In a recent blog, I shared my opinion on purchasing followers and fans and the importance of focusing on quality over quantity with your social media strategy. If you’re searching for a social media ally, a firm to help you with your social media efforts, you’ll also want to focus on quality over quantity in your search.
There are two ways to get social media results, the organic “white hat” way or the purchased “black hat” strategy. The organic strategy requires a consistent effort and is time consuming. You won’t see results overnight, but when you do they will be high quality and will help achieve your social media goals and objectives. With a consistent white hat strategy, you’ll see your fans grow, your website visits and leads increase and an overall improved ranking on search engines.
The purchased strategy is expensive and does bring you “results” overnight. You’ll notice I put results in quotation marks. If you purchase your fans of course you’ll see an increase in number, but what does that do for you? In most cases, these purchased fans are dormant, fake accounts that bring nothing to your page, but a number. Also, these black hat strategies can get you banned from search results completely! Do you remember the J.C. Penney link scheme controversy from 2011? It’s a big risk for a number that means nothing and doesn’t help your bottom line.
I recently came across a small firm offering social media services in the Pittsburgh area. Needless to say, I was stunned to see over 4,000 fans on their Facebook page. I also noticed the page has absolutely no engagement. With 4,000 likes on your page you could post the driest of dry posts and still muster up a few “likes” or comments. That was a glaring red flag.
So I began to look deeper into this account and came across this graphic:
Now compare that image to this one from WordWrite’s Facebook page:
That’s quite a difference. In my last post, I mentioned a spike in activity as an indicator of someone purchasing fans. You should see fluctuation in new likes and people talking about your page, like in the second image. Notice that WordWrite has 402 fans, while the other page has 4012, yet WordWrite’s page has over twice the number of people talking about it. Finally, you’ll notice in the first graphic the most popular city for the social media services firm is in Colombia. What do you think the chances are of someone from those accounts purchasing that firm’s services? My guess is slim.
The next time you’re on the hunt for someone to help with your social media strategy, do yourself a favor and take a moment to do some research before automatically picking the firm with the most likes on its Facebook page. Do some deeper digging and make sure there is no suspicious activity. Look for a firm that’s doing things the organic way with a transparent, authentic approach.
What is your opinion on purchased fans? Share it with us in the comments section below.
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Emma Walter is a senior account executive for WordWrite Communications. You can find her on Twitter @emmasreallytall.
