Don't Buy Followers on Facebook and Twitter

buy followersDon’t Buy Facebook Likes

The whole point of social networking is to be social. And to network. Buying Likes is neither. But it’s also more damaging than you might think.

Don’t Buy Twitter Followers Either

Sometimes, we’re hired to clean up an online reputation. And we admit that some messes are harder to clean up than others.

Can we tell you something, though? One of the messiest situations we are called to fix is so unnecessary. We understand the importance of having a good following on Facebook or Twitter so that anyone else who chances upon it gets the right impression. We also understand the pull to buy those Likes and followers.

But it’s just not a good idea.

Chances are, you will not be publicly ridiculed for buying followers (like Mr. Romney there). But just because you’re not getting the celebrity treatment when it comes to being outed for fake fans, it doesn’t mean that someone who matters won’t be coming to the same conclusion about you. And if that someone found out about fake followers while they were researching you and trying to decide if they wanted to do business with you, well, this could be a costly mess, indeed.

Seriously, Don’t Buy Followers, Likes, or Fans

Most companies purporting to selling fans are selling you fake or inactive accounts.

  1. Regular fans, potential booking agents or venues, etc. can see a spike in your analytics with a single click of their mouse.  Look at any Facebook page. Click on Likes, and a graph appears. Anyone can see this. A jump in the number of Likes is easy to spot – and can look mighty suspicious.
  2. Getting caught can make you look like a phony! Zero credibility.
  3. Your Most Popular City may turn out to be Pakistan. Which is great if you live and work in Pakistan. …Do you live and work in Pakistan?
  4. How will it look if your average follower is between the ages of 13 ~17? Or completely skewed on the side of one gender? This may work in your favor if you’re marketing, say, pre-teen apparel, but what if your target audience was high-end homeowners? You may be sending a vastly different message than you intend.
  5. The BIGGEST thing: “People Talking About This” vs. “Likes” will be horribly skewed. A huge number of followers is great! But if they’re silent, that can be more damaging to your reputation than not having them at all.

The point of social media is to engage. Buying followers shows a complete misunderstanding of this point – and power – of social networking.

The Bottom Line

It’s quality over quantity. Despite the growth of the Internet and the changing of the business landscape, the basics tenets of good business have not changed.

We know business. We know social networking. Ask us your questions here or on Facebook. iQuarius.

Tweet Lots of Links To Get Followers

To get followers on Twitter isn’t about herding unicorns — that is, there’s nothing mythical about it.

Looking at the relationship between the number of followers a user has and the percentage of their Tweets that are “@” replies: Highly followed users are less conversational than those with few followers.

Looking at the relationship between follower count and the percentage of a user’s tweets that contain links and are not replies: Using a sample of random, recently active Twitter accounts, there is a strong correlation. As the amount of links a user tweets increases, the number of followers they have also increases. And users with more than 1,000 followers tend to tweet many more links than users with fewer than 1,000 followers.

The data is starting to mount to suggest that “engaging in the conversation” is a waste of time from a marketing and reach-building perspective, especially when compared to sharing content.

 

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