There is a thriving industry for buying and selling social media accounts. It’s not hard to understand why. Building a social media account from scratch takes so much time. You can imagine how long it would take you to boost an Instagram account’s followers and engagement rates.
And that’s why some businesses opt to acquire existing social media accounts while others choose to buy Instagram followers. Either way, this is usually a great way to accelerate results.
But as you can imagine, buying the wrong social media account can be a huge mistake. Therefore, this is something you want to approach carefully. In this review, we’ll share four tips to help you buy a social media account that’ll benefit your business long-term.
3 Benefits of Buying A Social Media Account
Before going into what you need to do to ensure you’re buying the right account, let’s quickly go over why this is a reasonable route to take. So, here are the three major benefits of buying a social media account:
- Unlimited access to a great audience
Purchasing a popular social media account can give you access to a large and engaged audience. If the account is well-known and has a large following within a particular niche, it can be an effective way to promote your product or service to a targeted group of potential customers.
However, it’s vital to consider whether the account’s followers match your customer persona. This is critical as it ensures that you can reach your ideal audience through the account effectively.
Essentially, it’s not just a matter of purchasing an account. Sure, buying one will give you instant access to an audience. However, that won’t be beneficial if the audience is not your ideal customer base.
Therefore, you must buy a social media account whose followers match your target customer to get the most value out of the account.
- Have complete control over the posts
Collaborating with influencers is very beneficial. After all, the content generated by influencers is known to perform better than brand-generated content. That’s one of the many reasons 97% of brands have partnered with influencers at some point.
Unfortunately, influencer marketing can also be costly. Plus, influencers will not give you complete autonomy with their accounts. There’s only so much they can publish about your brand.
These are all issues you can resolve by acquiring the accounts. When you purchase a social media account with a large following, you get complete control over the account. This allows you to run the campaigns how you like. You can, hence, promote your business in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had you decided to partner with the account owner.
That said, you should know that social media users tend to be sensitive about the type of content shared by the accounts they follow. Therefore, if you decide to go on a promotional spree, chances are you’ll lose some of these followers.
To prevent this, avoid posting promotional content alone. Mix up your social media content calendar to ensure you publish content types that can educate and entertain your followers.
- Saves marketing costs
One of the main benefits of buying a social media account is the ability to reach a targeted and engaged audience at little to no cost. This is particularly true if you’re a new business that wants to reach a larger audience. In such cases, your options are usually limited to influencer marketing and paid ads, both of which can be very expensive.
Buying a social media account requires a considerable investment upfront. However, it is a long-term investment that pays for itself, especially if you buy the right account.
We also can’t ignore the fact that buying a social media account saves you time. As mentioned earlier, building an account from scratch can take months or even years. Buying one helps you bypass this process.
Where to Find Social Media Accounts for Sale
You know why buying a social media account is a good idea. But do you know where to find good social media accounts worth buying? Here’s where:
- Use the help of a third-party company
If you’re the type of person who likes to play it safe, you might want to consider using a third-party company that specializes in buying and selling social media accounts.
These companies typically act as a go-between, scrutinizing an account’s numbers (such as followers, engagement, and audience segmentation) to provide you with as much information as possible before the purchase.
While these companies tend to charge more than buying directly from the account holder, they often offer some level of security and guarantees regarding the transfer of login information and payments. This prevents you from losing your money which can happen if you decide to purchase the account directly from the owner.
Moreover, the best 3rd party companies tend to do a thorough background check of the accounts on behalf of buyers. They’ll scrutinize the account for fake followers, for example. Doing this yourself can be quite difficult and time-consuming.
That said, you should know that most of these sites don’t disclose the exact account name before the purchase to prevent undercutting themselves.
There are different third-party vendors of social media accounts. We’ll cover one of them, Flippa, later in the article.
- Manually search for social media accounts
This is the perfect option if you prefer to handle things independently and avoid using an intermediary.
One of the main advantages of finding and buying an account on your own is that you can make the first offer and set the starting point for negotiations. Also, it can be cheaper to buy a social media account directly from the owner, unlike through go-betweens, who typically add charges for their services.
When looking for an Instagram account to purchase, look for an active page in your niche. Let’s assume you want to market an eCommerce store that sells beauty products for young women. The ideal account for you should have the appropriate young demographic, mostly made up of women.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to market a B2B SaaS product and your target audience is marketers or business owners. In such a case, you’ll want to look for a social media account with such an audience. You can easily get some of these details by analyzing the analytics. More on that later.
To put it simply, go for an account that has a high number of followers and has been relatively inactive lately.
The idea here is that you may be able to find an account owner who is too busy to keep the page active and would be willing to sell the account for a good price.
One way to find these types of accounts is to search for popular hashtags. A little digging may help you uncover high-follower, low-activity accounts that are open to selling.
4 Tips to Help you Buy Social Media Accounts Safely
Now to the best part. Here are four things you must keep in mind when purchasing a social media account:
- Know about fake followers
One of the biggest issues with the rise in popularity of influencer marketing is the buying of fake followers. Social media account owners may be inclined to buy followers to increase an account’s perceived popularity and value.
This practice is quite common, but there are ways to determine whether an account’s followers are fake.
One way to do that is to examine the number of likes a post receives. If an account has tons of followers, but the posts get very few likes, chances are they may have some fake followers.
Unfortunately, some fake account services have become more sophisticated and may even “like” posts and leave comments on behalf of their clients. To catch this, read through the comments on the account’s posts. If many of the comments are generic and vague, such as “Great post!” it’s possible that they are fake engagements.
You can even go further and investigate some of the accounts leaving comments. Do those have any other activities? If not, you’re probably looking at a fake account.
Finally, consider investing in tools that scan for fake social media followers. These include tools such as Hype Auditor and Analisa.
It may take some time to thoroughly assess the authenticity of an account’s followers, but doing so can be valuable in making informed decisions.
- Ensure to make secure payments
If you choose to complete a transaction without using a third-party service, make sure to use a payment service that offers protection against disputes and allows for refunds.
PayPal Goods & Services is a great example of a payment service that provides this level of security.
With that said, note that PayPal payments done using the Friends and Family transfer option does not allow for refunds.
- Check the analytics
Many social media platforms, including Instagram, provide their users with insights into their own accounts.
For example, Facebook and Instagram offer business accounts access to insights with details on the demographics of their audience (such as gender, age group, and location). This can be useful for determining whether the account’s audience aligns with your buyer persona.
Moreover, these insights can provide information on engagement numbers, which can help you determine the authenticity of the account’s followers and assess the audience’s engagement level. Ideally, you want to go for an account with an engagement rate of between 2 to 5%.
- Change the login credentials
Lastly, make sure to change the login information for a social media account as soon as you’ve completed the purchase. This involves creating a new email and password for the account to ensure the previous owner cannot lock you out of the account.
Essentially, take full ownership of the account. Change those logins and start using the account on your website, email, digital business card, and other company assets.
How to Buy Social Media Accounts on Flippa
Flippa is one of the largest online marketplaces for buying and selling online businesses and digital assets like websites and apps. While it’s yet to introduce a dedicated section for buying and selling social media accounts, Flippa allows users to buy websites with their accompanying social media accounts.
Therefore, while you may be looking for a social media account, buying one through Flippa gives you access to additional assets like a website, which gives you more value.
The Flippa marketplace also has a reputation for offering a high volume of new listings every week, making it a good resource for finding undervalued assets.
The drawback with Flippa is it can be time-consuming and expensive if your sole goal is to acquire a good social media account.
In Closing
Buying a social media account is a sensible move in business. It speeds up your growth process significantly. But, of course, it’ll only be beneficial if you do it correctly.
In this article, you’ve learned how to safely buy a social media account. Scrutinize the account for fake followers, check the account’s analytics, and make the payment using a secure vendor that supports refunds. Finally, make sure to change the login credentials after completing the deal.
