Advertising

Should You Buy Facebook Likes?

Becky Doles

For the past few years, many brands have struggled to effectively prove the direct ROI of social marketing. Measuring the value of leveraging Facebook as a content and advertising platform is especially difficult, but this is due in part to marketers focusing on one very wrong metric – the number of fans of their brands’ Facebook page.

I only wish I had a dollar for every time I read or overheard someone brag about their fan base on Facebook. Not only is the number of fans a page has on Facebook completely irrelevant to the success of an overall social marketing campaign, focusing on this as an advertiser is incredibly detrimental for several reasons.

It’s important to remember that the real reason you want a Facebook fan is to engage them so that they eventually express an interest in knowing more about your brand, and then someday convert into a customer. (Alternatively, you may want a customer as a Facebook fan for retention.) If you are not developing and maintaining relationships with these fans via Facebook, they are not only worthless, but could be costing you instead of leading you to profits.

With the recent changes to Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, more brands are seeing the negative impact that a disengaged fan base has on a brand. Now, it really hurts a Facebook page if a high percentage of fans do not comment on updates or share content, as future posts from this page are less likely to be shown to fans in their news feeds.

Of course, if you have built a strong following of true fans, the changes to EdgeRank will actually help you and enable you to organically grow your fan base with more true fans. Unfortunately, not every brand is this lucky – and many social media consultants, community managers, and advertisers have gone so far as to actually buy Facebook fans. Even NPR reported on this trend earlier in 2012, describing how companies have bought thousands of likes – likes that are usually from fake Facebook accounts (i.e. not real people.)

In light of the recent changes to EdgeRank and the core purpose of social marketing, stuffing a Facebook page with fake fans is not just ethically a bad idea – it is actually counterproductive to both your campaign and your marketing budget. With thousands of fake Facebook fans, and just a few real ones, your page is destined for extremely low engagement, which will doom your Facebook content to be seen by very few people – if at all. (If you have bought most of your Facebook fans, your sponsored content will also be a futile effort.) Not only will your brand see a lack of leads (let alone conversions), but your time spent will be at a loss as well.

Admittedly, the number of fans a brand has can be an indicator of your brand’s success. Growing that number organically by leveraging your real fans may take time, but in the long term will lead to a much more positive ROI than by buying fake ones, which will only hurt your brand’s potentially for success – and budget – in the end.

Author
Becky Doles

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she led a variety of marketing and communications projects at San Francisco startups. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After living nearly a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned to her home of Charleston, SC, where you can find her enjoying the sun and salt water with her family.

19 responses to “Should You Buy Facebook Likes?”

  1. […] HasOffers.com: Why You Should Never, Ever Buy Facebook Fans […]

  2. Tzur Rokah says:

    Nice one

  3. Facebook fans says:

    Very nice article thanks for posting. I’ve been using socialbakers, hootsuite and socialkik to increase my followers and fans.

  4. Jean Noël Tribolo says:

    Very informative, thanks!

  5. Mithu Hassan says:

    Great article !! I really like this !! Artificial nothings are good !!

  6. Mica says:

    Hello, I am Mica! I purchased 5000 Facebook Likes from Websolutions.pro and I am happy because all Facebook Likes are genuine.

  7. Paul says:

    Now it is very easy to buy Genuine Facebook Likes because
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  8. mealy hude says:

    thanks for sharing a perfect writeup for gaining likes in a real way

  9. Wesly says:

    I used Fiverr to buy 5000 facebook page likes at a pop for just $5. The problem is that the likes are without peoples knowledge, so the number drops rapidly with each post you make. Not really a good trade…

  10. Leticia says:

    We can buy FB fans if you just started your page and you want to let everyone know about your page, I try to order from http://www.bestsocialprovider.biz/. They are very nice people and will answer all my question.

  11. Mario says:

    I’ve purchased facebook fans but only enough to get to pick my URL, after that it has always been organically.

  12. You just put everything in a package. 🙂

  13. Milon Akanda says:

    Very nice articles i am so amuze.

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