Are you tempted to buy social followers?

[Uwe (Invoiceberry)]

All these get 10,000 FB likes or Twitter followers for $10 or $50 (if they really want to scam you) are useless in my opinion.

As helmuc mentions about 2-4 years ago you might have achieved something with fake likes/followers as it was all new and nobody thought about it. Now Facebook, Twitter, Google and Co. all know about it and they created algorithms to prevent any gain from it.

Yes you might have 1 million FB likes but they are worth next to nothing. It is the same with SEO or any other marketing tool. Over time marketeers who exploit the system ruin it for others. Only the early adopters gain from it but once everyone knows and writes about it on public forums like UKBF the gold rush is over...

Best,
Uwe

 

[helmuc]

... about 2-4 years ago you might have achieved something with fake likes/followers as it was all new and nobody thought about it. Now Facebook, Twitter, Google and Co. all know about it and they created algorithms to prevent any gain from it.

Huge +1

I would even say that now it is opposite - I have heard speculations that Facebook, YouTube and Google actually does devaluate the pages with low proportion of social interactions (they are comparing the number of fans and the number of likes/comments).

have a great day,
Helmuts

p.s. yes, I know that YT is owned by G..

 

[Paul Baldwin]

No as a quick look at your followers list would show that this is exactly what you have done

 

[Jennie Rich]

Interesting discussion.

I'd rather have people following me because they're genuinely interested in my content. It's more satisfying seeing the number of followers slowly, but surely increase instead of a sudden rush of (fake) interest.

 

[Leather Briefcase Company]

We've just been offered 100 Facebook "likes" for 1$.
One of our competitors offers a 10% discount when a customer "likes" his website.
We're not buying or giving.
Deeply sceptical about the value of social media in relation to a good branded product or service.

 

[LAURENMSG]

There was a great programme on on Channel 4 a while back called 'Dispatches - Celeb, brands and fake fans' talking about click farms and how companies can buy fake likes as well as bribing celebs to talk about them on social. The number of likes can initially look impressive to some people who are unaware that they can be bought but re engagement/SEO benefit purchasing followers and likes off people who have no interest in you or your brand is a pointless exercise. You will gain no SEO/online visability/brand awareness from this.

Admittedly though celebs tweeting about products (which they have been given for free) makes a huge impact on brand awareness/ popularity. Who can blame the celebs though?!

 

[fisicx]

Is that why you are promoting Monosodium Glutemate?

 

[LAURENMSG]

haha thankfully not! I wouldn't want to be promoting the 'silent killer lurking in your kitchen cabinets' Unfortunate resemblance though....

Made Simple Group.

 

[10032012]

There was a great programme on on Channel 4 a while back called 'Dispatches - Celeb, brands and fake fans' talking about click farms and how companies can buy fake likes as well as bribing celebs to talk about them on social. The number of likes can initially look impressive to some people who are unaware that they can be bought but re engagement/SEO benefit purchasing followers and likes off people who have no interest in you or your brand is a pointless exercise. You will gain no SEO/online visability/brand awareness from this.

Admittedly though celebs tweeting about products (which they have been given for free) makes a huge impact on brand awareness/ popularity. Who can blame the celebs though?!

Bribing celebs? They are just paying for them to promote something. No bribing here.

This is why and how actors, musicians and the like, become "celebrities"... they see it as sponsorship, its social marketing at its most basic.


I, like the next person, have favourite actors, actresses and musicians, but I know when their image involves products its 9 times out of 10 because they have been paid to. Musicians are not as well paid as people expect so its really obvious why they promote products on the side to get income.

The problem with society very few people want to aspire something better with inspiration from certain people, but actually wants to become someone overnight. Anything any celeb says or is attributed to saying in the media is more times than not, actually words they have never said. I think people are only just catching on that most celebs do not personally post on their twitter account...

 

[helmuc]

humm... this thread is getting nowhere..

Let me jump in with a question from my side >>
>> Are you tempted to buy REAL social followers or to pay to get more REAL and socially active followers?

Let us put aside the conversations about useless fake accounts and talk business

Helmuts

p.s. I'm not offering these services

 

[maxine]

There's so much fake and robots about it's a totally pointless exercise and do more harm than good when credibility is lost from the outset.

There's much better ways to start off with such as using offline activity to help boost likes/follows from a quantity and quality perspective

 

[helmuc]

There's so much fake and robots about it's a totally pointless exercise and do more harm than good when credibility is lost from the outset.

well, it is the same everywhere.. even in this forum ... but still you have a a forum signature loaded with links with purpose to generate leads

Let us take a simple tactics (there are tons of them) >> FaceBook ads. There is almost no chance that you will get a single bot by using them and all the people will be highly targeted (if the campaign is set up properly). Let us say you get 10k visitors to your FB page out of whom 2000 will like your page and out of whom 150 will become your real customers of yours and highly valuable fans that will share your brand with their friends? .. I would say - it is 100% worth that in most of the cases.

There's much better ways to start off with such as using offline activity to help boost likes/follows from a quantity and quality perspective

offline activities to get Likes/followers will generate tens of fans, while online - much, much more

with respect (in the case if you find this comment offending - I really you you will not)
Helmuts

p.s. don't get me wrong - offline marketing is very, very important

 

[houseofdecals]

I bought 300 twitter followers or what I thought would be. I was well aware they would be spam followers but I thought if it looked like our brand had alot of followers it would be better for attracting new followers lol. FAIL I wouldnt waste my time most them just unfollow as the days go on.

 

[Primeaspire]

Surely, the focus should be to engage with the followers you already have, no matter how small. It is this engagement with people that will bring new (real) followers if that's what you're after.

 

[helmuc]

ok.. this one is a tip for all those who are looking for active twitter followers.

Every Friday people on twitter share their favourite twitter accounts >> search hashtag #ff (stands for follow Friday).

Follow those accounts and interact with them and soon you will have few new twitter buddies.

Helmuts

... and I would advise to go against buying followers on Fiverr

p.s. if you are very desperate and need 25 fans on FB in order to get your friendly url - hit me up and I will help you out.. free of charge .. not more than 25 .. don't expect much from them neither

 

[10032012]

Does twitter followers even work?

 

[helmuc]

Does twitter followers even work?

are you serious????

twitter is one of the top social networks where to engage with business accounts you wouldn't be able to connect otherwise

Twitter is awesome (if you don't spam)

.. just be yourself and soon you will have few brand ambassadors

 

[japancool]

>> Are you tempted to buy REAL social followers or to pay to get more REAL and socially active followers?

Err... isn't that called "advertising"?

 

[LocalGuy]

It does help present your business from a standpoint of authoirty. You do not need many likes / followers but from a customer point of view which company looks more established and liked by the community, a business with 100+ likes/followers or one with 1-5.

I wouldn't say that you should get thousands but just a few hundred, in my opinion, does help.

 

[KStarAssociates]

Hi,

Big London agencies fabricate hundreds of thousands of fake social media shares, and use fake accounts to make their clients, (many well known brands - supermarkets, insurance companies, car manufacturers), look good online, have seen it first hand.
No, you don't get engagement, but you do get instant credibility if you have great reviews, lots of likes and re-tweets, sad but true... every little helps!!

Hi,

The only thing I'd challenge in this comment is your statement about getting "credibility" instant or otherwise. Getting lots of fake likes and RTs from non-existent accounts can actually be harmful to brands and adds very little value from a customer perspective. Think about it this way.....the whole value 'likes' bring about are that when one person likes a page, that like becomes visible to their friends, who in turn may also like the page and voila you (hopefully) go viral. If all the likes are being created by spam accounts, then no one is going to see it & therefore there's little value. Further, anyone who does see an account (e.g. on twitter) having a long list of spam followers will immediately be put off.

There is no credibility and very little value from "buying" social followers. The best thing you can do is a) create high value content on your site that engages people and makes them want to share, b) improve your search engine rankings to drive organic visitors and c) create an active social media profile that posts content, engages in debate and responds to visitors - twitter is particularly great for this.

It sounds like a lot of effort but if done right can be relatively easy and will do wonders in terms of opening up engagement. Cover that and the social followers will follow.

Good luck

 

[Ranthael]

I would never do it. As well as I would never spam my friends with asking them to like my business page. There is a social factor involved where one sees a page having more than 100,000 likes, he thinks it's valuable. But in the end if your content is just spam, having just a high number won't get you anywhere, as your followers aren't your target audience.

I think there's a lot of value to get from starting from scratch and building yourself up to be highly credible. Cutting corners is ok for a simple push, but if your business revolves around it, in the end you're just spam.

 

[houseofdecals]

I did it and can tell you its a total waste of money it looks good but whats the point. You later find it hard to workout how many are real and how many were fake.

 

[James2612]

Every time i set up a new facebook fan page and twitter account, i always pay for followers and likes. They are very cheap, you can get thousands of FB likes for around £3 or £4) - They are "fake" acconts and over time they will fall off. But if you are trying to build a social presence then this is a great starting point.

 

[japancool]

Every time i set up a new facebook fan page and twitter account, i always pay for followers and likes. They are very cheap, you can get thousands of FB likes for around £3 or £4) - They are "fake" acconts and over time they will fall off. But if you are trying to build a social presence then this is a great starting point.

The only possible value in it is real people seeing the number of likes you have and thinking that you're more popular than you actually are, but the value of that is doubtful.

Far better to spend some money on some highly targeted Facebook advertising and get some people who are actually interested in what you have to sell and will buy from you.

 

[James2612]

The only possible value in it is real people seeing the number of likes you have and thinking that you're more popular than you actually are, but the value of that is doubtful.

Far better to spend some money on some highly targeted Facebook advertising and get some people who are actually interested in what you have to sell and will buy from you.

Highly targeted Facebook advertising is by far the better option. But if you just want a bunch of likes to get you going and not look so "New" then paying around £3 isnt the worst thing you can do.

 

[japancool]

A page that joined in April 2014 and already has 5000 likes with no engagement does not look credible.

 

[James2612]

Most of the time when people are "Liking" a page, all they see is the name and how many likes.
I think if in time, when paying for likes becomes more "known" to the evry day person, it would indeed not look credible. But as it stands, not many people investigate a page before liking. Also, i limit my fake likes to a few hundred just to get of the ground.

As for engagement, this will happen quickly if you are using other methods to obtain REAL likes. Paying for fake likes alone is pretty pointless.

 

[RapidFormations]

Most social media users are savvy enough now to be aware of fake likes. Personally, nothing puts me off following a company more than seeing they have sent like 200 tweets but somehow have 10,000 followers - it just looks desperate and is so obviously insincere that it reflects badly on the company. I think more people would be put off by it than would be persuaded to follow because of a large follower count.

You're much better off pursuing a modest number of genuine followers who are actually interested in your services.

 

[Fred_the_frog]

Every time i set up a new facebook fan page and twitter account, i always pay for followers and likes. They are very cheap, you can get thousands of FB likes for around £3 or £4) - They are "fake" acconts and over time they will fall off. But if you are trying to build a social presence then this is a great starting point.

I agree. If a company follows you and they have 2 followers you'll obviously not follow them back or even check out their website (after all if only two people have followed them then they can't be that exciting). However if they have 4,523 followers for example you'll think 'Oh they must be fairly popular, i'll follow back and maybe take a look at what they do')

 

[Deggle]

Well, this is my first post. Been keeping an eye on the UKBF for a while, and have something interesting to share on this thread that's not been mentioned so thought I'd sign up at last!

Buying followers will dilute your real followers, and can actually reduce your social reach (sites know the % of users that interact with any activity, and with lots of fake followers the site will assume your content is less interesting to users). The crazy thing is, that even using Facebook's legitimate advertising to gain followers has the same impact!

I found this very interesting:

 

[fisicx]

Was reading a report (which I now can't find) that says SM isn't delivering as much as expected. Many big names are now cutting back and returning to traditional marketing because the ROI is better.

 

[Remys]

It's pointless to do simply because the followers wont interact back with you. If you use twitter, stat tweeting to random people, of course utilize hashtags and such to find people that may be interested in your product. Secondly, facebook likes don't help either, these people wont interact with your page, they'll like it and move on, simple as that. Some may even mark it to where they wont see an updates from your page either.

It's better to talk to people, and get legitimate likes and followers.

 

[anthonyp01]

There good for giving potential customers the 'illusion' that you are a popular business and in effect may entice them to like or follow you as well.

What looks better? 3 or 3,000.

 

[japancool]

There good for giving potential customers the 'illusion' that you are a popular business and in effect may entice them to like or follow you as well.

What looks better? 3 or 3,000.

Why not do it by making your page have interesting content and selling interesting products instead?

 

[MikePNV]

HI
I don't see the point in buying fake likes from people with absolutely no interest in your business

 

[VOCLA]

No. What's the point of having a bunch of followers who aren't interested in your product? If you did this on Facebook and then targeted your Facebook ads at your fans, you would then end up paying to advertise to a bunch of people who are not interested

 

[Soph13]

Pretty pointless...we tried it as an experiment and got about 20 followers from random countries. Although we had just started the page so we quickly got enough like to see our analytics.

 

[adopsguys]

With a simple swipe of a credit card, anyone can buy mindless followers. But you can`t have any interaction with them as they are not interested in your products/services. It`s better spend some time and effort consistently building engaged community by posting hilariously witty remarks and sharing awesome content, which is interesting to your potential followers.

 

[MageWorx]

There's no point in wasting money over fake followers.

As has been said, they’re not real people and can’t properly interact with your site content, etc.). They only create visibility that your page is a kind of "popular", which is not true.

Yes, the perception of popularity online may help a business or cause attract more followers in the short term, BUT it is good content and effective user engagement that will separate the wheat from the chaff over time.

Moreover, these days lots of companies are double-checking the followers on their social media pages as the number of Internet bots rises.

So I'd advise you to focus on more important things.

 

[japancool]

They only create visibility that your page is a kind of "popular", which is not true.

And so far, no one has presented any evidence that this makes one blind bit of difference to whether people like you or not.