If the social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, and the like doesn’t really pick up speed, frustration quickly sets in. The many great contributions simply fizzle out without reaching the target group. You have to be able to do something about that, right? Anyone who simply enters “More Facebook fans ” on Google will quickly find that there are agencies that sell fans and Facebook followers. And that is how it works:
- The buyer claims a specific package.
- This pack includes buying fans and followers for a specific social network. It promises that more people will become aware of the profile and thus the interaction rates will increase.
- Once the payment has been made, you will receive the promised Facebook fans, depending on the quality of the “followers”.
But is that really all that is going on behind the scenes and is the solution really that simple? Unfortunately, no. As expected, there are a few things to note here. Especially the quality of the fake fans. Here are the 4 types of bought fans that you can go for when thinking of buying Facebook followers:
1. Simple Bots
Bots are known. It is programming that follows a fixed sequence. Buying Facebook fans usually end up with hundreds to thousands of such bots, which, given their price of a few cents, also do little. They are mere profiles that do not interact and simply express themselves as a number on your profile. You can find out why this is problematic below in the 5 reasons why we advise against buying Facebook followers.
The somewhat more complex bots are developed to the point where they actually interact with your account from time to time. This allows them to appear like real fans at first glance. But this impression does not last long, because these fans react unusually sluggishly and rarely. A circumstance that Facebook registers when the number of such followers is high.
Another possibility is accounts that aren’t really interested in your brand and are created just to follow thousands of other accounts. If you buy such Facebook fans, the interaction will be correspondingly low and your engagement numbers will not improve either.
3. Exchange Accounts
These accounts are more likely to be used if you want to buy real Facebook fans. Nevertheless, they are far from what one imagines them to be. Although these are often real accounts, they usually come from fan providers who operate exchange platforms. There you can, similar to the “Follow 4 Follow” principle, get fans by following them yourself.
Unfortunately, this is also possible with several accounts at the same time. Of course, this means that many accounts are only created to generate followers. As a result, no one has the time or interest to seriously maintain all of these accounts and use them to get in touch with thousands of followers. The interaction rate is therefore also rather meager here.
4. Temporary Followers
What comes closest to the idea of buying fans on Facebook is this fourth type of follower. However, there is a problem here too: Only a small number of the followers that you buy actually consist of real and active accounts (e.g. out of 5,000 fans only 500 are active or look like it).
Unfortunately, these few real accounts are resold and followed only so they can generate followers themselves. So there is no real interest here either. Also, these accounts unfollow fairly quickly once they get what they wanted.
Buying Facebook fans sounds nice, but there is a lot behind it that you should take a closer look at first. In general, the chance of achieving what you wanted with purchased followers tends to be close to zero. In the following, we explain what other reasons speak against buying Facebook fans.
Buying Facebook Fans: This Is A Questionable Investment For These 5 Reasons
The Facebook fans are ordered and the number of followers on the account has grown considerably. Did the mission accomplish? Not at all, because: These are absolutely worthless fans – and why these clicks are worthless, we explain with five very simple reasons.
Reason #1: There Are (Mostly) Not Real People Behind The Clicks
What is social media actually about? To interact with people who may be tomorrow’s customers or to interact with existing customers to strengthen customer loyalty and promote conversions. Let’s say you buy Facebook fans:
- Apparently, your fan base is growing – a nice thing
- But what can you really do with these fans?
- The people who gave a like through this action do not really exist. These are fake accounts that the service provider set up specifically to make money.
Do you really want to buy Facebook fans that actually don’t exist and spend a lot of money on them? Exactly, neither do we.
Reason #2: The Fans Remain Inactive After The First Click
There is simply no interaction with fake accounts – this also applies to people who were paid to click “Like”, because the click was not out of interest, but simply because of pennies. That’s not true for Facebook fan growth. Here, too, the problem remains: there is no interaction.
Reason #3: Your Stats Evaluations Become Absolutely Worthless
Assuming your fan base grows from 100 fans to 1,000 fans in a few days – the like numbers look good, of course, the growth rate is 1,000 percent. You can’t pat yourself on the back because:
- All other key figures that are much more important than the absolute number of fans and followers are reduced to a minimum.
- In particular, the interaction rate suffers from such purchases, because: only your real fans are still active. However, since it is difficult to tell who is real and who is fake, you can only evaluate the fans as a whole.
- Since interactions are calculated from the relationship between fans and their actions (likes, retweets, comments, shares), these numbers are now in the basement.
Reason #4: Your Marketing Misses The Target Audience
A company naturally wants to use statistics to conduct successful Facebook marketing. However, it is not only the case that the statistics are worthless, but that the target groups set are also completely falsified.
So if you place an ad to advertise what your company has to offer, you’ll pay almost the entire amount for nothing because the ad doesn’t reach a single real person or interested person.
The algorithm that selects your target group does not distinguish between bought and real fans. In the end, you end up paying for the fans you bought cheaply at first, who supposedly look good on your business profile.
Reason #5: If It’S Found Out, You’ve Got A Problem
First of all: Facebook prohibits users from buying fans – among other things for the reasons mentioned above. Naturalness is, as with backlink building for websites, the be-all, and end-all. Since the fan base is growing unnaturally fast and is often easy to recognize, you could quickly run into big problems:
- If Facebook and Co. realize that you have let yourself be carried away into buying fans and followers, there may be a penalty – in the worst case, your fan page will even be closed and deleted!
- If your real fans realize that the majority of fans have been bought, a migration could also take place here – whoever is “fake” is not a welcome guest, especially on social networks where personalities are concerned.
- On top of that, if your competition finds out that you’ve bought fans, you can be sure of snide comments. Found food to badmouth your business.
Why A Fan Page With Purchased Followers Attracts Attention
The last point, in particular, is a critical one because you can tell very quickly when a company has bought Facebook fans:
Typically, a company’s following comes from its sphere of activity. If your company is based in Germany, most of your followers are from there (unless, of course, you ship regularly all over the world).
1 to 3 percent of these followers will typically interact with your profile. But if the majority of your fans aren’t interacting at all, it’s noticeable. If the majority of your fans come from all over the world, that is also noticeable. And it’s even more noticeable when most followers come from conspicuous countries that are known for providing purchased fans (e.g. Turkey, Indonesia, or the Philippines).
So based on the points listed, it’s clearly better to get followers in an honest, tiring, but well-deserved way.
Generate Fans Honestly
For ethical reasons alone, it’s better if you stick to the tried and true method and grow your followers honestly. But how do you achieve that? First of all: With a lot of patience, the right know-how, and carefully considered test runs. What counts here are:
- Content with added value
Offer your users something for their interaction and use a call to action. For example, offer an e-book download for a newsletter subscription. Or give a small discount on your assortment for the first order.
- Interesting posts
The target group determines what is interesting. However, high-resolution images, practical graphics, videos, and emotionally charged storytelling tend to always be successful. Of course, special offers and sweepstakes are almost always interesting.
- interaction
Not only is it important to come up with posts, but ongoing interaction with fans is crucial. In the event of questions or complaints in particular, it is essential to be there immediately. Here are some useful social media monitoring tools to help you connect very closely with your fans.
A common argument in favor of buying Facebook fans is that there are real accounts among them. However, this is rarely the case and even then it does not lead to authentic interaction. As much as you hate to hear it, honesty is always the best policy. Try to come across as serious and bond with your fans through what you want from them: genuine interest.
Buying Facebook Fans Is Not A Good Idea
Buying fans and Facebook followers is an absolute no-go in the age of social media – and yet it is still used more often than you think. We can only strongly advise against it. You read why above. 100 active fans are worth more than 10,000 fake fans – it’s not easy to win real fans. It takes a lot of patience, know-how, and the right social media marketing agency. Then the following on social media grows naturally.
