Since launching our Meet the Doctor podcast, we have seen some suspicious engagement behavior on Instagram coming from some doctor accounts.
Our Instagram account only has about 200 followers, and our posts are highlight clips from our episodes. We don’t care about growing our followers here, it’s just one of many ways we get the word out about the podcast and say thank you to our guests.
Since March, we have created 59 posts, made up of mostly reels and a few “quote posts,” where we take a juicy quote and turn it into an image or a carousel.
We always request a collaboration with our guests, and this is where it gets interesting.
Our three most viewed reels have 6649 likes, 5513 likes, and 4902 likes respectively.
Cool, right? Yeah, we finally figured out how to go viral!
But in our analytics, we can see that the top country our engagement comes from is Uzbekistan, followed by the USA, then Argentina and Kazakhstan. I’m not going to link to the posts here because I don’t want to give the monster any more attention.
Kind of a bummer. 😕
You don’t even have to look at the data to figure out what’s going on.
In the comments, it’s plain as day that the accounts putting up these big numbers are buying followers, or buying engagement, or both. The usernames and comments are nonsensical and bizarre.
You might not ever get caught by Instagram, but what do those real humans who are considering you as their surgeon think about this?
I don’t have hard data to support this, but I know how and why people choose their surgeon and I’m confident that the fake engagement is actually working against you because the real humans find it so distasteful. It makes us feel kind of dirty and it’s so bad for your brand.
And not to mention, what a waste of money.
On the other hand… two of our collabs were total rays of sunshine, and I now know why these two doctors are extremely successful, loved by many, and have tremendous real engagement on Instagram.
With each and every person who commented, these two doctors personally responded quickly and authentically. This simple habit acts as a multiplier that generates more positive comments and more likes.
You can see these two examples here and here.
Here’s just one of hundreds of comments from a superfan:
I am old in internet years, and I have seen it all come and go. Cheating never gets you ahead in the long run. Not on SEO tactics, not on social tactics, not on anything.
Other than an ego boost, what do you gain from distorting your metrics and making prospective patients feel uncomfortable with blatantly fake comments?
Trust is the number one reason patients choose doctors, so why give them such a compelling reason to view you as dishonest?
Trust is the number one reason patients choose doctors, so why give them such a compelling reason to view you as dishonest?
Genuine comments from patients sharing their experiences puts you much further ahead in prospective patients’ eyes than hundreds of comments from bots with zero emotion.
Instagram should be a place to showcase your results, your personality, and your knowledge with no concern for the number of likes each post receives. If you truly care about your reputation, you’ll favor real people who respect and admire you over thousands of random spam accounts that clutter your account so much that they bury authentic interactions.
Nothing good comes out of spending money on fake Instagram engagement. Am I missing some hidden value? Please tell me what I’m missing!
Be a guest on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Learn more and book your free recording session at meetthedoctorpodcast.com or see past guests and follow us on Instagram @meetthedoctorpodcast.