While you may be eager to grow your fan base on Facebook and Twitter, promise us you’ll follow this golden rule. DON’T buy yourself fans and followers! Trust us, it’s much better to have a smaller fan base of loyal customers than a large group of people who could care less about your brand and who won’t pay attention to what you have to say.
When measuring success on social media, many people immediately think to look at number of Likes or Followers. But the true measure of a successful social media presence is engagement and reach. How many people are you reaching with your social content, are people finding the information valuable, and are they engaging with it? This article from socialmediatoday.com gives us three main reasons why you shouldn’t buy fans.
1. Numbers aren’t everything: Most of the followers that you can purchase are not even real accounts, but dummy accounts set up as placeholders. Don’t worry so much about the numbers. Focus on your content. Small businesses are not expected to have as many followers as a large corporation. A small business with over 100,000 followers would probably lose credibility with its real fans.
2. Low engagement= Low EdgeRank: Facebook uses an algorithm to determine which content shows up in users’ news feeds. If your Facebook has little engagement (because your fake fans are not connected with your brand) then your edge rank will drop and your posts won’t appear as often as you’d like.
3. It’s a waste of money: As a small business, you probably don’t have a ton of time or money to dedicate to social media. You can better spend your money running targeted Facebook ads or Promoted Tweets. These fans will be more likely to actually engage with you on social media.
So remember, social media is not a popularity contest! It’s about creating a relationship with your fans in a way that develops brand loyalty. Therefore, buying fans that are simply dummy accounts gets you a nothing- you can’t engage with someone who is unable to be influenced. This article from Practical Ecommerce puts it perfectly, “If social media is like a cocktail party…all that you’ve done is fill the room with cardboard cutouts.”