Recently, companies have been popping up all over the internet leveraging business’ anxieties of having too few fans or followers on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. If you type “buy Facebook likes” into a Google search, you’ll get pages of companies promising thousands of fans and followers for as low as $15.
And while having lots of fans and followers via your business’ social media pages really does look great, according to a recent article that investigated the top 25 websites to purchase fans and followers, only one site actually provided real people – most of these companies inflate ‘likes’ with fake profiles. So, before you make any big fan purchases, here a few other things to keep in mind:
1.) You will never see fan engagement.
Once you make your purchase of 1,000+ fans, you will never hear from them again. Your content won’t go anywhere either. Without engagement, Facebook’s algorithm will prevent your posts from ever being seen in the news feeds of actual fans.
2.) Fan purchases may trigger suspicion.
Purchasing thousands of fans or followers may definitely look odd. If your business isn’t well-branded within your small community, and you suddenly have 5,000 fans, it will certainly raise questions. Many will make assumptions that something underhanded is going on. If word gets out that you’re paying for ‘likes’, how will that affect your business’ credibility?
3.) Purchasing fans won’t benefit your bottom line.
If the fans you purchase do end up being real, they will probably be based out of locations like Singapore, Tunisia, or Latvia. It’s pretty doubtful that they will ever make it to Wisconsin to get their hair cut or try your Friday night fish fry. Compare your social media profiles to your business’ paperwork. Would you inflate the amount of money you made within a month? Probably not — without actual money, you are certainly not benefiting the business in the long run. Purchasing fans will spike your social media page’s numbers, but they will never buy your products.
In the end, purchasing followers and fans may very well lead to some long-term disadvantages, and there are plenty of strategies and tactics that can be used to effectively attract natural fans. Continuously promote your page through other marketing mediums, provide regular, valuable content, and consider launching contests with the use of third party applications to help engage existing fans – if you are doing all these things effectively, there will be no need to purchase fake social network relationships.
Sources:
http://www.dailybloggr.com/2011/08/buying-facebook-fans-to-your-pagedoes-it-work/
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