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05/07/2012 by
8284 views

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?

Buy Facebook Likes, Buy Facebook Fans

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!

Social Media Marketing Components

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?”

Buy Facebook Likes

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!

Buy Facebook fans here

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.

 

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Martin Michalik
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