Creating a dynamic social media space that both promotes your brands and engages customers is no simple task. A truly robust Facebook page or Instagram account is a delicate balance of user interaction and straight ahead marketing that must be built up over time.
Given the importance of social media to any industry, and the time it takes to build up an audience, some website publishers have turned to shortcuts such as purchasing fake followers and fake likes. While this idea may sound good at first blush, it’s actually incredibly counter intuitive and may cost more over time than it saves.
Here are a few real facts you should know about fake followers.
In many ways, fake social media followers are a bit like parasites that feed on your body’s nutrients, but don’t actually support good health or growth. That’s because as long as the social platform thinks your fake followers are real, it’s going to treat them as real. So when you have 5,000 fake followers who will never post a comment, like a Tweet, or share a Facebook post, it negatively impacts your engagement metrics. As your engagement rates go down, so will the number of posts that get sent out to news-feeds.
Even worse, social platforms include your fake followers when deciding how much to charge your for ads that aimed at your followers. In short, you’ll be paying a higher price for advertising that’s aimed at accounts that will never ever convert because they simply don’t exist.
In the world of social media, there are no shortcuts – just an endless grind of building and maintaining followers.