I saw a small retail business in Australia recently added 5,000 Facebook likes in 24 hours. They did this by paying an overseas service $25.00 for the likes. While is makes their overall likes number look good, these likes represent no tangible value to the social media strategy of the business.
There are many services offering to sell likes for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. They are cheap and easily accessible.
Social media experts say that bought likes rarely engage with a retail business.
My understanding is that bought likes can also negatively impact the metrics facebook uses in analysing your page and this can hurt your business in the longer term.
My advice is don’t use these services. A smaller number of genuine likes is more valuable to your business than a larger number of likes you have paid a service to provide.
It is important to think about what you want from your social media presences before you chase size. If you want in-store engagement then the likes you want the most are the real, from people likely to shop with you.
Sure, attracting genuine likes is a hard road. However, my experience is that it is valuable. Invest the time, provide useful content and fun content and people will be attracted to you for this.
If you are in a marketing group they should provide to you a carefully thought through strategy for attracting genuine likes.
Paying for likes can open you to ridicule as people will know you have done it. The can know this by seeing a high like count but actual human engagement that is low and more reflective of lesser likes.
There is no substitute for the hard slog of real, personal, engagement. People who try and sell you a magic bullet are more likely snake oil sales people and should be avoided.