Over the years, we’ve tested and used hundreds of social media marketing panels, also known as SMM panels. We can say, without a doubt, that nothing in internet marketing is safe to use as something can always go wrong, especially if you’re boosting stats artificially and violating the terms of service of a platform.

But fret not! You see, part of what we do at Sycosure is dismantle these types of services to understand them inside and out. So, you can imagine that we’ve picked up some nifty tricks on how to use them as safely as possible. To understand how to use these SMM panels safely, you first need to understand the risks of using them.

The Top 5 Risks of Using An SMM Panel

Risk #1: Your Social Media Account May Get Banned

This is more likely to be the case if you’re sloppy about it. We’ve only ever had one account get banned, and it’s not really clear if the use of social media panels was the case as no reason was even given nor had we used a panel on that account in years.

The only reason we assume this was the case is because that social media platform, which we will not name, was going on a spree of banning accounts en masse that were suspected of violating their terms of service.

How to avoid this: Be careful about how you use these panels. We’ll come out with a guide at a later point here on Sycosure about how to use SMM panels as safely as possible.

Risk #2: The SMM Panel May Not Deliver What It Advertised

This is such a common problem, it’s ridiculous. Basically, SMM panels are usually pretty good at advertising drop rates (i.e., how often your new followers, likes, etc will be removed by the social media site). However, one thing many people don’t know about these SMM panels is that the vast majority of them are known in the internet marketing space as “reseller panels”. That is to say, most of these guys are reselling someone else’s panel on their own website.

As a result of this, these resellers don’t usually know much about the services they’re offering, so it’s always possible for the services to be mis-advertised. Some primary panels take care of this problem by providing their resellers with all of the correct service descriptions, though.

The real risk here is that you might get, for example, YouTube subscribers from a developing country instead of from the USA. If your main audience is from the USA, you obviously don’t want this as it would look unnatural if anyone were to take a look at your stats on YouTube’s backend. Do you see the issue here?

How to avoid this: Choose your panel carefully. Don’t just go for the one that has the best stats or the highest review; obviously, they can fake their own stats. Instead, we’ve found that using specialty panels that focus on offering a handful of services for one social media website resulted in the best service.

Risk #3: Your SMM Panel Account May Get Closed

This has never happened to us, but we’ve helped many others who have dealt with this issue. Summarised, these reseller panels are not run by the most professional people in the industry. No, in fact, our dealings with SMM panel owners have generally not been positive. Because of this, the people we’ve had to help navigate these SMM panels all had their accounts closed for some very odd reasons such as “being too problematic” or asking for a refund when they didn’t receive what was advertised.

How to avoid this: Once again, choosing your panel carefully will help you avoid this issue.

Risk #4: Your Social Media Account May Look Artificially Boosted

Have you ever seen an Instagram profile where they have thousands of followers, but only a few likes and comments on all of their posts? That’s because their followers are, without a doubt, fake.

There are exceptions, such as older accounts where the followers just lost interest over time and forgot about the account. In those cases, they either unfollow the account or they just leave it as is. When someone genuinely follows an account, they have a keen interest in following that account. Generally though, for them to not engage with any of the content makes absolutely no sense.

How to avoid this: Knowing what a natural engagement rate looks like is the key to avoiding this issue. Once again, we’ll cover this in another guide.

Risk #5: Your Social Media Account May Get Penalised

Some social media websites will roll back your followers, likes, and other stats if they determine that anything has been artificially boosted. In the case of YouTube specifically, if you were boosting your stats to get an award, know that they review your subscriber count at specific thresholds to determine if you’re actually eligible. If you’re not, your subscriber count may get rolled back, or even worse, your YouTube account may be banned.

How to avoid this: This one is very difficult to avoid and depends entirely on the platform in question. However, the best way to avoid this is to simply not use an SMM panel.