Do You Have Fake Twitter Followers?
Status People, a social media company, created a new social tool that apparently is able to spot out both "fake" followers as well as "inactive" followers.
They stated the reason for creating the tool in their blog:
The number of people buying fake followers on Twitter to look more legitmate is a growing problem. Essentially people are trying to game the system and convince people they have social legitimacy when they don't. They are Fakers and they are undermining Twitter.
Of course any third party app always has its complications, but our social team thought this one was pretty cool.
What are your results?
Comments
Christine, you did a GREAT job. It was an awesome article.
Uh... You can post all your content, or you can "re-post". And save me time from reposting :)
I love content from you, Brian and the rest of PCG-
Thanks for the repost Sean!
Awesome Post... Here are my stats:
Fake
2%
Inactive
34%
Good
64%
Find out how many fake followers your friends have.
lol so cool..I got 2% fake
Again, it helps if you actually read the WHOLE comment. Fake fans have no value. You can actually buy marketing programs which will get you real fans even targeted local fans. They also won't be $17 for 1,000.
If a dealer is honestly finding that utilizing PPC through google is a big fat waste of money, then I would say they are both not measuring their results and likely hired some guy in his mother's basement to do the work and not a reputable company. Or worse, they told the salesman with glasses who sells the least amount of cars and is good with computers to "handle this internet thing."
Ah, a perfect example of my supposition is JD Rucker. Arguably one of the most socially influential people in automotive. His username 0boy shows 18% fake followers, 35% inactive, and 47% good.
I don't think JD EVER bought followers for his twitter account. But it isn't surprising that bots would target him.
47% good of 109,598 = 51,511
Still a numbers game. It is better to influence and engage with 51,511 people and have a bunch of fake fans as well than it is to influence 1,243 and have no fake fans.
On Twitter you can buy a 1,000 followers for $17.00 Doesn't mean they have any value whatsoever, but at least you can impress yourself or other "social media newbies" who don't know better. Just go to Buyrealmarketing.com to boost your count.
Smart dealers who really know marketing (not many at this point) are seeing that buying keywords on Google, spending a lot of time/money on Facebook or Twitter is a big fat waste of money.
Read Robert Boff's article in AutoUSA's recent newsletter. http://www.automotivedigest.com/AutoUSA/AutoUSA_July2012.html
Mark
Carfolks.com
God. I don't understand how people that are supposed to be social media experts keep saying stupid things like "social media isn't a numbers game". Clearly you don't understand social media. The measurement of social influence is ABSOLUTELY a numbers game. If you don't influence anyone and you don't engage with anyone then you are not succeeding in social media.
Perhaps a better statement would be that social media is not JUST a numbers game. But this idea that it is quality vs quantity is ludicrous. The two are not mutually exclusive.
You need quality content AND a massive (REAL) audience to see and engage with that content.
YOU NEED BOTH!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps I misspoke. Social media may not be a numbers game. Because if all you care about is sharing kittens playing pianos, then no. It doesn't really matter. But social media marketing is all about numbers.
You need engagement, brand exposure AND A BIG AUDIENCE to see it all. PLEASE stop saying it isn't a numbers game. IT IS! It's just not the ONLY thing is is.
Thanks Kathi for the great link.
It is highly unlikely that ANYONE with social influence would not have fake followers. The more you have the bigger a target you have by bots and spam machines to follow you in hopes of reaching your legitimate followers.
This is an even bigger problem on Facebook. They have roughly 90 million fake accounts. This becomes a real issue because bots are not only liking pages, but they are clicking Facebook ads. One of the reasons that large companies have pulled their ad spend.
I wouldn't put a lot of stock into this tool for twitter because research has always shown that 40% of the user base don't tweet or share anything. They just check in to see what others are saying. So do we assume they become fake because they're not active?
Running this tool on Wikimotive's 304,820 followers showed 2% fake 72% inactive and 26% good. So what does that really mean? 72% inactive? Certainly I would be willing to bet some of those inactive are also fake since it falls so far out side the normalized 40%. 26% good means that 79,263.2 of my twitter followers are active.
So what is better from a marketing standpoint? to have 91% of your 1,200 followers labeled "good" or 26% of 300,000 followers labeled "good". And what about the inactive? Even if we say only 40% of the inactive are useful followers, thats another 90,000 followers.
Wikimotive's 304,820 followers were acquired through our social media acquisition service. Given all the hype that anyone buying fans can only get fake fans, I think this tool shows quite clearly that is in fact not the case!
I love this tool and Christine, you are right-on when you said Social Media isn't a numbers game. Fake followers or likes will NEVER buy from you, plain and simple. As a footnote, I found a great tool for helping keep your Twitter account clean. It's called ManageFlitter.com It tells you who's inactive, who's an "egg" (no profile pic) and who isn't following you back. You can unfollow any and all that come up and you get extra points (more room to unfollow) if you Tweet about it (I like that). Great post, Christine!
David - funny you say that because I was JUST reading @kathikruse 's new blog just that:
There are people that do care. I'm one of them. I think the question is, are you doing business legitimately or cheating. The same argument holds true for buying Face Book "likes". Say your buying 5,000 likes (but they are all from Bangladesh). The numbers might impress some clients, but if you're willing to cheat at your followers or likes, my guess is you'll find no problem with cheating your clients.
Adam - great!
Bob - I think you answered your own question. If you have fake and inactive followers, you can't engage with them. Many dealer buy fake likes or follows, but social media isn't a numbers game. You want to have the majority of your followers be active users so that you even have the chance to engage with them. This company made this tool in response to businesses buying fake likes and followers.
And I have 1% fake, 7% inactive
The site is VERY slow - looks like you blew it up!
Who cares if you have some Fake followers. It's all about your conversations with active followers. Social marketing is about building relationships and helping people learn and understand your product or service. There are so may people who do not engage in any of their social platforms. This is why we here about disappointment with Social platforms like Twitter or Facebook. If you are active and engaged yo will be successful.
It's hard to weed out fake or inactive followers so you'll always have a percentage there, but if your majority is good then you win a Twitter medal!
I had 3% Fake Followers