Should I buy Twitter followers?

Some services offer to sell you Twitter followers, or create them for a fee. I give my advice on the best course of action.

Many people who are new to Twitter and wish to expand their business or marketing influence quickly (especially those who are marketing or promoting a product, service, brand name, or person) see advertisements promising lots of Twitter followers in return for money and ask the question: ‘Should I buy Twitter followers?’ This article intends to answer that question by looking at the advantages and disadvantages and drawing conclusions.

First of all, I would say that it is useful to have a basic idea of what you wish to achieve and the approach that you intend to take when starting out on Twitter. Twitter marketing can be used to sell products, network, build a readership or customer base, promote a name or brand, and many other things. In almost all circumstances your ideal Twitter follower is someone who is either directly interested your product, or at least has an interest in the general area that your marketing is directed at.

Pair of twittering birds

Public domain image (CC0) via pixabay

Advantages of buying Twitter followers

There is one advantage and that is that you get lots of Twitter followers quickly and with minimal effort.

Some Twitter users may well take you more seriously if you have a lot of followers and be more likely to follow you themselves.

There is a threshold that Twitter accounts reach when you are following around 2000 followers. Once you reach that threshold, if you haven’t got a sufficient amount of followers, Twitter won’t allow you to follow any greater number than roughly 2000 people.

Disadvantages of buying Twitter followers

Twitter is generally a free resource and gaining followers the conventional way through networking, tweeting and advertising your Twitter account won’t cost you anything. But by definition, buying Twitter followers will involve spending money (how much money can vary considerably)

The Twitter followers that you get are unlikely to be “targeted”, that’s to say that there is a strong chance that they probably won’t be interested in the product, service, or brand that you are marketing. Random followers are certainly no use if your Twitter account is aimed at a specific niche. For instance, if you are trying to market a plumbing service in Chicago, Twitter followers who live in Mexico, or Australia are of no use to you. Likewise, if you are trying to promote golf equipment, you mainly want followers who are golf players and other followers are of limited or no use.

The Twitter followers that you buy may not actually be active accounts, or they may belong to users who are purely interested in promoting their own product and not in what you are selling or doing. Many Twitter accounts operate without any regular human involvement, having been set up with software that regularly tweets advertisements – these sites are no use as followers.

Conclusion: So should I buy twitter followers?

Looking at the list of advantages and disadvantages, my response to the question would be no, it is not worth buying Twitter followers in most situations. In my opinion, it is generally best to accept that building up a large amount of Twitter followers takes time, especially if you want them to be targeted, and that increasing your followers gradually over a period of several months or more is generally the best approach. (Occasionally, a Twitter account can accrue thousands of followers quickly without much effort, but this situation is relatively rare and generally happens with the Twitter accounts of people such as celebrities, fashionable causes, or accounts related to current events in the news etc.)

Updated: 02/12/2013, PaulGoodman67

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