Can you Legitimately use Instagram Growth Services?

Instagram has shown to be a highly effective tool for marketers. Influencers have been using Instagram for years now to carve out successful careers.

Brands, influencers, and regular people use the platform to show their services or to simply post photos of events, and selfies.

For the average user, growing an audience isn’t necessarily a priority. These accounts will often be followed by friends and family and will attract other interested followers.

However, for an influencer or a business, audience growth is essential. Without a following, brand awareness cannot grow.

Users are always looking for tips for more Instagram followers, and growth services offer one possible solution.

Is it safe and legitimate to use one of these growth services though?

Who uses Instagram today?

This highly popular platform has now been around for more than a decade. It took nearly 8 years before it achieved 1 billion monthly active users. Around the same amount of time that Facebook hit their 1 billion mark.

Now though, there are slightly more users. In December 2021, CNBC reported that Instagram had hit the 2 billion mark for monthly active users.

Instagram users cover a wide range of ages. Yet the majority of users are within two age ranges. The biggest user group is between 25 and 34. The next biggest group are 18 years to 24.

After these two age groups, the active users start to drop significantly.

It isn’t just individuals who use Instagram though. Big brands have made use of the platform for successful marketing campaigns. Doritos, Nike, and famous influencers such as Huda Kattan have large followings.

Why use a growth service for your Instagram account?

Brands such as Nike have no need for a growth service. Their brand is instantly recognizable and known all across the world.

A small start-up, or someone keen to become an influencer, however, will be less well known.

They might find themselves struggling to grow their audience, and there is plenty of competition too.

Users often find themselves reaching a certain level of following, and then stalling. Audiences can appear to plateau, and fail to grow again for months. They may even start reducing.

Using Instagram growth services can mean kickstarting an account and gaining more followers quickly.

Is it safe to try one of these growth services?

You will find many opposing views on the internet regarding these growth services.

The first thing to understand is that you will not go to jail for using one. No one will be banging on your door and handcuffing you for using a growth service.

There are no laws surrounding Instagram growth services of any kind. Except for the ones that Instagram themselves have written, that is.

Buying followers and views are prohibited by the user’s terms of service for Instagram.

This puts Instagram growth services in a murky area.

What are the concerns with using a growth service?

According to Statista, Christiano Ronaldo has the largest Instagram following of any user.

Just like Nike, Ronaldo is hugely famous and needs no help in growing his audience. You may feel differently.

However, before launching yourself into growing your audience by spending on one of these services, you should look at the problems you may receive.

Some growth services use fake accounts to boost audiences. This can lead to some issues with your existing followers, and potentially with customers.

For example, if you are an influencer and have been approached by a brand to help with promotion, they would want to know you have a good audience. You may explain that you have 10,000 followers, and perhaps this is perfect for them.

The problem may arise though when your followers don’t engage with your posts of the brand’s products. Why? Because a percentage of them are not genuine.

Your existing following may notice that you have bots and fake accounts too. This could lead to their hard-won loyalty disappearing.

Where can you find legitimate Instagram growth services?

Just because there are issues with bots and fake accounts, doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate growth services.

Search for a growth service that promises that they will not use fake accounts or bots. You should seek out services that promise organic engagement, and if you can, personal account managers.

Although some of these services can be costly, they may offer a temporary solution if you find your growth has stalled.

Some of the better growth services are as follows:

• Growthsilo
• Growthoid
• Nitreo
• Kicksta
• Seek Socially

Many services will offer free trials which are certainly appealing. This might not perhaps be the best choice though.

Any service that offers a free trial is going to have to produce results fast. If you aren’t impressed with the service, you won’t take out a subscription, will you?

Why is this a problem? Because if you grow your following too fast you could end up falling foul of Instagram’s rules.

Suspicious activity such as sudden growths in your following may lead to your account being investigated. Read below to see what may happen in these circumstances.

What could happen to your account if you use a growth service?

As previously mentioned, there are no legal concerns with using a growth service. But this doesn’t mean that Instagram won’t come down on you.

A legitimate growth service, such as Growthoid, will avoid fake followers. They search for people and accounts that will engage and have a genuine interest in your posts.

This leads to genuine organic growth. Yet, not all growth services work this way. If you end up adding fake followers or bots through lesser growth services it could backfire.

There are four possible outcomes to using a poor growth service, suspension, banning, and shadowbanning, which are the worst results. Of course, you may slip by and continue to run your account fine, albeit with a largely fake following.

Suspension

If you receive a suspension, this may only be for a short period of time. Sometimes accounts are barred for 24 or 48 hours only, especially for a first offense.

Banning

This means being completely barred from the platform. Although, like a suspension, this may not mean permanently. Donald Trump received a two-year ban from Instagram and Facebook, with the possibility of reinstatement of his accounts later on.

Shadowbanning

This refers to the alleged practice of reducing the effectiveness of an Instagram account. Why allegedly? Because Instagram denies it is a real practice.

Depending on who you believe, shadowbanning will result in followers not seeing hashtags or posts, and accounts being invisible on searches.

For anyone looking to grow their audience, this is obviously a total disaster.

Summary

When you are looking at how to easily boost likes on your Instagram page, gain more views, or grow your audience, it is easy to consider a shortcut.

It can take a lot of hard work to gain a legitimate following on this platform. That isn’t to say that you should resort to dodgy methods of growing your audience though.

Fortunately, legitimate growth services do exist. Avoid bots and fake accounts, and be aware of false promises. Some growth services will promise to boost your audience by tens of thousands, but these will likely be fake and may get you banned.

Look for testimonials and reviews before signing up to any growth service, and check how long they have been operating.