It never fails, the request for a marketer to get 20,000 Facebook likes within 30 days or 25,000 twitter followers in 15 days. Can this be done? … sure! Will I do it for someone? No.
When those type of requests would come my way, I used to politely educate the person on the proper way to obtain Facebook fans, twitter followers and so on. I quickly realized that this is not what they want to hear. They want to hear about how they can cheat the system and basically trick the consumer. Let's call it like it is folks; you're trying to cheat the consumer.
Why do most (not all) of these requests really come up? The underlying idea is that someone will come to your Facebook page or Twitter account and be blown away that they aren't part of the "cool" group of realizing what a benefit becoming a fan of your page is. Or the idea is that you are so popular, everyone will want to be a part of the cool group … supposedly.
The consumer is not stupid and if you feel the people buying from you are stupid, I'm not sure you want to be in business long term. The consumer is more aware of tactics, ways to misrepresent and can smell a Nigerian Spam message a mile away. Why is it then that people still insist that their consumer doesn't realize this or doesn't realize these tactics?
I think the following video should tell us a lot about not only the current consumer, but the younger generation that's following who has access to internet searches, can read online reputations, will realize with 20,000 Facebook fans of fake accounts without content or engaging current followers in their social streams … those might be the ones that are trying to cheat the consumer ….
Your consumer is smart … listen to what they want, create content and products that show you understand your best fans and followers are smart and they are valued.
Will we work to help engage current fans for a company? Yes. Will we help work with a company to figure out a strategy to develop ways people will want to come to their social sites? Yes. Will we buy fake profiles or mass follow random accounts? No. We want to find your smart consumers….