Buy Facebook Likes, Buy Facebook Fans
Not everything can become a commodity, be bought, sold, exchanged. After all these are the fundamentals of free market and trade. Water, electricity, also information, all of those are commodities. But buying Facebook fans and likes?
If someone would ask you around five, six years ago if you’d buy fans, you’d probably have thought about that person being nuts and ready for a very special room with soft walls. Now Facebook fans, Twitter followers are on the free market, being bought and sold. What’s wrong with it?
Even though social media and marketing around it is here for quite some time. There is uncountable number of articles, blog posts, books, whitepapers and case studies out there (free and paid). So with all these resources and time for preparation one would think – social media marketing is probably not that difficult to implement!
Let’s set up some of the social media channels and we’re good to go. So wrong.
What surprises me is that brands and marketers responsible still perceive social media as a one shot, campaign-alike medium. Or they simply don’t understand the fundamentals (what is even more ridiculous).
It’s not TV, it’s not newspapers, it’s not radio where you can repeat the same messages and ads over and over again to your target audience, which is (fingers crossed for you) hopefully exposed to your one way communication enough to buy the product or service.
And many brands do the same in social media and don’t realize that here they first need to listen and understand what people like to see. No, they continue with the same things as in the “old-school channels”.
Such as:
- 30 seconds TV ads pretending to be “exclusive viral videos” (Not that many views because it sucks? Let’s buy them!)
- So called “great content” for bloggers and fans to spread the word (few months old ad or “funny picture” that most of us saw already on a 3,5″ floppy disk)
- Or a community manager asks “have you seen our latest ad in TV?”
And so on.
Than one day someone somewhere, CMO or a marketing director meets with another marketing guy from different company and during the conversation one of them mentions “Well, we just passed 100,000 Facebook fans, how are you doing?”
So later on the poor CMO with “only” a few fans of the brand decides to get as many as possible, as fast as possible and for the lowest possible price. What a master-plan! The first idea – use Google: buy facebook fans. With some really tempting offers:
- Get 100% REAL Facebook Fans (Likes) direct to your fan page
- Buy Facebook Fans/Likes – Get 200 Likes for $12.99 or Your Money Back ( $0,065 CPF)
- On Sale! 3,000 Facebook likes, Only $49.90! Become socially engaged. ( $0,0166 CPF) – sure ENGAGED!
- 1,500 Facebook Likes – Only $34.90 ( $0,0233 CPF)
And more, the list can be very long. Great idea, really cheap commodity these Facebook fans, they even have summer sales, yay!
Great, quick solution, isn’t it? Also short-sighted that will only bring more problems onwards. On one hand, there might be the magical, desired number of “likes” on the page, but these are “likes” just in that sense. Why? Because these so called “fans” will not give a damn $h1t about the brand, will not comment, like, share and engage with the page. If they are even real, active users.
Yes, it is an approach. But what all these fan buyers are forgetting – this is social media, not only media/advertising.
Social media ≠ advertising
The people, fans of your brands are crucial, they are not just a number on the fan page and if you perceive them this way, please forget about social media.
It’s about a relationship, and this cannot be done overnight. Can you imagine meeting someone in the morning and being happily married by the end of the day? OK, can happen in Vegas. But what happens in Vegas…
The point is, not all brands are love brands and it may take some (longer) time to gain the magical number of 50,000; 100,000 and more fans. How? First listen, come up with a theme and long-term approach for the people that are already there, entertain them, make them feel special and rewarded just because they already like the brand (like, not “like”) and are in favor.
And the biggest difference that pays off – you’ll have people that care, engage and spread the word. That’s the social aspect which is still omitted.
Forget about short-term solutions in social media, the probability that these will backfire and do more damage to the brand is too high.
You can always go for Facebook ads, activate the customers you already have with email or encourage fans to spread the word about the brand with an activation. The possibilities are nearly endless, so don’t be lazy and take advantage of the vast potential of social media or you will join the club of lonely brands that buy their fans & followers.
Or get on the longer, maybe more difficult path and you can already start thinking about how to thank your fans. And you’ll be sure that these are real and happy for what you did and will do. And be rewarded with passionate people that care.
Follow Category?Facebook Marketing |
Follow Author?Martin Michalik |
16 more
Follow Tags?buy engagemenbuy facebook engagementbuy facebook fansbuy facebook fans and likes |
Hi Martin,
What would be the best approach if I want to get real ambassadors in. Are there certain tangible steps?
Peter
Sure Peter – understand the fans, create a theme or a platform that will get their attention and provide entertainment/key information to them.
I get likes for my clients at http://facebooklikeme.com. They are real, quick, and reasonably priced.
That’s a bad joke Julie, right?
Hi Julie, at what price bandwidth (CPF). And what defines ‘good fans’; do the know why they become (and/or are potentiels for being brand ambassadors, fitting the brand targetgroup profile)?
I remember when someone asked if I would rather buy Facebook likes or grow them organically. I guess you get more “fruits” when you do that things the natural way.
@Melonie Really agree with you. Here in Holland also a lot of Companies want to buy fans because their competors have more fans than they do. But they forget that the bought fans are not really brand ambassadors so in the end the viral spread and engagement stays low. Hope the companies will realise this …
Totally agree. The success of social media should rely on your great content and strength of conversations you have with people. It is a slow build, but by the end of it, if you just wait to get real people behind your figures, it’ll be far more worthwhile for your business..
It even is more awkward sometimes when brands buy Twitter followers, because most see that it’s too obvious to have 50,000 followers with 10 tweets and not following others..
Nice talk on the golf course, but not very authentic because everyone out there can see it’s a bribe on steroids..
And I do not always have the feeling agencies / consultants tell the CMO: sure, you want it? Yoj wikll be rather exposed and visible that you did not earn but bought your “friends”…
@ Peter and Martin
Maybe it starts bottom-up? Create satisfied customers – that next might be willing to tell their peers: this is a cool brand, great products, good service.. so try them, I did and like them.
In the old day: being a client was key, next staisfied client could become a fan or even ambassador.
Did social media really change that? Guess not!!
Today we want hit and run: never tried our brand or product in your life? We don’t care, we’ll buy your “like” as a fan anyway…
Is it even possible to get fans before thy ever tried the brand / its products / services??? Or should fanship come from existing client base?
In that case you should not have to buy “likes” but you could ask through “owned media, opt-in email, crm base etc” to your clients: hee, if you are satisfied and like us, why don’t you like us on facebook…
So are we crazy? Does social media make us mad?
What about Adaptly? They offer a reasonable CPF model, and all of our campaigns with them so far show good results and fans that are both real and engaging…
Reasonable as in?
Hi Jerry, gaining new fans combined with strategy (or aligned) is the way indeeed, I’m talking about the ridiculous offers “get 1,000 fans for $19,99″ or so.
What is your perception of a reasonable CPF model?
I really believe in a organic community.
I will tell you why small businesses use these services. They have no idea what they are doing when it comes to social media. My company, Social Babies, performs social media services for the small business community and I speak from years of experience. Even in 2012, the majority of businesses don’t understand facebook and social media in general. On our site we use laymen’s terms for social jargon. For example, we refer to Social Networking as “meeting new people” and Community Management “talking to your fans and followers”. Sounds silly but it helps. Most business owners have too musch pride to admit they are dumbfounded by social media so we try to make it as painless as possible.
Unfortunately it’s not about small or big businesses and their ability to understand social media. You can see outstanding social media in small and big companies and vice versa – big brands with big budgets trying to succeed and failing instead.
Very interesting article. I agree that buying these likes would be a waste of money. Some of these facebook likes might not be real people and it’s highly likely that the people liking your page won’t be interested in the brand.
i think there is nothing wrong with buying likes. in a business perspective, i wont say its good but an effective way start if you really need likes for your facebook page.
Hi Socialyy,
and what do you do with these “likes”? Store them in a closet?
Sorry for being sarcastic, but unless there is some kind of social media strategy (doesn’t have to be a long-term 5 years plan in the beginning), it’s useless.
People like the page or become fans because they want to connect and are interested in brand. Also, they want to get entertained – that’s what a brand on Facebook can do, even if it’s not totally in line with their products/services.
I agree, everyone started somewhere but everything needs time…