Tek-Bull

Why Buying Facebook Fans is a Horrible Idea

We’ve all been there, you’re sitting a home not doing absolutely anything proactive for your blog, and then you look at your fan page only to realize you have 30 fans. Every time you update your status, those 30 fans engage with your content but you just can’t get pass the 30 fans! And then it finally it hits you. There are companies that actually SELL you facebook fans! If you are like most of us, you laugh at their claims. But if you found this article while looking on whether or not it’s a good idea to buy fans, then read this before you do! If you want our take on it, you’re doing it all wrong!

 I mean, sure you can always go out and buy people if you want, but think about your fan page as a real business,  do you think that there is a “human” store where you can go and buy humans to come to your store and like it? I mean, sure you can go out and find a human trafficking mobster, but come on, be realistic on this one.

A simple search online will bring up several different types of advertisement like the one on the right. While this kind of website does guarantee that you will see a huge increase in your number of fans, instead of helping you… you end up in a whole bunch of trouble that could potentially kill your website’s reputation or even kill your website on Facebook 100% by destroying your EdgeRank Score. I’m sure this is your first time hearing about this score so I’ll explain what it is. In laymen’s terms, this is the “rank” that facebook gives your content, a low EdgeRank will guarantee that your content will never be seen by anyone on facebook period.

If you’re not familiar with Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, The Next Web has a has an amazing article explaining exactly what and how it works Everything You Need To Know about Facebook’s EdgeRank once you read that, you will think twice about buying those friends. Here is a little bit more information on the rank

EdgeRank, looks like this:

What EdgeRank does is determine if your content is worth being shown to Facebook and its users. Every time that you send out an article, a status update, put up a picture or a link, your “average” rank goes out with that status update. If your “fans” are interacting with your links and content then your rank goes up and is displayed to everyone on their news-feed, however if you have 10,000 fans, but only 30 of those are interacting with your status… well… your EdgeRank DROPS to below sub standards and Facebook automatically believes that your content is so horrible that not even your fans want to read it. Instead of showing your post to its users, facebook will only show the post to 10% of the people… IF you’re luck – regardless of how AWESOME your content is.

You see, when you buy “fans” all you really do is add numbers to your page, you are effectively buying people who do NOT even care about your page. These people are probably paid to come and like your facebook page and then click on “hide” stories. They do this same process to hundreds of pages per day…. I know you’re probably thinking “well… my page is extremely cool looking once they see my page, they’ll keep on coming back” and the fact of the matter is that While your page is very “cool” your being liked by Robots and Fake accounts or worse yet, accounts of people that were hacked. These “hacked fans” see your stories and instead of liking your pages and comments they just click on “spam” which drastically lowers your EdgeRank and could potentially get your page shut down by facebook.

The difference between facebook and twitter is the fact that on twitter anyone that “follows” you, robot, fake, or just people that are paid to follow you, sees your tweets on the timeline. On facebook, you have to actually prove to facebook that you deserve to be shown to your fans. You don’t need fake fans taking your page rank down, instead focus on your real fans and work with them.

EdgeRank alone should be more than enough evidence to get you to not buy fans. But if you need other reasons of why buying a fan is a horrible idea; just think about your fans first.

First off when a true fan notices that they are being disregarded as fans and that instead you are buying people, you are practically pulling the trigger on your real fans telling them they are not good enough. Again, think about it as a real business. Imagine a bar full of people who don’t actually go to bars, but instead they just stand there crowding the place, would you go back to that place

But then you run into another problem, the whole desperate problem, imagine a small business, who is just sitting around not doing anything, your fans come in, and they see that the business is an AWESOME business but you are slowly gaining popularity. This growth has been happening for the previous 2 months. Your fans are happy, you’re happy and then 1 day later you go from 30 fans to 5,000 fans, which automatically makes your business look desperate.

Think about all the successful businesses you know of. Do you think they got that big and successful by taking shortcuts and trying out “magic pills?” Or do you think that they got to their successful stage by following a very rigid business model? Most likely the latter if you ask me.

Getting people to “like” your page is not that difficult as long as you have a product or service that enriches your reader’s lives. Do some of the following things:

  • Ask questions
  • Share unique photos and video
  • Run contests that are brand-related
  • Discuss topics intended to push button
  • Keep up with current events and interact with your fans
  • Make yourself part of larger conversations.
  • Tie online to offline and vice versa.

 Guess what happens when you do these things? You get a whole bunch of people that actually like your page. But it takes time, and work, and most people don’t like to put in this effort, instead they just look for the easy way out and decide to take the easy pill.

Something that we’ve learned is that social media relationships and real life relationships work the same way, you can either pay people to be your friends so you “look” popular but when people ask them about you they only know you as “oh that guy that pays us money!!” or you can actually have a good attitude and get the support of real friends who are willing to stand up for you when things get tough.