While Facebook’s star may be fading, it is still monumentally popular and any business that wants to grow and reach a global audience should have a presence on it. If you’re starting out or wanting to grow your audience, is it safe to buy Facebook followers and Likes?
Social media marketing is all about growing your audience, offering them value, interacting with them and investing time, energy and effort into building relationships. It’s like running a business all on its own.
The trouble is that it does take so much time, energy and effort to get anywhere. So what if you could avoid all that and take a shortcut?
The TL;DR here is that no, it is not safe to buy Facebook followers and Likes. I’ll tell you exactly why in a minute.
Buying Facebook followers and Likes
For some, social media is still a numbers game. If you don’t have lots of followers, you’re not worthy of notice. Never mind that your posts are top quality or that you answer every comment, thank every Like and do everything you can push quality over quantity. Many businesses know that, which is why there is an entire industry dedicated to selling Facebook followers and Likes.
Put ‘buy Facebook followers and Likes’ into any search engine and you will see millions of returns. You can find hundreds of websites offering likes from as little as $5 per 100. It is tempting isn’t it? To pay a few dollars to boost your follower or Like count? Even if it’s just to get things started?
You should not give in to this temptation and here are five reasons why not.
- Fake Facebook followers and Likes don’t buy from you.
- Fake Facebook followers and Likes don’t help your social proof.
- Fake Facebook followers and Likes can be easily detected.
- Fake Facebook followers and Likes stops you measuring your real success.
- Fake Facebook followers and Likes gives you Low EdgeRank.
Let’s take a quick look at each of these.
Fake Facebook followers and Likes don’t buy from you
The whole point of using social media marketing is to get more business. Bought followers and Likes don’t buy from you. Neither do they spread the word, offer recommendations, leave reviews or share your posts with others. If followers don’t buy what you’re offering or add value in any way except boost a counter, what’s the point?
Fake Facebook followers and Likes don’t help your social proof
Aside from a boost in your numbers, there is no other benefit to buying followers and Likes. Social proof is initially influenced by follower numbers but needs much more to be of any use. People read reviews, comments, feedback and look outside Facebook to corroborate all this. Having hundreds of followers but nothing else will not help your cause.
Fake Facebook followers and Likes can be easily detected
It is usually obvious when a Facebook page doesn’t have real followers. Their may be hundreds or even thousands of followers but nobody talking or commenting. It’s like a wasteland on the page. Nobody home and nothing going on is a sure sign of bought followers.
People can be fickle and nothing annoys us more than the thought that we have been duped. If we detect a phony story or post or think someone is tricking us, we will react accordingly. Usually that is by just moving on and ignoring the person doing the tricking. Some people will take action and call you out or tell everyone they can that you’re a fake. This would definitely undo all your hard work!
Fake Facebook followers and Likes stops you measuring your real success
To measure whether your social media marketing efforts are working, you need clean data to measure. Buying followers and Likes messes all that up. If you don’t know what is working and what isn’t you cannot refine your efforts and your real success is pushed further away than ever. Metrics can be incredibly dull but accurate reporting is also incredibly important.
Fake Facebook followers and Likes gives you Low EdgeRank
EdgeRank is how Facebook assesses whether to put your post into News Feeds. Legitimate social media marketers have hard enough time getting there so you would stand no chance if all you had were bought Facebook followers and Likes. A poor EdgeRank also means Facebook is less likely to promote your posts and you will eventually disappear from view altogether.
Social media marketing can be an onerous, thankless task to begin with. It is only once you’re more established and have genuine followers that you can interact with that you begin seeing real value. Every quality internet marketer everywhere will tell you exactly the same thing, it is not safe to buy Facebook followers and Likes and you should never do it!
