When you want more followers and engagement on your social media profiles fast, you may resort to a quick fix.
As social media platforms grow, it is getting increasingly hard to make your voice heard above all the noise from your competitors. As a result, you may have noticed a decline in audience interaction or little growth in your followers over a certain period of time.
For example, a study by Buzzsumo has found that the average number of engagements with Facebook posts has plummeted by 20% this year.
This may see companies turn to alternative methods in order to get their content seen by their customers and increase their following too. However, what are the consequences?
Buying followers and likes
It’s easier than ever to find a site claiming to give you ‘100% real likes’ on your social media accounts, but do they really work? While it definitely gives you quantity, it does not give you quality followers. Spambots will not interact with your content. You could have over 10K followers but next to zero engagement on the majority of your posts. In the long run, this will make your real followers doubt the integrity of your brand.
Many platforms will also ban or suspend your account if they believe you have attempted to buy followers or likes. You can use certain audit websites to take a look at how many fake followers you do have such as this one for Twitter.
Social Media Pods
Social Media Pods have become a big thing on Instagram due to the recent algorithm change. If you haven’t heard the term before, it simply refers to a group of Instagrammers who have teamed together in order to like and comment on each other’s posts. By doing this, you are essentially ‘tricking’ the platform into thinking that your post is popular with your audience, meaning it will rank higher in your follower’s feeds.
The value of this method comes from the quality of your ‘pod’. Create a good team who consistently engage with your content and your posts will rank higher.
However, this may only make your posts rank higher for those who are involved in your ‘pod’ meaning there will be no significant benefit from using this method.
Liking and Retweeting your own Twitter posts
The new Twitter algorithm places importance on engagement, as Nicolas Koumchatzky in a past Twitter blog said...
“Right after gathering all Tweets, each is scored by a relevance model. The model’s score predicts how interesting and engaging a Tweet would be specifically to you. A set of highest-scoring Tweets is then shown at the top of your timeline, with the remainder shown directly below.”
With the ability to like and retweet your own posts, it appears that you can double your chance to show up in your follower’s feeds using this method - the first time being when you actually post and the second being in ‘your company name’ liked.
Find more via Social Media.
