Why are People Paying for Twitter followers?

As is the case with everything you do online, it’s a bad idea to rush into buying Twitter followers. You need to be sure that you’re aware of what it is for, what it isn’t for, and what the consequences may be. There are good points to this practice, but there are also downfalls that you need to be aware of.
This article seeks to show you the truth behind Twitter follower services so that you know what it is you’re dealing with. A simple “pros and cons” approach will be taken.

The pros for buying Twitter followers

 

Social Proof – Basic psychology 101
Basic psychological concepts apply just as readily to online marketing efforts as they do to offline marketing. Social proof is the concept that looks at the credibility of an idea based on the number of people who support it. Think of it as peer pressure, but with numbers.
The number of Twitter followers you have is the variable in this concept. More followers means that you have more of a trusted voice. This will bring even more people to your account as they trust your voice.

Twitter followers are an easy and cheap way to start your account

Having a large following on Twitter takes time. But it will take you more time to get those first few hundred followers than it will to get any others. Accounts with a big ZERO under their follower column stay that way for a long time as they build their audience. Some never get off the ground.
Buying those first few followers is cheaper than all of the time you’ll invest in getting your numbers up.

Jumping on the bandwagon

This is a bit like social proof, but is related to people watching your numbers rise and then wanting to join in. For example, someone could come across your account and see that you have 300 followers and ignore you. That same person could come across another one your tweets a month, two months, or however longer later on and see that you now have 1500 followers. You can then be seen as successful and capture that person this time.

Buying Twitter followers is a common practice

Many of the most popular account on Twitter have been pumped up by followers that have been bought. There’s no law against doing it, so successful Twitter accounts from RiRi, to President Obama have some paid for followers on their account.
RiRi herself is rumoured to have as high as 70% of her followers inactive and possibly bought. This fact doesn’t make me dance around like a fool any less harder when “Pout it Up” plays at the club. Reliable providers will also be anonymous, so that no one will ever know who actually bought the follower for the account.

This is just another piece of online marketing

You can pay for a Twitter Ad Campaign to get more followers, which puts money in Twitter’s bank account and comes with mixed results. Buying Twitter followers is a marketing tactic taken on by those who want to pay for additional marketing beyond their current tactics. At the end of the day, marketing is spending money to influence behavior, and that’s what Twitter follower services provide.

The Cons for buying Twitter followers

They will not be real followers

All that you’re paying for is for that number under you Follower heading to be higher. You will not be getting followers that actually care about your company, or interact with you. Some may retweet your tweets, but that will be an automated process.

Your Klout score will not raise

Your Klout score will not go up by much, if it goes up by any number at all, when you buy followers. Klout measures real interaction and influence over a crowd of online users. Twitter followers that you purchase rarely interact with you in any way.
This is why it is possible for someone with 3000 followers to have a higher Klout score than someone with 10,000 followers. The person with 3000 followers has more interaction with the followers on their account.

You could suffer a small slight to your account

This point is debatable as it can be shown that a number of accounts have inactive followers that were likely bought. The problem is finding proof, and since good providers don’t expose who has bought from them, and are anonymous, there isn’t any proof to be had. Be aware that you could face some small scorn if you’re found to have purchased some.

Some providers are scams

There are a few follower providers out there who are scam artists, saying they provide you with a certain number of followers but never delivering. Since their services are anonymous, and their customers don’t want to be identified, nothing is ever done about it.
If you want to learn more, beyond pros and cons, and learn about individual providers, check out this Devumi review, or just poke around more on that review site to learn about other providers there. Being sure that the provider you’re choosing is not a scam is a wise move. Being ripped off is about as small an amount of fun as I can think of!