Monday, August 4, 2014

Gauge interest in your content honestly


(image credit)
In Should I Buy Facebook Likes? Tom Bukacek makes a logical case for not doing so:
You have 200 organic fans of your page. Let’s say 25% of them engage with your content on a regular basis, that’s 50 fans. 
You buy 1000 fans (now a total of 1,200). If those 50 fans are still engaging with you, Facebook sees that only a meager 4.2% of your fanbase is engaging with your content. This tells the algorithm that you aren’t producing valuable content, and you will appear in your fans’ Newsfeeds even less often. 
So what happened to those 200 organic fans that loved your brand? They’re still there, but they aren’t seeing your posts, and one of your competitors may have caught their eye in the meantime.
As I launched a handful of project-related profiles on Twitter two years ago, I thought about doing this very thing.  I bookmarked a site that sold followers, and read it over a handful visits to the site.  My budget is tight, but the fees were affordable.  I was almost sold on the faux argument that having thousands of followers lent my profile, and thus my project, credibility.

Interestingly I get a fair amount of followers who advertise such a service right on their own profile description:




I don't follow them back, and I never bought into that credibility argument.  Logic notwithstanding, my decision not to buy followers was a matter of ethics.  What kind of credibility could I ever establish by misleading people and feigning followership?  The fact that I see such a service still filtering through my Timeline, however, suggests that many actually buy into it.  So when I see anyone with an unusually large numbers of whatever, I wonder if they've bought themselves into their numbers.

It's always a choice for you, of course, if you're thinking about it.  But I advise against it.  It's better to gauge interest in your content accurately and honestly, so you can then modify it and go forward accordingly.  It's better to engage genuinely, than to expose yourself inevitably as a fraud.

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