HOW THE PROFILE OF YOUR FOLLOWERS ARE RELEVANT TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

Marketing on the social media has become a need of the current time. Everybody is pushing their products hard and harder on the social media platforms. Analytics use various parameters like impressions, followers, likes, hits and so on. Oh! I forgot to tell you that the World is full of people who keep looking at other’s plate. Let me explain it to you in a better and different way

Competitor's Followers

Assume that you are promoting your products and services on say, Facebook and your competitor is also pushing through the same channel. You found that the number of followers on his page are 10,090 and on your page it is only 410 and the page is created almost for the same duration. You will definitely rush to your digital marketing team to scold them that why your list of followers is too short. However, it is not a good idea to assume that long list of followers means more clients and more business for the competitor. It is a wrong indicator to take it alone for the growth of somebody’s business.

Viewer’s Perspective 

Let us have a quick understanding of the viewer’s perspective as well. You have looked at a page A with 10,000 followers and then page B with 80 followers. As a layman you might think that company with Page A is better than company B. However, this may or may not be correct.

Fake Followers

The problem of fake followers is quite a serious one in the World of social media marketing and it has the inherent capacity to ruin your brand reputation and waste your marketing budgets and efforts. 

But who are these fake followers and from where do they come in?

Fake followers comes from the fake or dormant social media profiles that were set up with the sole intention of using it for following social media accounts for a return of money. It is just like selling your “likes” from an unengaging account for money. Such fake accounts usually do not participate or engage with the contents of your social media page. And this is the main reason that you find many followers for a particular brand but the engagement rate is less.

Twitter follows a strong action policy in blocking and removing fake accounts per week. This clearly shows that the policy of these social media companies are not in favour of fake accounts and followers. Despite this, it is normal for many brands to buy fake followers, due to the belief that a large number of followers will bring a better impression of reliability and will also be a symbol of their popularity.

Risks associated with fake followers

Before buying fake followers, one really needs to think from the perspective of the associated risks.

1. You have an influencer marketer with say, one lakh followers and you have paid a huge amount from your marketing budget to the influencer for promoting your brand. Now this long list of influencer’s followers may consist of majority of fake followers generated through bots and inactive accounts. This means that the money you have paid to the influencer is promoting your brand to the bots and inactive accounts. Do you think that it is going to increase the visibility of your brand in the market?

2. If you have fake followers on your social media page then these inactive accounts will not comment and like your contents. This will automatically reduce your engagement rate and will definitely put a question mark on the content quality, which may be in reality is a good content.

3. Whenever these dummy accounts get active then they majorly post scams, news and lot of unwanted content and thereby flood your news feed. 

4. If somehow a brand is caught using the fake followers, the whole image turns upside down and this can definitely raise questions on the credibility and trustworthiness of the company and the group.

It is better to have less but of quality. Follow the right path and consider the profile of your followers. In the short run, it may look weak with less followers but if you continue working on it organically, then in the long run, it will definitely yield you good results. And always remember, slow and steady wins the race.