Followers & Likes – Worth It or a Big Mistake?

[SuSocial]

Hey everyone,

We’ve seen many services offering cheap social media followers and likes. If you ever need to go that route, they are called SMM panels.
Is buying followers or likes ever a good idea? Does it actually help with growth, or does it just kill engagement?

Personally, I would say they will just kill your engagement, but I'm curious if there are some specific scenarios where people use them to serve a specific purpose (social proof may be one of them).
I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences:

• Have you (or someone you know) bought followers? What happened?
• Are there any "safe" ways to use fake engagement, or is it all bad?

 

[Champagne]

There was a time when buying followers, likes, or views was helpful. However, that time was about 7–8 years ago. Nowadays, it's only useful for churn-and-burn projects where you need to display a lot of social proof as quickly as possible. The only exception to this is if you have your own farm and can control the quality of the engagement. That would be the only approach that might still work. But it's a lot of work, and you really need to understand the algorithm of the social media platform very well.

• Have you (or someone you know) bought followers? What happened?

Yes, the engagement dropped, and the account was shadowbanned. That was already years ago, and these were advertised as "HQ." You never control the quality unless you own it yourself.

• Are there any "safe" ways to use fake engagement, or is it all bad?

A lot of it is bad and just plain reselling. The only safe way would be, as I mentioned above, you either own everything yourself or you know that the quality of the service is really good. Then, it is good to start very slow with the engagement. Dripfeed options are a good way to do this.

 

[Octavia]

Hey everyone,

We’ve seen many services offering cheap social media followers and likes. If you ever need to go that route, they are called SMM panels.
Is buying followers or likes ever a good idea? Does it actually help with growth, or does it just kill engagement?

Personally, I would say they will just kill your engagement, but I'm curious if there are some specific scenarios where people use them to serve a specific purpose (social proof may be one of them).
I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences:

• Have you (or someone you know) bought followers? What happened?
• Are there any "safe" ways to use fake engagement, or is it all bad?

For Crypto projects likes/follows are still king on X, but anywhere else not really that helpful.
On Youtube for example you will just kill your channels reach.
On IG it can still work but only after you've gone viral at least once ( >100k views on reels)