James Spillane
Brands and businesses often want “social proof” to show that they’re “doing well” on social media. Very often they consider buying fake followers. My job is to convince you that it’s a bad idea. A very bad idea. You may have read my previous post on fake followers on Twitter. If not, there you go. The bottom line is fake followers can hurt your business, not to mention violate the terms of service for social media platforms. Here’s an excellent and terrifying article from the New York Times, “Social Media Bots Offer Phony Friends and Real Profit.” Fabulous article, although I’d argue that even more of these celebrities’ followers are fake.
Fake Followers On Pinterest
You can buy fake followers on Pinterest, just as you can on other platforms. Often those accounts still have the red pin as their avatar. Or, they have only a few pins of sunglasses and purses, and little else. They may have a lot of boards with just 1-2 pins. The photos are blurry and the links all lead to spam. These accounts often “steal pins” from other accounts (that is, nothing is curated and they “scrape” entire boards in the hopes of getting more followers). And if you want to know more things not to do on Pinterest, please read my ten ways to fail on Pinterest. There are many alternatives to buying followers on Pinterest.
Fakes On Facebook
On Facebook, as on other platforms, fake followers and fans can hurt your analytics. For instance, a brand I know (who shall remain nameless), bought fake followers. One day–boom!–4,000 new fans appeared. Then they asked me to look at the analytics to figure out when their followers were online. Since they bought the fake followers from Bosnia, the Facebook analytics showed that their followers were online at a much different time than their U.S. fans. If you’re going to buy fake followers, at least buy them in the same darn country where you sell your widgets. There are ways to remove fake fans, but most seem tedious. The result of that brand who bought followers? The first Facebook fanpage was deleted and a new one had to be created.
Twitter Fakes
On Twitter, you may have noticed that accounts follow you promising “real followers” for a very low price. But what will buying those followers get you? Just a number. They are not going to “favorite,” retweet your stuff, or have a conversation with you. You might as well buy mannekins and put them in your car. It doesn’t amount to very much. Here are some more reasons not to buy Twitter followers.
Cooking The Social Media Books
You wouldn’t create a fake set of books for your business, would you? If buying fake followers would embarrass you, then don’t do it. If doing anything in your business embarrasses you, you probably shouldn’t do it. Let the feeling in the pit of your stomach guide you. And what would your competitors do with this information? It doesn’t make your business look good, does it? Yes, these are rhetorical questions.
Getting Genuine Followers
Being patient and having conversations with people are two of the best ways to get real followers. Here are some others.
- On Twitter, join Tweetchats to speed up the process.
- On Facebook, invite your friends to follow you.
- On Pinterest, comment on other people’s pins. Start conversations.
- On any platform, search for people who share your interests and then follow them.
- On all platforms, as my friend You Too Can Be a Guru suggests, respond to comments, retweets, etc.
- Meet people in real life, then follow them online.
Did I Forget Anything?
We all want more real followers. Did I leave anything out? Please let me know in the comments!
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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It was a great reading, thank you Carol, fake followers are really bad idea because you will end up either getting banned by twitter or just engaging with yourself. I’ve been using Tweet Rocket ( https://thetweetrocket.com/ ) for a while and find it really amazing. It helps me to gain “only relevant and real followers”