I once had a client I started consulting with on his social media campaign. In particular, he was focused heavily on Facebook. Before I came on board, one of the things he was working on was setting up and growing his Facebook page.
As a social media strategist, I do not believe that to be successful on social media you need to have thousands of followers. Nevertheless, its one of the things that people seem obsessed with. Hence, if the need is to grow your social media, then so be it.
The client I signed decided that to generate likes for his new Facebook page, he would purchase a couple of thousand likes on Fiverr. I have never been and never will be a fan of buying fake likes. But I was interested to see what would happen and decided to observe it.
A few months ago, I saw a particular Caribbean business went from 1,700 fans on Facebook to over 12,000 in two days. I was intrigued by that and very impressed; I thought they implemented some aggressive Facebook growth strategies. I decided to check it out, as I thought maybe I could learn a thing or two. However, after conducting some analysis of the page, I saw that 90% of the fans were from Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, India etc.
Find Out About My Social Media Starter Pack Here
I decided to dig deeper, and I noticed that the persons who were liking the company’s page were: 1- Not the target market of his business 2- These persons all had different profile pictures, but the same post, 3- maximum number of post on the page was three. Basically, the profiles were all fake and from middle eastern and other random countries. That was pretty much the same as the client I mentioned above.
I believe buying Facebook likes is a complete waste of time. No Caribbean business should ever find themselves doing that and here’s why.
Here’s Why You Should Never Buy Fake Likes
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. There will be no real engagement and no one to reach.
2. 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 entirely no interaction. They may perceive that what you’re doing is unimportant and move away without becoming a fan.
3. 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 buying something or someone that doesn’t exist that will add absolutely no benefit to your brand.
4. Unable to generate leads and sales: True Facebook marketers use Facebook as a means of generating leads and then sales. So 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.
Here’s What To Do Instead
1- Entrepreneurs and employees of the business can ask friends on their personal page to like their page if these friends are ideal clients for their business.
2- You can put your Facebook page in your email signature.
3- Content is the backbone of any good social media strategy. So create valuable contents that will attract people and promote it through sponsored stories.
4- Whenever you post something, and someone likes it, you can click on the list of people that like and invite them all to like your page if they haven’t already.
5- Business owners and employees can connect their personal profile and company page. So when someone goes on their personal profile, they will see that this person is an employee of the business and possible check it out and like the page.
6- One of the best ways to grow your following on Facebook is to use Facebook ads. I am not a fan of running strictly like ads. I believe we should run ads to actual value-based content and invite everyone who likes the content to like the page. However, if you are one of those people who value having a large following, go ahead and run Facebook like ads and grow your page.
There is no shortcut to marketing in general; the same goes for Facebook marketing. Take your time and grow your fan base and stop wasting your company’s time and money by buying fake likes/fans.
Find Out About My Social Media Starter Pack Here