Social Media Followers
We have all wanted more social media followers since the early 2000's when social media began to take off. We read how this person or that person had thousands or millions of followers. Wow, that set the bar right up there in social media!
Many people were getting paid to post or tweet this or that. Others found new jobs because of their follower count and so called influence. According to the Money Pantry " People with a lot of twitter followers (sometimes called Twitlebrities) are regularly getting paid to tweet about certain companies or products."
It is no wonder people want to have more social media followers to make a quick extra buck. In light of the recent news this made me wonder: Do we really need to prove our influence by the number of followers we have on each of the social networks? Or is the content we produce time after time again worth more?
Is this any different from actresses and models who do anything to be anorexia thin to keep their jobs? Women who do not leave their houses without make-up? Where do we draw the line?
Social Media Followers at a Price Offered
Remember the days when everybody was buying Facebook likes directly from Facebook? They still are offering it today and many do purchase the first likes for their pages. The difference today is your can pick and choose a demographic and audience for those likes.
Back in the day it was anybody and anyone that could like your page. This is more of a disservice to all. Facebook pages were designed to grab the attention of people in your niche. Maybe Facebook pages with less likes will generate more engagements going forward!
Hence there were many companies that offered these Facebook likes for less money than Facebook. I remember getting phone calls all the time as I had a retail website. They wanted to sell me Facebook likes left and right!
Of course as seen below there are still 491,000,000 queries that come up for buying Facebook likes today! Do Facebook likes really boost traffic and sales? You may remember the post I wrote back in July about how Facebook likes does not translate into making money.
Instagram Followers
Have you seen how many services they are now for generating yourself some Instagram followers? Today many are making money from this social network and Instagram was barely mentioned in the news about their fake followers. If you are on Instagram you may notice many users follow and un-follow you quicker than on any other social media network out there.
Other Social Media Followers For Sale Too
Apparently any social media site that can generate money for users has followers for sale. YouTube also requires you to have many followers to make a few dollars on their social network. Pinterest is one that was not mentioned in the news about fake followers but I'd imagine they are there too.
Social Media Follower Tools
Therefore does this mean all the social media tools out there to help promote your accounts, will fall into this category of fake accounts? I'm not sure but I doubt it. Tweets can be seen more when using a tool like Just Retweet.
Likewise will these type of tools be considered fake? Viral Content Bee is another tool that many and myself used. Thousands of these tools are used by social media marketers every day to gain in the social media system. Is it just like putting make-up on your social media accounts?
Social Media Followers on Twitter
As a result Twitter received the most attention in the news of the fake follower factory. It was not just the fake followers that caused this uproar but the bots generated. According to Wikipedia:
"A Twitterbot is a type of bot software that controls a Twitter account via the Twitter API. The bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts."
Obviously these type of actions on the Twitter network make anyone wonder. Who is real and who is only a bot? No wonder I have been receiving so many direct messages. Those nasty DM's are usually just a bot.
Social Quant for Twitter - Different?
I asked the folks over at Social Quant about their services that I've recommended from time to time. Here is the response:
"The difference is actually quite substantial. That report detailed that Devumi was buying fake accounts and then selling those in bulk as followers. In Devumi's case the accounts were fake clones of real accounts at best or just flat out fake accounts at worst.
Social Quant, on the other hand, monitors Twitter for real people using the keywords you provide us. When we find them, we run them through a series of filters to ensure they are good accounts to follow and not tweeting inappropriate content and then follow those accounts on your behalf. If they follow back, great, that a connection. And, if not, we will unfollow them after a time.
So any time you gain a follower through Social Quant, it is a real person who chose to follow you back, presumably because they came back to your profile and are interested in connecting with you. "
The Real People on Twitter
Many will wonder now - who is real on Twitter? People who interact with you on the Twitter network and off are real. Those than interact with you on any other social media network tend to be real. Friends that you talk to on the phone or via email are more likely to be real as it gets.
The news organizations that are reporting this is in fear of social media too. It has torn apart their businesses. We have to decide for ourselves who is real and who is not of our social media followers.
I can tell you folks like Sam Hurley, Ryan Biddulph, Neal Schaffer, Ted Rubin and Mike Allton are real. They engage with you on and off the networks.
Does Content Matter for Influencer Marketing?
Does content now count for influence? I think content will count more in the future. It will count more than the number of social media followers one can produce on any given channel.
Our content is our home. It's where we speak our minds and sometimes let others speak too via the comments. And yes bots are around here too. They try to come every once in while to make us wonder. Is that person real or a fake leaving a comment? We have to decide based on what we know in the moment. Maybe we need a anti-bot software 🙂
What Are Your Thoughts?
I'd love to know in the comments below if you will do anything different with your social media marketing since this all came out. Will you still use following tools for your social media? Will you focus more on your content?
If you need help crafting a REAL Twitter profile don't forget to get my Twitter Profile cheat sheet today!
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