Kelly Fitzgerald
It’s typical to find a new product or brand you enjoy, look them up on Facebook, and see how many Facebook fans they have. Sometimes we are quick to judge a brand by this number. We think, “Wow!” 5,000 fans? They must be doing something right. This may encourage you to buy Facebook fans when you are starting a new Facebook page or trying to increase the popularity of your brand. Facebook “link farms” have been around for a few years now, enticing brands to pay dirt cheap rates and achieve insta-likes for their pages. Problem solved, right? Wrong. There are several disadvantages that come with paying for Facebook fans and they can actually reverse the work you’re trying to do to improve your brand. In reality, paying for Facebook fans in the devil and we’ll explain why.
1. You’ll end up with fake Facebook fans, instead of a real audience
At first glance, paying for Facebook fans may seem worth it, but number of likes alone will not help your business build a good reputation. Buying likes generally gets your business thousands of likes from fake accounts, bots, or from real accounts that are paid to like your page. According to the Huffington Post, Facebook reported last year that 14.1 million of its 1.18 billion active users were fraudulent accounts. Although Facebook has tried to crack down on these fake accounts and link farms, it’s inevitable that new ones pop up as soon as the old ones are shut down. That’s why it’s up to you to be educated on why these type of fake Facebook fans are not beneficial. Fake fans go against the whole point of inbound marketing. We are trying to connect with our audience in a real and attractive way, and buying fans to do this, is counterproductive.
2. Your engagement metrics will take a hit
Facebook fan pages are rewarded for sharing and promoting relevant content and engaging with their audience. If you buy Facebook fans, many of these fans are fake accounts, or real accounts that have no interest in your brand and product. These fans will not engage with your page. They will do their one job – to like your page – and never think twice about your brand. It will be close to impossible for you to establish or improve your page’s engagement metrics with an audience who is not interested. This can lead to faulty numbers for your inbound marketing campaigns because your social engagement will not be accurate. You will not be in contact with your brand’s real audience. You could completely miss out on what they are saying, doing, and thinking about your brand.
3. Lack of engagement can increase your cost for real ads
If your engagement takes a hit, chances are your visibility in Facebook’s newsfeed will also decrease. This will inhibit your chance of gaining new fans who are actually interested in your brand. With Facebook’s new algorithms in place and organic reach decreasing immensely, low engagement from purchased followers will actually force you to pay more money on ads to get your posts seen by your real audience. It may seem like you’re digging a hole that you’ll never get out of. With an established fan base of purchased fans, the future may appear grim for finding and interacting with your true audience.
4. Your authority on Facebook will decrease
The whole point of creating a Facebook fan page and building a fan base is to increase your brand authority. Your goal is to build a trusting relationship with your brand’s customers and prospects. If these people see that you’re buying Facebook fans, your trust levels may be shot. This can destroy your credibility and may decrease the chances that your customers can relate to you on a human level. Buying fans may put you on stage for public shaming in the online world; people may be willing to name and shame you for not being authentic. This could reverse any real progress you’ve made in connecting with a real audience.
5. Your Facebook efforts will become worthless
Paid Facebook likes will not turn a profit. These fake fans will not help you achieve your marketing or sales efforts. It can be easily seen that many paid fans live in countries that your business probably does not operate in. Putting a call-to-action or questions with your Facebook marketing efforts will become fruitless if your fans are not interested in your brand or product. Without a genuine online fan base, your entire marketing campaign will suffer.
Facebook fan likes do not measure success. If your business has 17,000 fans, but no one is engaging with your posts, chances are you may have bought some of your fan base. If this is the case, you may want to consider the effect it’s having on your marketing and sales efforts. We believe there is no benefit to paying for Facebook fans. If you decide to go this route, you may be making a pact with the devil.
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