I recently had a client who I was consulting and one of the things he was working on was setting up his Facebook page and generating traffic. He decided that in order to generate some likes for his new Facebook page, he would purchase a couple thousand likes for his page. I have never been a fan of buying likes or any kind of audience on social media for that matter, but I was interested to see what would happen.

After the order for likes was made, I decided to check out the page and look at the persons who liked, and when the likes were coming in steady. I started noticing something weird. The persons who were liking his page: 1- Were not the target market of his business, 2- These persons all had different profile pictures but the exact same post, 3- maximum number of post on the page was three. Basically the profiles were all fake and to me that was a complete waste of time. Why would anyone want likes from fake profiles? My client immediately stopped, but here are 5 reasons buying likes is a waste of time.

1. Poor or No engagement: If the majority of fans are fake, then when you publish your best content you will hardly be reaching anyone. When offers are published in your business, it will be a waste of time and there will be no true engagement and no one to reach.

2. It will mess up your EDGERANK: Your EDGERANK score is based on the amount of visits to your page, your comments, likes on contents and how much time it is shared. If you purchased fans and the people on your page are fake and not interacting with your brand then your EDGERANK score will be very low, and Facebook will see your page as unimportant.

3. You may lose future prospective real fans: If someone stumbles upon your page and realize that no one is talking about this or there is absolutely no interaction, they may perceive that what you’re doing is unimportant and just move away without becoming a fan.

4. It’s a waste of money: Normally in business whenever you purchase something, it should be something of value. In the case of buying fans, there is no value there, you are basically buying something or someone that doesn’t exist that will add absolutely no value to your brand.

5. Unable to generate leads and sales: True Facebook marketers use Facebook as a means of generating leads and then sales. So unless you are purchasing adds which can reach real people, then marketing to your “purchased” fan base and trying to get them off Facebook and unto your website, landing or sales pages will be futile since that may not be real.

There are alternatives to purchasing fake fans or fake likes; one can ask friends on their personal page to like their page and invite their friends to like it. They can put their Facebook page in their email signature, create valuable contents that will attract people and promote them, and place their fan page in the persona description on their personal page. One can also simply purchase adds which can generate likes, leads and sales. There is no shortcut to marketing in general, the same goes for Facebook marketing. Take your time and grow your fan base, there are amazing programs and people that can teach you how to do so such as Amy Porterfield and Brian Moran. Just stop wasting your company’s time and money.