Buying Likes on Facebook: Today’s Craptastic Wedding Marketing

Have you seen the ads selling massive Facebook “likes” for cheap, promising instant social proof, and allowing you to grow your Facebook business page over night?

It’s true. You CAN buy likes, and it can grow your fans overnight. Tempting offer, right?

Not so fast there, Champ. Like most things in life, if it seems too good to be real then yup, it’s probably worthless.

One marketer commented on this craptastic marketing strategy: “It should be called, How to Buy Friends and Influence Nobody.”

Sage words, for sure.

Having only 105 fans on an established business page can look a bit anemic and make even the most confident wedding pro feel inadequate.

Sure, it’s tempting to buy 5,000 likes for a few hundred bucks. Then you, too, can say, “See, all these people like me! I must be a big deal!”

Here are the problems with this instant Facebook like strategy.

Problem #1: Your purchased “likes” are NOT your target market.

These purchased likes are a combination of fake accounts, scammers in the Ukraine and at best, a bunch of people who are completely uninterested in what you.

It’s not too difficult to identify these fakes. Just click a page’s Likes tab; if it’s a US business and the most of the fans are from Istanbul, Turkey, that’s a dead giveaway.

Since none of these followers give a squat about your business, no one comments, likes or shares, and your Edgerank is in the toilet.

Which brings us to problem #2…

Problem #2: Your page will have bad Edgerank.

Edgerank is how Facebook measures your engagement with your followers. Good Edgerank means your followers are actually reading and responding to your posts. Bad Edgerank means nobody is paying attention.

Facebook judges how interested your followers are in your content by the actions they take. If nothing is happening on your page, the message is clear: your content sucks and it’s probably irrelevant.

Which leads us to Problem #3…

Problem #3: Your posts won’t appear in your followers’ news feed, so no one will see them.

With only 105 likes, you don’t show up in the feed as it is. Buy 5,000 fake likes and this problem gets even worse.

Fake followers = no engagement = bad Edgerank = no visibility = no leads.

All those pretty posts and no one to see them. I know, what a buzzkill! But I’m not here to blow sunshine up your butt.

Is Buying Likes Worth It?

If all you care about is having a big number on your Facebook page, then have at it. You can stroke your ego and call yourself Mr. Popular.

But if you actually want an engaged group of bride and groom followers who might actually turn into customers some day…

Then run, don’t walk, away from this truly craptastic marketing strategy.

You can buy likes, but you can’t buy love.

What do you think about buying likes for a Facebook page?

photo credit: 401(K) 2013 via photopin cc