Facebook Likes, Why You Should Not Buy?

Are you a newly launched Facebook Page and thinking to buy Facebook likes to increase the number of fans on your Facebook Page? Hold that decision until you read this post. At the end of the reading, you are highly likely to change your mind. I am sure you would not love to pay and suffer, right!

Why are people buying Facebook Likes?

I believe psychology plays a big role in this decision. Most pages on Facebook are having certain marketing objectives. To fulfill those objectives Facebook Page will need number of fans and followers. At this moment, due to lack of knowledge about the long-term impacts, marketers think if we are having few thousand likes on our page it will be easy to attract and convince new users to like the page.  Well, this thinking is not dependable for Facebook Marketing.

Why? Here are super 7 reasons.

Reason 01: Organic reach suffers

What is organic reach on Facebook? The total number of unique Facebook users to whom your post content is shown without paying anything is known as Facebook Organic Reach.

Till 2014 Facebook Pages were witnessing approximately 16% organic reach. That means if a page had 10,000 likes on an average around 1,600 people were shown post content without spending anything. To increase the reach of a message, you required boosting that post through Facebook Advertising platform. These days, as reported by many Facebook Page Admins, Facebook Organic Reach is declining to as low as 6% to 12%. If you are getting better reach, consider yourself lucky!

Now assume your page is having 40,000 purchased Facebook Likes ( a majority of this would be fake accounts, select few real ones will not interact with your content), 2,000 Real Likes and average 10% Organic Reach. In this scenario, organically your post content will be visible to around 4,200 people only. Even when we think results from both strata is equal than also you are reaching only 200 genuine people.   Further, there are all chances that your real fans are not selected by Facebook for organic reach in their News Feed. Practically that means Zero reach!

Reason 02: Minimal Engagement

Engagement is the key to success in Facebook Marketing. To rank feeds, ads and search results, Facebook is using Machine Learning Algorithm. Through this ML Algo, Facebook decides which content to show you in your News Feed and at what time.

Now imagine you have developed a video which showcases interior of your restaurant. By posting this video you expect your Facebook Fans will comment about the interior and you will succeed in bringing them to the doorstep of your restaurant for his next lunch.

But, as you are having extremely low organic reach your video is not reaching to many people, i.e. 200 (that too if you are lucky) as per above example. Now only a small % of people gets engaged with content once it reaches to their News Feeds. Let’s say engagement ratio is 5%. So only 10 people will get engaged, i.e. Like, Share, Comment or Reaction. Now let’s look at the percentage value of this engaged user based on total users i.e. 0.024%. Due to such low engagement ration, Facebook Machine Learning Algorithm will consider this content as poor quality content and will send it to the bottom of the distribution list. Essentially that video content and your Facebook Marketing efforts go nowhere!

Reason 03: Increased cost of marketing

Two types of cost increase come into picture when you opt or purchased Facebook Likes for the page. First, effective cost. Let’s say you have decided to promote your video-post to your page fans only with Rs.3,000 and Facebook has shown you estimated reach of 15,000 people in this budget. That means you will pay 0.20 rupees per reach. But you need a careful evaluation here. Any reach beyond 2,000 is actually not helping you (pre-assumption, first 2000 are your real likes), as they are people sitting in other countries or cities where your restaurant business is not existing. So, your effective cost increases to Rs. 1.5 from Rs. 0.20. That’s a costly affair.

The second increase of cost applies for few third party services which are priced on fans capping. That means as the number of fans you have increased, the cost you will have to pay also increases. So, if you buy the service for 2,000 Facebook Likes count you pay less but in the scenario mentioned here, you have major purchased Facebook Likes so you pay more the same service.

If you go for re-targeting campaign again part of reach will be those bogus profiles only. So essentially effective cost will be once again in the picture.

Reason 04: Purchased Facebook Likes spoil audience details

Insight details of the audience are assets for any brand which is present on Facebook. Various bifurcations of Facebook Likes such as  Actions on Page or Page Views by Age and Gender, by Country, by City, and by Device give an actionable data to gain the most out of your Facebook Marketing efforts. But, because you are having purchased Facebook Likes on your page they will just ruin all legitimate possibilities of workable data. As there is no way to separate the purchased and genuinely acquired Facebook Likes, your Facebook Marketing efforts will remain directionless.

Reason 05: Cannot deliver members-only benefits

Providing freebies, discounts, or trial to fans of a page are great ways to improve engagement and acquire new Facebook Likes. Let’s say on your restaurant page you want to promote an in-store offer, 50% discounts to fans of your brand page. Can you do that? No. Because, the major part of your Purchased Facebook Likes is not from a city where you are having your restaurant. So you face a dead block. In spite of having impressive Facebook Likes on your page and your willingness to provide 50% discounts, there is nobody to redeem your offer!

Reason 06: Waste of time and money

It’s a waste of time rather the precious time, which otherwise you would have invested in interacting with real fans of your Facebook brand page. For every activity, you cannot spend time on redoing analytics. Download Facebook reports and redo the entire calculation by removing your purchased fans to reach real results. Further, with the same amount in Facebook Ads you would have increased few genuine Facebook Likes to your Facebook Page.

Reason 07: Questions your authenticity

Reliability is an essential ingredient in online marketing. If you are having only a handful number of engagements against huge Facebook Likes for Page it will certainly trigger reliability and authenticity aspects of your brand. Today’s customers are smart. Are not you? Slowly and gradually they will figure it out that you are projecting a wrong picture of your presence on Facebook. They may think, why nobody is reacting to this content, in spite of having such a fantastic figure of Facebook Likes? Worst if they decide to unlike your page. Such people are likely to carry the same, mostly negative, impression about your brand at other touch points as well.

Now will you buy Facebook Likes?

So now you know this small decision of buying Facebook likes adversely affects at many levels. Even after paying for Facebook Likes neither your engagement increases nor effectiveness. Do you still believe buying Facebook Likes will support your Facebook Marketing Objectives?

Let me know your opinion in the comments on this blog. If you come across any other disadvantages share them in the comments.