Not long ago someone asked an interesting question in the answers forum: How did Baba Jukwa get his seemingly huge following? It would appear the answer was just plain simple old sensationalism. This made me curious however, how do other businesses and organisation achieve social networking fame aside from notoriety (which might explain why a lot of sex tapes are getting leaked?) It seems some people just buy their friends or followers.
Social networking has become one of the many fronts where businesses compete. In some businesses such as fashion or entertainment you die or live because of your social profile.You need to be visible and popular to stay in business. There are a lot of businesses out there that make their money offering you tools that are tailored to boost your social networking profile as well as you SEO ranking in site engines. Most charge a fortune and do a lot of inexplicable things to your site. Some of these things work some and some of them are nothing but elaborate scams.
It seems however some unscrupulous business have risen who claim to have a solution. Just buy those friends and likes. Some, like this one, even sell premium packages of what they call real friends-something akin to the real relationship experience offered by small houses. You pay people to follow you.
Like with all things the big question is should you or shouldn’t you buy fake friends or likes? There is every reason not to and only a couple of reasons to do it. Here are a few reasons why you might have to do it:
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So you can appear important- social networking is like a chain reaction. The popular get more popular. People might start noticing your miserable lonely person and if you buy yourself fake friends then real ones might start bursting in instead of trickling in.
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It is easier and cheap to do. I mean everyone understands what is involved you just buy friends or likes instead of trying to follow all that SEO mumbo jumbo.
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“Everyone is doing it.”
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“ What’s the big deal it’s not like you are killing anyone right?”
On the other end there are a good number of compelling reasons why you shouldn’t indulge in this foolishness.
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Your brand will go out through the window and if you get caught all the chance you had at popularity will go with it and your name or brand will be forever associated with cheating. People will always say “X-who?” ‘Oh you mean the one who had a fake profile?’
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They are aren’t real friends anyway more like mindless sheep and spambots.
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The people are unlikely to come from your targeted region. Most of these fake followers or likes come from outside Zimbabwe so you are unlikely to draw the attention of your targeted crowd.
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Some of the sites that sell followers are scams so you might lose your money in the process.
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It just plain cheating.
In my own opinion it is not be a good idea to buy fake likes or followers. If you are wondering if someone’s followers or likes are real there are easy ways to find out. On Facebook you just need to visit that someone’s page, click on the likes and get a detailed view of the page’s statistics. Chances are if the majority the likes are from outside Zimbabwe/Region of that someone then the likes are likely fake. Also if a lot of people who are talking about the page are foreigners then the page might also be fake unless of course if the page is deliberately targeting a foreign audience. For twitter you can use the status checker here.
In case you are still wondering: Baba Jukwa’s followers appear to be very real indeed. A quick check revealed I am even acquainted with some of the followers.For what it is worth: If you are so desperate for attention then you are better of doing something scandalous than buying fake friends or likes.
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4 comments
Sometimes companies outsource their social media administration, the Marketing guy is paid to ensure the company’s clout grows and likes increase. Some companies’ own personnel are not aware of what goes on with social media so it’s easy to cheat and look like you are doing a good job. This is where companies like USocial come into the picture and few know them like back door viruses they work the system secretly and only those benefitting know what it’s worth. I know people who tried or are still trying to buy facebook pages, friends or profiles. The best way I have used to grow facebook presence is as follows:
1. Putting out riveting content, be intuitive and make people want to follow you.
2. Use a Credit Card or Paypal, yes Facebook Ads don’t always deliver what they promise but coupled with good content on your page/profile, they will go a long way. I have used this to promote some Big Brother housemates like Wendall and Hakeem.
3. Be patient, unless you sit on the track of viral phenomenon e.g. I become aware of top politician say Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife having a secret affair, I clandestinely record the conversations or trysts then once I have enough information I launch onto facebook, I am guaranteed massive followers in a short time, this is the Baba Jukwa effect.
Without anything viral, you must be content doing S4S with other pages but facebook clamps down on such if found you can be banned or else its slowly building your brand. The good part is when you become big you will know all the fans are real fans.
An alternative approach is to focus on developing influence, first. When you spend the time earning a position of true influence, you will get the most impressive social proof measurement of all – When you speak, people will listen and then act!
Great read and not too sure whether this fade has reach such regions yet. The challenge you have with some of these checking tools for Twitter (I have experienced this with one of the clients that I’ve worked with) is that they check for:
1. Has the person got a profile picture?
2. Have they tweeted more than X amount of times?
3. How many people are following them?
This creates a problem for us here in Zimbabwe, where a lot of people (my wife included) has just logged on to Twitter, signed up, looked around and seen no value and left the application (without deleting their account), thus equating to those Twitter profile checkers rating the people are fake…
Great news is that Twitter and Facebook remover “fake” profiles every now and again.
My greatest advise would be for someone to ENGAGE. Engage with their target audience frequently and don’t just post ADVERT after ADVERT. Answer the question in your followers mind of “what will I benefit by following brand X on their Facebook or Twitter profile?”
Would be great if we could have local forums that discuss the social media landscape here in Zimbabwe as most companies think and feel that all they have to do is find someone in the office for knows “computers” or has a “used” Facebook and then they get plonked into the driving chair of running with the brand on the social networks.
This article made me yawn. someone needs to go back to writing school. It fails in giving me any new insight and is disjointed. Doesn’t even say how baba jukwa got so many followers