This story originally appeared in the Nov. 30 issue of Marketing
There’s money in selling fans, even if it’s the opposite of what social media marketing should be
Megan Coppolino
Meghan Coppolino, the communications director at Kitestring, a creative branding studio in Hamilton, Ont., compares the act of buying Twitter followers to a junkie looking for their next hit.
She’s never done it, but understands the high derived from watching a follower count go up by hundreds or even thousands a day. But as Twitter automatically weeds out the bots (software applications that run automated tasks) and a user’s online “popularity” starts to fall, it’s tempting to keep going back for more.
It is, apparently, a money-making enterprise for the websites selling Twitter followers or fans on other social media sites, and an easy way for ego-driven users to fool the public into thinking they have a large social media footprint.
“At first glance, the whole idea is the bigger your following, the more reputable your brand might appear to the average person,” says Coppolino.
At the very least, the practice is misleading. But more importantly, it’s not good marketing. Coppolino and the team at Kitestring recently learned about it first hand—though, they’re not sure how it happened.
On Sept. 4, Kitestring co-founder and creative director Chris Farias sent this from the agency’s Twitter account: “You get the same results buying Twitter followers as you do stuffing your bra. A line of superficial egg heads.”
Not long after, the agency, which uses a web-based application called Twitter Counter to track its account, noticed a massive daily increase in its followers—most of which were fake. For the first few weeks, the number of Kitestring’s fake followers increased by 929 each day. By press time, the number had nearly tripled to 2,500 per day.
After hours and hours of research, Coppolino learned how easy it is to purchase followers, not only for your own account but also someone else’s. “What’s really interesting with the follower-buying industry right now is that you don’t need authorization or a password to buy followers for a Twitter account,” says Coppolino. All you need is a Twitter handle and a bit of cash. Sellers (or, as one site put it, “social media enhancement service providers”) offer social media supremacy for one quick, easy and anonymous payment. According to online research firm Barracuda Labs, the average price for 1,000 “followers” is $18.
BuyFansToday.com offers followers, friends and views for a range of social media sites including Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook. Prices vary based on what the buyer is looking for – $95 will get you 1,000 Twitter followers and $45 buys 250 Instagram followers.
These fan vendors usually claim to be selling real followers to help increase brand awareness online – though the pitch feels more like a get-rich-quick informercial than a sensible option for building brands. BoostSocialMedia.net explains the virtue of paying for some of its Twitter followers this way: “Buy Twitter Followers, increase brand awareness, increase customer base and book profits!” Worried about the authenticity of those followers? Don’t be: “We have delivered hundreds of thousands of real followers to satisfied clients all across the world. All of our Twitter Packages are real active Twitter Followers.”
Ask people working in social media marketing and most will tell you the concept of buying fans, “real” or otherwise, is absolutely anathema to the rapidly evolving best practices in the space. Simply put: social media is about engaging with people, buying followers is not. And yet these companies exist, apparently because the appetite for bigger numbers is still very real in some offices.
It’s clear that people and brands still put too much emphasis on their number of followers.
“It’s unfortunate it’s a metric that people still measure, especially the C-suite that aren’t necessarily as close to the mechanisms of social media and marketing,” says Lindsay Stanford, group head and director of content and community at Social Media Group.
“Social reach is increasingly important but calculating the ROI on social initiatives is tricky,” says Queens University media professor Sidneyeve Matrix. “Enter fan, friends or follower counts which are easily quantifiable, and thus popular metrics. Buying fake followers to puff up a platform may seem misguided, but on the social web, size matters. Companies selling fake followers will make money as long as this remains true.”
Indeed, it’s clear that’s why BuyFansToday.com exists based on the welcome to its site: “You are here because you have finally realized how important it is to create online social proof. You’ve woken up to the power of social media and you are now trying to figure out how all of your competitors have amassed such large social media foundations,” it reads.
“Consumers are now taking your overall social proof into account when deciding whether or not to do business with you. The days of having the largest most impressive ad in the Yellow Pages are dead, now it comes down to how many Facebook fans you have, the number of Twitter followers you possess, and how many YouTube views your videos and channel have.”
There is some logic to spending on followers, says Matrix. “No one wants to be the first guest at the party,” she says. “That same social awkwardness exists when we see a brand with a ghost town for a social stream. Users gravitate toward active communities, and (appearing to be) a big brand online is more likely to become bigger, due to curiosity, the bandwagon effect, and no one wants to be the last to follow a feed that’s trending.”
The business of buying followers became a widely discussed topic in 2011 when Republican Newt Gingrich was accused of purchasing the majority of his 1.3 million followers, and then again this past summer when presidential candidate Mitt Romney amassed more than 100,000 new Twitter followers in one weekend alone.
While an ex-campaign staffer for Gingrich admitted in an anonymous interview with Gawker that the followers had been paid for, Zac Moffatt, the digital director from Romney’s camp, told press the campaign did not purchase followers. Trying to purchase your way to the top of the podium or an online popularity contest is a lot easier than shaking hands and kissing babies, but it’s unlikely that someone in Romney’s position would risk getting caught considering the number of online tools that can digitally sort the good followers from the bad simply by entering a Twitter handle.
“If winning were about having the most Twitter followers, Obama would get blown up by Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber,” says Moffatt. “It’s whether people are retweeting or sharing. That is what is of value to us.”
But how to explain Kitestring’s odd spike in followers? Interestingly, Coppolino and Kitestring believe they have been the target of Twitter sabotage, though they are reluctant to speculate on motivation.
Author and Unmarketing.com president Scott Stratten (who is also a Kitestring client) has a theory: “It’s to make someone look like they’re buying followers for themselves so you can hurt their credibility. It usually happens to people who are rallying against fake followers,” he says.
Buying your way to the top of the online popularity contest goes against everything Kitestring has been teaching its clients and preaching at industry events.
“It’s to undermine all the work that we do to advocate for a transparent and engaging and personable and real brand presence,” says Coppolino.
The agency has worked to be seen as champions of the social media space, encouraging clients to use the likes of Twitter to engage with its consumers, and in some cases providing 100-page social media manuals with content calendars, contest ideas and more.
Kitestring got into Twitter early and “we really fostered that relationship with the community, holding some events and throwing conferences and doing lots of workshops and education pieces,” says Coppolino.
“One of the selling propositions that we think we have is that we encourage our clients to look at the quality of the follow as opposed to quantity,” says Coppolino. “I think some agencies might not see it that way and see numbers as the more important metric.”
It goes back to what is quickly becoming one of the most important rules of social media marketing: it’s not quantity that’s important, it’s quality of content and level of engagement that really matters.
“Three or four years ago the race for followers and friends was the end all and be all, and now any progressive marketers worth their grain of salt is tracking things like time spent and amount of engagement, which tends to be some subject of how many people have engaged with me over the last month versus my denominator, which is how many followers or friends I have,” says Sean Moffitt, managing director of Wikibrands in Toronto.
Social media platforms allow brands to gain feedback from consumers, says Stanford. It’s not a one-way push and it’s not advertising, she says. It’s sharing relevant, value-added content that followers will then share with their communities and networks, which is where the value lies. “Bots don’t do that,” says Stanford. “If you’re not seeing the retweets and the replies and your content is not being shared, then really what’s the point of you having all those followers?” she asks.
If purchased followers do nothing more than increase a metric marketers are encouraged to ignore, what damage do they do? Can phony followers really tarnish a brand’s reputation or credibility?
They don’t help, says Peter Vaz, VP director at M2 Universal Digital. “You see a wrong picture of what exactly is going on,” he says. “It can be damaging if it is artificially inflating a number. Having fake friends is an evil we need to figure out and I’m sure with time there will be better methods of weeding it out.”
There are ways of spotting a padded list and Twitter has a setting that allows users to report spam. It also filed suit last spring in federal court against five spammers, including those who create fake followers.
Kitestring uses ManageFlitter to weed out dead accounts and spambots from its list and deletes each and every one on a daily basis. According to the “Rules and Best Practices” section of Twitter’s website, users “may encounter websites or applications claiming they can help you get lots of followers quickly. These programs may ask for payment for followers, or ask you to follow a list of other users in order to participate. Using these is not allowed according to the Twitter Rules.”
Despite its recent onslaught of fake followers, Kitestring still accrues approximately 10 to 25 new, legitimate followers per day. “The only way to mitigate this really is to wake up every day and see what eggs or phony accounts are following you and painstakingly delete them,” says Coppolino.
Kitestring plans to be open and honest about this experience and will share what the team has learned so far. At this point, it’s all the agency can do.
In his latest book, The Book of Business (Un)Awesome, Stratten says social media is a tough place to start building anything.
“When you start online, focus on sharing solid content, engaging with great people, and being your awesome self,” he writes. “Although it may take a while, you will create your own community, where size is relevant.”
For marketers to reap the benefits of social media sites like Twitter, it’s best to share relevant and engaging content to build a loyal list of brand advocates one follower at a time. It may be hard work and not provide the exhilaration of overnight success, but it’ll be better for you in the long run.
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