Social Media Fan Base - To Buy or Not to Buy

With the recent explosion of Social Media and its increase in use for Internet Marketing techniques, a new type of 'branding' is starting to take center stage. 'Buying Fans' for social media platforms like Facebook is quickly rising in the search engines. On the other end of the spectrum, the debate as to whether its worth it or useful is also on the rise. The real question here is, is it crossing a very fine line into the realm of black-hat?

I recently had a client who questioned whether or not he should buy fans. Being relatively new to social media, he took it upon himself to research trends in social media marketing and an ad for 10,000 fans guaranteed caught his eye. After some of my own research and reading what some of the SEO Gurus had to say, I came to the conclusion that 'No - in fact it is not worth it at all'.

My reasons seemed logical enough based on what some were saying.

What is the point of social media and a business page if it does not appeal to like minded people?

Isn't the point of a business page to invite discussions, likes and comments about your posts?

But, despite my recommendation, my client went against my better judgment and bought 10,000 fans for Facebook. Since there wasn't much I could do, because at the end of the day he is the boss; I sat at my desk and watched as his fan base grew.

I am sure I don't have to tell any of you how time consuming it is to view almost 10,000 profile pages, but after about 250 I simply stopped because of the growing trend of what was making his fan base.

His entire 'purchase' of fans are from Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania. Upon further investigation I discovered a number of adolescence and children under the age of 13. I would hate to assume but I'm pretty darn sure most of these people probably don't even speak English. In total to date he has seven 'likes' and two 'comments' on his posts, which were done by close friends and family members. Now my job also includes scanning and removing un-wanted posts or spam from his business page.

At the very least now, I can clearly state with confidence that buying social media fans is about as useless as sharp teeth on a chicken. Take it from someone who as the damaging evidence right in front of her - recommend to all new clients if they ask about buying fans - 'NO! Please for the love of Google-God don't.'

So, in the end the question of black-hat still remains. Should we consider it black-hat tactics? I mean in all honesty, this particular fan sales site kept to their word. They did in fact get him 10,000 fans. They just forgot to mention that they are not necessarily from North America.