When the going gets tough, buy your Facebook fans and give off the false sense that people enjoy your product!
Wait, that’s not the expression, right? No, the actual expression is to try, try again! It’s meant to inspire ambition in the heart of the recipient, not tell them to give up and take the easy way out. Your first attempt at success likely won’t end up in success, but it could be used as a learning point on what to do and what not do in future endeavors.
That’s the beauty of ambition. It’s enjoying the sweet splendor of success because of how much time you invested into creating a viable product or achieving a personal goal. A payoff gained through shortcuts won’t be as fulfilling as a payoff gained through deep thought and tireless efforts.
Buying your fans – Even writing it out sounds weird – is not the key to winning on social media. It’s the exact opposite really. You’re harming your page’s metrics, and your brand’s reputation with shady tactics to drum up business, when you have all of these fans but nobody seems to be responding to anything you say.
You can buy your friends, too, if you have the money, but who’s going to be there when the money dries up?
Plus, you’re supporting even shadier behavior once you find out these fake accounts are being created by “workers [who] sit in dingy rooms, [with] bars on the windows, generating 1,000 likes for $1.”
Facebook has come out strongly against fake likes, citing how “Facebook takes into account Page engagement rates when deciding when and where to deliver a Page’s legitimate ads and content, so Pages with artificially inflated like counts are harming themselves, making it harder and more expensive to reach the people they care about most.”
As one of my esteemed colleagues has pointed out, “It inflates your social proof, but your data won’t be accurate.” 454 fans and one conversion isn’t pretty, but at least you earned a conversion through your efforts. 10,000 fans divided by zero conversions, however, is still zero.
Oh, and did I mention that Facebook “uses machine learning to catch suspicious behavior”? You could buy all the likes you want, but Facebook can still detect all of those fake likes and delete every last one of them.
When you buy fans, rather than crafting advertising efforts to create a solid foundation with a dedicated audience, you’re cheating yourself. Conversions aren’t going to immediately pop up because you bought fans. Neither are surface stats such as likes, comments and shares.
The only thing you’re going to be left with is 6,500 fans, no engagement, and prospective fans wondering how a page with so many likes can receive so little attention. They might even think the page itself is fake or possibly an aggregator that’s producing content for the sake of content.
Regardless, it’s fake and dishonest to “customers who are being tricked into thinking you’re artificially popular.” Even worse is that you actually have to pay somebody for fake Facebook likes. Why not just use that money for an agency that can develop a strategy and target those who would actually like to become a fan of yours?
Well, it’s the reason why most people cut corners: It’s cheaper than hiring a professional, people don’t have the patience, they don’t want to spend the money, and they don’t understand how it works.
Social media’s main purpose has always been to bridge the gap between connections. Even before brands got involved, people logged on and created accounts to reach out to people they know, people who wanted to know them, and those they were interested in getting to know.
Now that brands are in the picture the significance of bridging the gap has never been more important. It’s of the utmost importance to brands that they establish themselves as a reputable, reliable business that heeds the cries of its loyal customers and addresses them with a transparent, human response.
Your fans are out there. If you offer A/C repair, there’s somebody sweating in their house. If you offer pool cleaning, there’s an algae-filled pool in dire need of a detox. If you offer relocation services, somebody has a house filled with heavy furniture that needs to be moved to another residence.
Your job is to find them. If that sounds too difficult, there are plenty of marketing agencies (Here’s one) who can find them for you and craft copy that will persuade them to use your services. This type of business isn’t being conjured if your page has 10,000 fans, but they’re all from Pakistan and you’re a plumber in Norman, Oklahoma.
Unfortunately for those just discovering social media, it isn’t the wild west anymore where an organic post can reach thousands. Big brands have stepped in and invested a lot of money, because they see how valuable and cost-efficient of a channel social media can be, which has led to smaller companies getting squeezed out and needing to compete with those bigger companies for attention.
Money will have to be spent if success through conversions and a new, formerly unfound audience is achieved. It’s just the way social media is now.
But an investment, even a small one, can help build the foundation of loyal fans you need to start building.
