Have You Found Examples Of Folks Buying Twitter Followers?
-
Check out this article.....
USA Today “Handicapper” Danny Sheridan Bought Thousands of Twitter Followers: http://www.wagerminds.com/blog/danny-sheridan/usa-today-handicapper-danny-sheridan-bought-thousands-of-twitter-followers-6096/
Seems pretty clear Sheridan, who is not a particularly compelling celebrity, is purchasing Twitter followers. I remember when he first launched his Twitter account, he offered (on live radio spots) to donate $1 to charity for every follower he received for a few months.
From the article: "Buying followers is, if you think about it, the height of narcissism. You’re buying followers to dupe casual Twitter users into thinking you’re more popular and influential than you really are. In turn, you’re hoping the phony popularity will help translate into actual popularity as legitimate users flock to a seemingly ‘popular’ Twitter user."
Do you believe this is becoming a problem on Twitter, and do you think it actually can help him or anyone else?
-
Good timing - one of Australia's biggest sporting stars has just shut down his Twitter account after getting outed for buying followers.
Quite funny that a fellow sports star outed him! So yes, it does happen.
-
A guy I went to uni with actually owned a website that sold Twitter followers. I think the going rate was about $40 for a few thousand. He did alright business out of it.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to stop. People want their follow count to be as high as possible.
I have never purchased followers and never will. The aim of the social media game is to create meaningful relationships (be it with customers, like people in the industry etc). You're not going to get that by buying followers.
-
I've never purchased fans, likes, followers, or anything else. Buying Facebook fans will cause a drop in EdgeRank as nobody is interacting with the posts. I don't see any negative repercussions for purchasing Twitter followers other than being called out like this publicly.
-
This is pretty rampant and shouldn't be all that surprising. There's a great video called "First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy" (can't recommend it enough) that illustrates why people do this. It's not enough to be compelling / interesting. People need to feel safe that you are worth following... that they won't feel like idiots for thinking your stuff is good.
On Twitter, your Follower:Following ratio is a quick way to gauge value. Sure, it's a flawed measure that's easily gamed, but it's something that inherently feels like it should work... and it definitely influences how many people follow you and who will follow you. "Fake it 'til you make it" applied to social media.
-
Buying Twitter Followers is not a good practice and actually against Twitters Policy. My advice is to cross market yourself on all the social networks and you will see that in time you will attract real followers. Buying Face Book Likes and Twitter Followers is like buying links. Seems easy but in the long run is not worth it.
Also most of these likes and followers aren't real and won't provide much value for you as a business or marketer. It's nice to have 10,000 followers but there is a different of genuine versus artificial.
You can also potentially hurt your efforts. I am sure that Twitter and other Social Media Networks are aware of this tactic and will in due time penalize sites for this practice.
Remember Panda and Penguin.
-
Yes indeed, the purchase of Twitter followers as with Facebook is very very common. It's a bummer!
-
I know loads of people who have purchased Twitter followers. There are at least 10 businesses who I have done work for who practice this method regularly. I saw an article somewhere not so long ago which claimed that 85% of Twitter accounts were spam/fake accounts and I can believe it. Users only have one goal, to shout as loud as they can but they refuse to listen to others... This just results in lots of shouting lol.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Add Tracking Parameters to Website Links on Facebook/Twitter
does anyone know of a way to add tracking parameters to facebook/twitter website links in the about us section so that we can understand what traffic is specifically coming from that page? I already add tracking to posts, but I am more trying to track each standard link on these social channels. I am currently running into character limits or the result looks like a long url that will most certainly deter clicks because it looks suspicious.
Social Media | | dsinger1 -
What's the value of Twitter and Pinterest links?
Just wondering should part of my regular activities include sharing certain URL's to these social networks? Presumably it requires constantly mentioning random pages as part of an ongoing nature... Any pointers? thanks
Social Media | | bjs20101 -
Best way to keep in touch with Twitter leads
On Twitter every now and then I have a conversation with a few people that lasts couple days. Then the conversation dies down and a different conversation with a few other followers begins. What do you guys do to keep in touch with the followers from the older conversations and perhaps start new ones? Do any of the online tools help with that?
Social Media | | Heydarian0 -
Connecting Twitter accounts?
Does anyone know if it is possible to connect 2 separate Twitter accounts? The marketing department in my company set up the official Twitter feed. However, one of the employees took it upon themselves to set up another one and built up a good following. Now a lot of people are getting confused to which one is the official one. It would be great it we could merge the two, but I've been looking all morning and can't seem to find a way. Any help?
Social Media | | AAttias0 -
Does promoting a new page on twitter/facebook help it get indexed faster?
I know this probably won't matter much to people who get crawled on a regular basis, but for those of us who don't, does promoting a new page on social media help it get indexed faster with google? My site rarely gets crawled, but I've recently been adding new content. When I add new content I started to promote it on facebook/twitter and I do get minimal traffic from it. I noticed that a couple of the pages seem to be indexing quicker than pages normally do for me, although I'm not sure if it's because I recently migrated to WP or what..? I know T/FB are no follow sites, but is there a chance that promoting a page may contribute to the pages getting indexed? Thanks for any insight you can shed on the matter. It's more for curiosities sake than anything else. Pete S.
Social Media | | psokoloski0 -
Youtube and twitter
Does anyone have an idea how long it takes for the business profile to show up on youtube and twitter? I created profiles yesterday around mid afternoon. I searched for both today and they do not show up just yet. Thanks!
Social Media | | hawkvt10 -
Linking Facebook - Twitter - Website - G+ Profiles
During a spectacular presentation at Seattle Interactive Conference, Rand discussed how Google is able to see linkage between different social networks and a Google profile. Outside of setting up your Twitter feed to send loads of messages to your Facebook fans (or vice versa), is there a best way to communicate the "linkage" between your social media profiles to the search engines? Eg - How do you best signal to Google that your Twitter, Facebook, G+ and your website are from the same entity?
Social Media | | sftravel0 -
Multiple twitter accounts for Different countries...
Ok, so we currently operate in the UK, Australia, Ireland, Spain and France. Currently we have a different twitter accounts for each Country. This can be difficult to manage as we are going it all from the UK. I can understand that having separate accounts for foreign language countries is perhaps suitable (we have foreign staff tweeting in their native tongue), but my question is this: Is it worth just tweeting all English speaking activity from one account. I mean at the end of the day we are one company, and also our activity in other countries won't effect our followers, in fact wouldn't it just make them realise we are a global brand? What are the advantages and disadvantages of gradually deleting the other accounts and tweeting all English stuff from the one account? Cheers,
Social Media | | esendex0