Followers != Following
Marketing advice that I got second-hand from the Advanced Search Engine Optimization conference, in a nutshell:
If you want to get a thousand fans on Facebook really quickly and cheaply, start running ads in a foreign country that has an extremely low GDP. The ads cost less per click and people's Facebook pages haven't been saturated there yet.
This isn't bad advice if you want 1,000 Facebook fans, pronto. But it also illustrates the supreme futility of playing the numbers game. Sure, you end up with a bunch of faux fans, but what does that really translate into? (Maybe it looks good on an executive summary for an investor, but that's about it.)
Having followers doesn't mean you have a following. And a following, while it takes longer to build, is infinitely more valuable.
If you want to get a thousand fans on Facebook really quickly and cheaply, start running ads in a foreign country that has an extremely low GDP. The ads cost less per click and people's Facebook pages haven't been saturated there yet.
This isn't bad advice if you want 1,000 Facebook fans, pronto. But it also illustrates the supreme futility of playing the numbers game. Sure, you end up with a bunch of faux fans, but what does that really translate into? (Maybe it looks good on an executive summary for an investor, but that's about it.)
Having followers doesn't mean you have a following. And a following, while it takes longer to build, is infinitely more valuable.