Does Begging for “Likes” and “Recommends” Work for Social Media Marketing?
This blog was derived from our groups on Linkedin that were asked the following question “Does Begging for “Likes” and “Recommends” Work for Social Media Marketing?”
By Kristin Tomlinson, Web Success Team
Do you think begging for “likes” and “recommends” works for Social Media Marketing or is it counterproductive? When it come to marketing a business, everyone wants to draw as many supporters as possible, but there’s a thin line between begging for support and actually earning it.
Begging for “likes” from Facebook followers and asking fellow colleagues to “recommend” you on Linkedin will make your business seem desperate and tacky. If you’ve created a great brand that’s reliable, ethical and “likeable”, fans will flock by the hundreds and the “likes” and “recommends” will come naturally.
Organic Fans vs. Bought Fans
As a business owner, the need to gain as many fans, followers, “recommends” and “likes” as possible is often extremely important. Many will even go as far as to “buy” their fans from other companies in order to see an immediate surge in support. The problem is that most of these “fans” are not targeted towards your specific demographic and often include hundreds of spam accounts.
It’s better to go the “organic” route and gain followers the proper way. You want fans that are suitable to your audience demographic and have expressed interest in your type of brand because it will be beneficial to your business in the long run. The quality of friends is much more important than the quantity for your organization!
No Fake Fans
In order to gain an ideal fan base (without begging) it’s important to combine great marketing knowledge with technical expertise to deliver the best social media marketing campaign. An effective marketing plan that combines many initiatives is often your best strategy. Engaging fans though multiple fronts such as promotions, freebies, discounts, blogs and contests can yield incredible results and be more successful than any individual strategy.
About the Author: Kristin Tomlinson is an online marketer, social media strategist and works for the Web Success Team. You can follow her @websuccess or join the Web Success Team Facebook Page
November 22nd, 2010 13:43 /
Good question! From my perspective. Hootsuite is good for Twitter analytics, you can also use Klout. As far as Facebook, you can add your domain url to your insights to track visits from your website to your Facebook page but it still is not enough information. You might also want to check out this article for more on the Analytics topic: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-your-facebook-fan-page/.
November 22nd, 2010 15:10 /
I agree that acquiring likes and recommendations unnaturally is not the way to go, but I also would like to raise a couple of points. The first is that I believe it takes fans to get fans, meaning that the more popular you look, the more people will be interested.
I read an interesting article recently on Facebook algorithms and what it takes to appear on the Top News and Most Recent posts. The more people who engage with your page, the more likely you are to appear in the news feeds. So if you are just starting out, perhaps “begging” for a few likes might not be so terrible as it will help the visibility of your page.