- Get 10,000 fans / likes for just $100
- 5,000 unique Twitter followers for just $50
- Buy your way to the top!
Just some of the headlines of email I’ve received in the past week.
Then there are the potential clients that approach me asking if we can ‘buy fans or followers’.
Well the answer is a resounding:
NO!
I can see why it seems a great idea. 10,000 people listening to your message, all added to your account within a week or so – before you know it you’ll have sales coming out of your ears, right?
WRONG!
See, think about it. How many of those 10,000 will be REAL people, waiting to read your message and interested in what you sell? The chances are, not many.
And how many alerts will you be triggering with your super fast growth? Probably lots – Twitter is renowned for closing down accounts that grow so rapidly, as it’s the classic hallmark of a spam account (which, incidentally, yours pretty much is once you start buying fans and followers instead of building your fanbase organically).
I know, it seems like the easy option – hardly any money gets you a huge potential audience.
But I put it to you that if you think this is a great idea then you’ve not quite ‘got’ the idea of Social Media Marketing – it’s not about broadcasting to a huge audience, it’s about attracting the right kind of people and followers, building your audience gradually, interacting with them, and developing credibility.
Having 10,000 fans or followers is great (my own @nikkipilkington has 14,000ish, built organically) but it’s not a short cut to untold riches, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to sell loads – it just means you bought a list that’s probably as useless as the $50 link campaign you considered buying last summer – and probably just as dangerous, in terms of the likelihood of being banned from Facebook or Twitter.
Have you bought followers or fans? Would you? Send me your thoughts on Twitter at @nikkipilkington
Or talk to me about Social Media Marketing help.
