Should you buy Social Media Likes and Followers?

There are plenty of places out there which will sell you Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers from all across the globe. The question is, should you buy them or not?

The number of Likes or Followers a Company has seems to be becoming more important than years in business or customer testimonials in today’s day and age. And I guess this is good, because let’s be honest, if you paste 3 or 4 customer testimonials on a Website then this may not be a fair representation of how happy the hundreds or thousands of customers have actually been on average. Plus, it may only represent a small part of the whole business. For instance, it may represent the Sales Process at the beginning but not the after service further down the line.

I’m not here to say whether you should or shouldn’t. Instead I think it’s worth considering all the reasons for and against including the ethical side of this. So, in no particular order let’s look at the pros and cons of buying Social Media Likes and Followers.

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Pros and Cons...

1. A crowd draws a crowd, so you could buy them on the basis that it will get things kick started and the rest will follow. The danger with this is that if the Likes you get are just generated by a company for you, then despite them saying the accounts are active, the chances are you will not get any engagement from them and thus won’t get any further Likes or conversions from it. An active account doesn’t mean the person has any interest in your business and in fact they may just be being paid to like everything and anything. So Buying fake followers and Likes will not increase engagement.

2. Ok, so you’re more worried about having no Likes from day one which just looks bad. You don’t have time to manage Social Media or a budget, but you want a Facebook page and just want some likes, so it looks good. On this basis it could be worth doing. Provided you aren’t looking for any of the above and you just want pure Likes for the look of it, then you will get exactly that.

3. What is the ethical argument? Well if we jump on the Soap Box and start preaching ethics then none of us should ever consider buying Social Media Likes. But that is a little harsh isn’t it? For the small business trying to make ends meet that has a limited budget, zero time and possibly no experience or passion for this then a few Likes is acceptable as in point 2 isn’t it?

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If you look this subject up on the Web you will see dozens of articles for and against doing this. If you are considering it, then it’s not a definitive yes or no, so I would ask yourself what you are looking to achieve. Social Media is changing all the time, as is your business. So, provided the ethical part doesn’t keep you awake at night filled with guilt, then in some cases it could fit for the short time. But as a Long-Term Strategy to drive engagement and build a larger following, it’s not likely to work.

If you would like more information on how Signpost Media could help you to Manage your Social Media in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, please contact us to arrange an informal meeting.

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