One of the guys at the office always has cool stuff to show me on Instagram. Yesterday morning he shows me a post he came across with an unusual way to buy followers. Although it seemed harmless enough, it certain set alarm bells ringing for me. It also got me thinking again about how many ways there are to buy followers, likes and reviews. This is not how to grow your followers. However temping (and cheap) it might seem, it’s a bad idea. Let me explain why.
First I’ll show you the unusual example from Instagram yesterday:
Apparently the night before the same guy had gained around 40K followers in just under an hour. By morning the account appeared to have been shut down and the one above started. I wonder what he plans to do with the followers? I don’t dare ask what the common characteristics of his target audience are.
Don’t be tempted
I’m sure you’ve seen them before. People following you, or contacting you to offer to add followers, Facebook likes and YouTube views for $5 or more (examples below). Don’t be tempted, especially if you want to attract potential clients and brand advocates as part of your social media marketing strategy.
I hope these new followers find value in my posts and don’t expect me to be interested in their Twitter BIO pic.twitter.com/Lng0W2vcxv
— Matt Crawford (@SocialStratMatt) February 7, 2014
What kind of followers do you want?
Of course having more followers might seem to appear that your brand has credibility at first glance. However if a potential (genuine) client takes a look at some of the followers you bought it could be devastating for your credibility.
Besides just like so many other things you should be focussing on quality over quantity. Don’t get me wrong, having as many followers, fans and likes as possible is ideal. But only if they are people that will engage with you, support your brand and buy stuff from you.
You get what you pay for
Have a quick think about it. What kind of results do you think you should expect from $5 worth of fake followers? Then there are the (so called) real ‘likes’ you can buy pretty cheap too. I saw this video last month with some alarming evidence about paying for Facebook likes.
Conclusion
So I hope that you can see that this is not how to grow your followers. There are plenty of blog posts around with great advice about how to build your brand through social media the right way. It’s my opinion that there is no real value in paying for followers and likes. Better off spending your money on a quality content marketing campaign and create some visual content worth sharing.
Have you ever considered paying for followers, or have you actually tried it? I’d love to hear your comments about it below. If you want to check how many fake Twitter followers you (or anyone else has) you can try ManageFlitter. Please CLICK HERE if you would like me to help you gain real followers and ‘likes’ the right way and learn how to engage with them. Please share this post with all of your social networks to help put a stop to this nonsense. Let’s keep our social media social. Thanks for reading and sharing. See you back here next week.
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Image credits [Instagram, The Open Dept.] Video [Veritasium ~ YouTube]
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