Disclosure: I will surely be disliked for this post, but I couldn’t care less.
As a blogger, the common issue one faces is competition. One would say why is competition an issue? The reason being that the competition has become extremely unethical over the past few years.
Just because buying followers and likes was not enough, there are new trends coming up every now and then. A lot of bloggers are guilty of something or the other. I don’t claim myself to be cent percent honest and ethical; I too have had instances where I was not completely honest with my readers.
When one goes through Instagram posts, it is common to see a lot of bloggers getting plenty of comments while the others who produce equally good or sometimes better content don’t get these number of comments. Are these other bloggers doing something wrong? Or are the bloggers with all the comments doing something extraordinary? Well let me disclose the difference; the bloggers with comments B.E.G.
B.E.G. stands for Blogger Engagement Groups. Eversince Instagram changed its algorithm, bloggers came up with a way to increase engagement by creating groups on Instagram. These groups have a number of bloggers who share their posts in the group and all other bloggers in the group have to comment with 3 or more words on the post. This increases the comments on the post and the engagement on the post. As a result, the post becomes more popular than the others and shows up more often than the other posts.
When this concept came out, I held back for a while but eventually gave in for a bit. I was probably a part of a B.E.G. for a week or two before I realized it wasn’t for me. I excused myself from the group saying that I was too busy with work when I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was liking photos that I would generally not like and commenting silly stuff. Commenting on ladies makeup being a food and travel blogger! Seriously, what in the hell was I thinking?
The concept of B.E.G. is to challenge the Instagram algorithm, but it promotes fakeness, dishonesty and randomness! The question every blogger needs to ask themselves is, would I really like this photo and comment on it if I were not part of a B.E.G.?
Since the engagement is somewhat forced (try not commenting on someone’s photo for a day or two, they would probably eat you alive lol!), the quality of comments is poor. Comments like “Wow! That’s amazing”, “You rock babe”, “This is killer”, “I love it” add little or no value to the content and have no thought process behind it whatsoever.
How to identify if the comments are B.E.G. enforced:
1. The same set of people or so called influencers commenting on each post.
2. Poor quality of comments.
3. Crappy responses to the already poor quality of comments.
The fact that quality content will always find a way to attract followers and comments is slowly being forgotten. Fake likes, fake followers, fake reviews, fake comments! Don’t know where the blogging world is going with this!
PR companies, wake up and analyze if the bloggers/influencers are worth the hefty amount of money you pay them. Are these actually translating to numbers that you want? Getting 100k extra followers for a restaurant is not an achievement unless a few of them come over and dine at your restaurant. Are those influencers actually influencing their followers to visit your restaurant or cafe or to use your products?
I don’t expect this post to do wonders by making people drop out of the groups. However even if a single person does do that, I would feel that this post was totally worth it.
This is Baggage and Dish signing out. Will be back with more controversial posts *winks*. Happy 2018!
Baggage and Dish 
Love the post. The more articles like this, hopefully the more people will wake up to this BS. It feeds into a murky world, such as those ‘blaggers’ intentionally and callously faking on social media for personal game, fame and freebies.
The bottom line is – anyone BEGging is trying to game the system, but the house always wins. Arguably, IG isn’t doing all it can yet as it’s profiting in some ways from it. Once they’re not, the game will be up – overnight. Just like Youtubers got gamed, and before then, the Google keyword spammers trying to game SEO.
Keep up the great work 🙂
Thank you so much. I am just trying to speak my heart and mind in recent posts. It’s better to be honest and inform the followers what’s true and what is fake.
I agree with you, beating the system or rather Technology is not that easy.
There was a time this practice was very popular on YouTube. Several accounts would subscribe to each others, then they like and comment each others’ videos. Too bad for them as it would never fool Google’s algorithm. For example, it’s not common to see a video with 1000 likes and 2 dislikes…
As for Instagram, there are too many spammers and bot users over there that it’s not even funny. No matter how good those “BEG” groups are, they’ll never beat automation. Also, the quality of the comments they receive are laughable. They are akin to messages sent using a telegraph.
Then there’s the fact that they must “like” and give sycophantic comments on all the crap that the group members post, even those that they don’t like. They don’t only look hypocritical in doing that, they are also mimmicking bots’ behavior… There are a lot of better things to do in life than that.
You have hit the bullseye with your comment here. I agree, nothing can beat automation. It’s just a pity that focus have moved away from quality content.
P.S. Apologies for the late reply.
Interesting post. Im just starting out trying to market my blog and learning about all these crazy “cheat” ways. I’ve started to recognize a lot too. Any suggestions on better ways to market?
Thanks. First thing would be content. Create good content on various platforms. If your work is good, people will automatically follow you.
Secondly, check out posts similar to yours and comment on them only if you genuinely like them. This way you will connect to other bloggers too.
Choose your niche and stick to that. Apart from this, you can have sponsored posts once you have a good enough customer base.
Best way to market? Be yourself, be original, be intentional, have integrity, and most of all, be content with your content. It doesn’t matter a jot if one person in Nepal loves it. Any fake followers, engagement groups, or otherwise don’t love your content. FACT.
If you need further validation, read 1000 true fans article by Kevin Kelly, Positioning by Ries & Trout, or The Long Tail. None of those mentioned being a blagger…
Totally agree with you on this. It’s been well over a year since I left those groups, it was actually just an annoyance and people could tell. If the same people are commenting on all your posts it looks kinda shady
I am glad you did that. I just feel we should be more honest to our readers and not cheat them in any way.
Love the post, totally agree with you.
Thank you. Just tried to be as honest as I can be 😊