You get what you pay for. Keep that in mind if you’re tempted to buy Facebook fans.
Sites that sell fans ask you to simply enter your page URL, tell the vendor how many fans you want and input your PayPal information.
A few weeks later, you have a few thousand brand new fans!
Anything wrong with this? Everything!
Every fan-selling website, no matter how legitimate and professional it seems, delivers fake fans. These services are always having issues with their PayPal accounts, which often get suspended. Some of the sellers demand payment upfront, and then never contact you again.
(Just to clarify: I’m not talking about social media marketing agencies that manage a fan page or ad campaign. I mean the sites that sell a guaranteed number of supposedly real and targeted fans for a fixed price.)
Most fan-selling websites are just middlemen. They get send your orders to companies in India, Pakistan and Singapore. These outfits use spammy, hacker tactics to provide you your “100 percent real and targeted” fans.
How do I know this? I tested about 10 different fan suppliers and not a single one yielded “100 percent real and targeted fans” as promised. Most turned out to be fake profiles with a few real people mixed in the bunch. I even talked to page owners who’d bought fans and not a single buyer got any increase in sales nor engagement after the purchase.
Notice how the fake likers pictured below have stock photos and oddly constructed names.
(Click here to see more signs of fake profiles.) In my opinion, the bigger issue beyond the poor quality of fans lies in the mindsets of those who choose to buy them. They are still looking for that magic pill for their business. That mentality never leads to success.
Think about a successful businesses you know of. Do you think it got that way by taking shortcuts and trying out quick fix after quick fix and eventually stumbled upon one that worked? Or did it carefully craft out a working business model, took action and modified their strategy until they got the results they wanted? Most likely the latter.
The kicker is, getting fans for your fan page isn’t that difficult! As long as you have a product or service that adds value to people’s lives, people will naturally like your page. You just need to know how to use the tools that Facebook gives you to give everyone a chance to learn more about you.
Some ways to do this include:
- Facebook ads
- Contests and giveaways
- Fan-only discounts
- A reveal page
- Posting great content
- Using viral apps
- Asking your fans to tell their friends
- Promoting your fan page
And guess what happens when you do these things? You end up with a bunch of people who actually like your company and want to use your products and services.
The problem is, a lot of business owners don’t want to put in all that work and rather just take the magic pill. It’s almost guaranteed that these bought fans the few real ones in the mix will never buy anything from you.
So to everyone else, your page might look awesome because you have a gazillion fans, but you know that you’re not making a dime from them. Do you want your business to appear successful or actually be successful?
Tony Thor is the chief executive officer of Social Brawn.
Thanks! I just wrote about this! A client of mine did it and while I did not conduct a thorough investigation like you did, I knew immediately it was all fake. Thanks for giving me some back-up to send her. Unfortunately the "magic pill" is all she's interested in
http://bit.ly/mFryx8
Comment by Ruth Sheahan — June 29, 2011 @ 11:14 am
I think this is important. How much fans do so much fame
Comment by necooo — June 29, 2011 @ 11:37 am
1 real fan is worth a million fake ones.
Comment by Iain Johnstone — June 29, 2011 @ 9:37 pm
I disagree to an extent. Doesn't facebook show your page more often in searches if you have more fans? Therefore, buying fans might not be such a bad idea?
My arguement is if you have two identical pages and one has bought 3000 fans and one has 24 that are genuine facebook likes will always display the one with 3000 likes before the other. Always.
I totally understand that you aren't selling your products or services to these people, hell the majority of them won't even speak or read the same language. But to be found in Facebook searches, displayed first are pages with the most likes. Therefore to have my page displayed before my local business rivals by the RELEVANT people, $40 for 3000 likes seems like a sound investment.
I'm not talking about appearing in news feeds. I'm talking about searches. Do a search on a company that might have a few pages set up such as Coke. http://www.facebook.com/search.php?q=coke&ini... Facebook displays the pages in number of like order. Therefore, to get my page at the top of the searches paying for likes might be a good idea.
I'm not trying to sell to the likes I may have paid for, I'm using the like figures to get my page to appear first in searches. Why? Because I want people who may be searching for or on my business keywords or name to find me first before my rivals – then I will have relevant likes. They found me first.
Comment by @DenboTaylor — June 30, 2011 @ 4:58 am
I don´t see you having mentioned Twiends here. How´s your view on services like that? (Until recently, they had a system for adding facebook fans the same way as twitter followers).
Comment by adrenalinfeed — June 30, 2011 @ 10:18 am
Can you answer how much a fake Facebook fan is worth?
Comment by cbaccus — June 30, 2011 @ 5:37 pm
I've tried Twiends before.. 90% of the accounts are completely FAKE… the real ones either unlike you within a week or turn out to be 17 year old girls who have no interest in your page.
I always recommend getting real, interested fans. It's better to have 500 followers who will do anything you say rather than 1 million who ignore you.
Comment by webdevelopers77 — July 1, 2011 @ 4:41 pm
Depends what you do with it. Certainly the fans you get from these sources aren't going to actually buy anything from you. However, a little boost in numbers by buying fans will make your fan page APPEAR more successful than it really is which can help attract the real fans. For the low cost of these and other services, it can be worth it in some cases.
Comment by Carlos Scarpero — July 1, 2011 @ 9:52 pm
You bring up a good point, you just have to be careful about it. Twiends is pretty useless because most of the fans leave your page soon after you paid for them. While there are some services that get you quality that sticks, I think if you use one of these services you have to look at it from the perspective of ranking higher in Facebook search results and having a larger number of fans to impress others and shouldn't use it from the perspective of thinking that they can guarantee your business customers. I would search for reviews online and use http://www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com to figure out if the company is worth it or not before spending my money. I think that this article is looking at marketing just from a tech perspective rather than from a psychological perspective and that buying fans in certain circumstances can be beneficial.
Comment by James Walker — July 4, 2011 @ 12:39 pm
I bought likes from 5 different sites and found the same thing to be true! The only site that I found to deliver Real actual fans was http://fanpagelikes.net for
Comment by Rick — July 4, 2011 @ 6:58 pm
any website offering reviews is usually an affiliate of the products/services on offer, and so can't be trusted for the real, honest review.. why else would they go to the bother of creating the website if they weren't making money from it?
Comment by fefeefe — July 5, 2011 @ 9:12 pm
Thanks for sharing
Comment by Brian — July 14, 2011 @ 6:55 am
No magic required, you can find 1000s of genuine facebook fans. http://www.fanpagers.com
Comment by fanpagers — July 20, 2011 @ 9:42 am
There is no point in having 100,000 Facebook fans where only a small percentage of them are interacting with your brand.
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Pingback by Think Twice Before Buying ‘Real Facebook Fans’ — September 6, 2011 @ 12:33 pm
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Comment by Real fans — October 1, 2011 @ 5:36 pm
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Pingback by INFOGRAPHIC: The Anatomy Of A Facebook Fan — November 7, 2011 @ 11:02 am
But what about advertisers – aren't they 'wowed' by all the fans and more likely to buy ads?
Comment by Paige — November 16, 2011 @ 9:04 pm
Eh, I disagree with your post. I've never had any problems purchasing them. Although it did take me a while to find a company I liked. Many of them did do the above. I've had the best results with http://www.fansgalore.net/
Comment by Nathan — November 21, 2011 @ 11:17 am
I also disagree! I have bought 1000 fans months ago without a problem! There are many advantages and obviously these fans will not keep talking on your page for $60 or so! Do you really want a page with 3 – 20 friends? If you are a half decent site that has been around for years, you will want to kick start it before letting your clients onto it.
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Comment by Letting Go Quotes — January 8, 2012 @ 11:48 pm
You are right. Fake fans are worthless besides minor bumps in search rankings on Facebook. I understand many sites offer serices that claim you get real fans when some are fake but there are several legitimate services that deliver real fans that voluntarily like your page much like ad placement. http://noisycicada.com and http://buyrealfansandlikes.com both have been shown to be credible.
Comment by Steve — January 18, 2012 @ 12:48 am
I bought spanish facebook fans at fan.com.es and I,m happy
Where´s the problem?
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Comment by Gina — January 26, 2012 @ 5:29 pm
I bought 1,000 likes on http://www.buyusalikes.com and they seem to be real for the most part. Some have even liked or commented on my posts. Maybe they are not all real, but some of them certainly are.
Comment by Trey — February 9, 2012 @ 7:18 pm
Hello Tony and thank you for your article. It is always good to read different opinions. I have myself tried different Facebook fans providers and was pretty disappointed. Fans were not real or mainly coming from Asia (which is absolutely not the kind of fans I was looking for). Conclusion : they were not real and definitely not active. Happily I have found a website that seems pretty good so far. I have ordered 1000 USA fans and 80% were real US Facebook users. Of course they are not as active as organic fans but at least they are real and answer when I contact them. The website I've used is : http://www.easy-fans.com /
I don't know what kind of methods they are using to attract the fans but it seems to work fine with me… I guess you can send them a message to find out
Anyway, I wish you a great evening ! Keep up the good work.
Ben
Comment by Ben — February 17, 2012 @ 7:42 am