Fake Fans, Real Problems

The recent Dispatches documentary, ‘Celebs, Brands and Fake Fans’ on Channel 4 made interesting viewing for anyone responsible for managing social media communities, which focused on the issue of fake fans and followers on brand pages.

An example of this was a social media page set up by the programme makers to praise courgettes and shows how ‘click farms’ sell fake likes to brands. This runs a tremendous risk for any organisation resulting in loss of credibility and trust in their brand.

Click Farms may be a quick way of building fans and followers – what are the alternatives?

Facebook Ads

There are lots of ways to grow communities of real human fans on Facebook, such as targeted advertising, promoted posts, and even creating creative engagement campaigns.

Get Personal

Have you ever noticed companies who include the initials of the person tweeting at the end of each tweet? Or companies who include the Twitter handle of the person tweeting in their bio?

Both of these strategies are a great way to make a branded Twitter account feel a little more human and the interactions more personal.

Don’t ignore people who or post to your company.

Even just acknowledging these can make someone’s day this potentially making that person loyal to your brand for a lifetime. If you take the time to post, take the time to respond to feedback both good and bad.                                                                              

Use humour to make your followers laugh  

You never want to force humour but it can be an effective way to make your company seem less robotic. 

 With volumes of information streaming on Twitter, breaking it up with a laugh is always appreciated.

Social Media Strategy

Building a solid social network of fans or followers isn’t easy. It requires a quality strategy with good research, clear direction, and valuable content for users to engage with. This will help you to clarify your goals, identify your target audiences, and determine the most suitable social media tools to enable you to engage with potential customers and ensuring long term success.

Does a social media page have fake fans? How to find out 

It’s easy to find out if a Twitter account has fake followers using Status People’s Fake Follower checker. 

This allows you to get instant statistics on any Twitter account, including yours. Here’s our result: 

We're proud to say we don't use fake followers. We are passionate about everything we do, adopting the best values whilst building long-term relationships with what matters most, our customers.

Data and insights coming from genuine fans and customers through social media, the instant feedback on a product or service, can be incredibly valuable. Organisations must commit to growing and engaging with their communities rather than just giving priority to likes, views and follower counts, which can simply inflated by paying click farms to create fake accounts.

We’d love to chat whether it’s for some advice and guidance on creating a social media footprint, or to enquire about an in-depth strategic social media campaign. Feel free to get in touch.