buying Twitter followers.

In a news report by TechRepublic, both Clinton and Trump have been found out to be followed by hundreds of thousands of accounts with no tweets, or descriptions, followers of their own, or location - meaning bots. Other presidential candidates, like Mitt Romney, also have been accused of buying followers. A greater number of followers here doesn't necessarily mean more political credibility. Still, it sure does indicate popular consensus, which is a great asset to have by your side.

Famous tv personalities, actors, and singers also have barrages of bought followers. Like Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, and Kim Kardashian are accused of amassing the largest numbers of paid-for followers. Nearly half of their followers' accounts were either bots, dead accounts, or fake ones. Because these celebs are mega-popular and constantly in the news, their social media accounts are under the most scrutiny. Thousands of influencers and bloggers who have bought followers fly under the radar.

None of the bigger celebs have owned up to buying followers, though. Most have excused themselves by claiming that the bots targeted them instead. Some claimed that it was their secretaries and employees that bought it for them unbeknownst to them. No matter how they got those followers, though, they do benefit from the big numbers. Record labels are more eager to fund singers with large followings with large budgets, more sought out actors on social media are paid more, so on and so forth.

Where do they buy followers from?

There are different types of follower accounts you can buy online. There are ones that follow you but do not engage, and there are others that like, comment, share and retweet your account regularly. Twitter bots can even be programmed to tweet out at specific time intervals. The latter is slightly more expensive than the earlier ones but still very cheap on the grand scale. Some multiple companies and websites sell followers, e.g., www.buylikesservices.com.

Why does buying bot followers work?

There is a psychological theory behind this phenomenon, which explains why buying fake accounts increases your organic, authentic audience. It's called Social Proof. It basically implies that people are very likely to follow the herd mentality and go for the popular choice for decisions of little importance or consequences rather than examining all the options by themselves and going for the better choice.

Say, for example, you are looking for the recipe for blueberry muffins. On the internet, you find two blogs that detail the same recipe. One of them has been reblogged hundreds of times, and the other one only a couple of times. Most people will go with the more popular one regardless of which blog actually has the more accurate answer to your problem. The decision feels intuitive, and our mind reasons it by arguing that the first blog must be popular because it has better recipes.

On the internet, fake news is getting so prevalent because it spreads like wildfire and gets popular. Since thousands of people have liked the fake news article, we also believe it. That's how Social Proof works. So, if an influencer buys followers, they are more likely to follow them just because they already have a good following. It eventually snowballs into more and more people engaging with your content. Soon enough, there is a real following of people, which translates into huge sums of money for you.

What are the advantages of buying followers?

1). To kick start one's online presence - As mentioned earlier, getting those initial few thousand followers is a tough job and can take years. If you buy the initial bunch and then advertise your content a little bit, you will attract people to your page like flies to honey.

2). It's not just the influencers who can profit from this idea; businesses can also get it. Your online shop will start to flourish, and you will find a customer base whose demands match your supplies.

3). Increases more organic growth - Having a good follower count will increase people's curiosity about your page. They will check out your page, and if you continue to make good content, they will follow you, and soon you will form a nice fanbase for your work.

4). More collaboration work - Big influencers, bloggers, YouTubers, and other internet celebrities often collaborate among themselves. This way, both parties are introduced to each other's audiences, benefitting both. The more followers you have, the more new followers you are going to attract.

5). Algorithms boost you - It's no secret that social media works on algorithms that boost posts and creators who are popular, create solid content, and engage with their audience. If you have a large following, your posts will be shared more, and the algorithms will make you go viral more.

6). Revenue from working with brands - The greater number of followers and engagement you have on social media, the more money you are paid per post to promote brands and companies. Brands also want to work with people with big numbers. So buying followers can get you a lot of income opportunities.

7). Easy building of cross-platform following - If you buy followers, likes, and views on your different platforms strategically, you can build big cross-platform audiences. Buy followers on each platform separately, grow them to real numbers, and transfer those audiences to your other pages increasing numbers on all of them.

8). Easy to access and affordable - Buying followers on the internet is super easy and completely legal. Success on social media is just a few clicks away. You can buy followers from websites on the internet at super affordable prices. You can get yourself followers, for literal pennies.

Organic reach is dropping due to sponsorships and ads - Buying a chunk of their following online has almost become necessary these days. Organic reach on social media platforms has decreased from 16% to about 6.5%. Desperate times call for clever methods, and buying followers helps increase your reach quite a lot.

In bloggers' defense -

Although big-name celebrities won't admit to buying followers if their reputation is tarnished, since many people consider the practice a bit shady, a blogger from LA admitted to Vox to buy followers. She bought 5000 followers to start her career, and those followers helped her get work with local boutiques. Slowly she took off, and now she boasts of the platform of 40K authentic followers.

Conclusion: Celebs and influencers have been buying followers on social media for years now. Even though some people don't approve of the practice, it is legal to buy followers. The social platforms are changing their algorithms and interface a lot, killing small pages' engagement. Thus, people have no choice but to buy followers to get ahead of the crowd and beat the system.

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Why are celebrities accused of buying followers?

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