Need Followers? Not Like This.

Posted by Jack Smith in Social Media | View Comments

If you have been on Twitter for more than a day, then you have more than likely had a DM (Direct Message) sent to you by a site claiming something to the effect of ‘Get Thousands Of Followers In Less Than 30 Days’ or ‘Add 5,000 followers this month for free completely on autopilot.’ or something similar.  Although these may initially sound like good ideas, in most circumstances, they are not going to help you or your business and could actually do some harm.  Here is the latest example and my opinions.

The Site: NeedFollowers.com – best site online to get @twitter followers! (Really?  Says Who?)

The Promise: “Here you can get more followers on your twitter page! Its really simple, The 1st thing you will need to do is login your account above. After that you will be redirected to a page where you will click and follow all the vips and the last 20 regular riders then you are able to join and you will be place on the site to get TONS and hundreds of followers. Come visit us often! Enjoy, And watch your follower count grow!”

The Catch – Become a VIP member: “Want even more followers? Become a VIP member and receive 400-1300 followers a day, Our prices are the lowest around. How to be vip? Simply login above and at the bottom of the next page is where you will enter your twitter username and payments can be made by paypal, credit/debit. ”

The Rules: Pay careful attention to the second and fourth bullet.

* You have to add all vip users and 20 regular users to join the train.
* We may use your account to promote our services, with the exception of VIP account.
* An update will be posted on your account upon signing in, You can delete anytime.
* The fee for VIP is non-refundable.
* After payment, give us up to 6 hours to update your VIP status.
* Don’t want to use our service anymore? :[ All you have to do is sign in, then at the very bottom hit "close accout"

The Results: While reviewing my Twitter account this morning and checking out all the great comments and feedback from Ignite Phoenix 4 which was awesome, I get this tweet from a client -

Thinking that it doesn’t sound like something my client would actually write, I sent a Direct Message asking if she wrote it.  Do you know the answer?  You guessed it, it was automatically generated by NeedFollowers.com and sent out through her account.  Here is another example with another client:

Did the company do anything wrong?  I guess not since it is in the ‘the rules’ that you agree to when you login.  But I can tell you that I don’t want to give access to other companies to use my account for their promotional activities.  If I like the service I’ll promote it and talk it up!  That is the whole point of social media in my opinion – the ability to provide and receive honest feedback about things I do and do not like.

I also don’t like this because it lacks integrity to me.  The way the messages are worded and delivered make it look like they are coming directly from the keyboard of the account holder, not the company.   All of these messages are short enough they could have easily added a ‘sent by NeedFollowers.com’ so at least it is clear the account holder didn’t actually approve/type the message.

The message that bothers me the most is this one:

Again, it is the integrity and authenticity issue that bugs me so much.  This one in particular is written as if the account holder is using the service AND seeing results when it wasn’t even created by the account holder. Not to mention that ‘LOOOK’ is obviously mis-spelled and the bad punctuation/grammar of the second line is an un-professional representation of both NeedFollowers.com and worse, the account holder.

When I am asked where companies make mistakes with Social Media, one of the biggest in my opinion is not being upfront about who you are and what you are representing.  Nobody likes being lied to, duped, being mis-represented or being played as a marketing pawn.  If your product is that great, there are better, and in my opinion more powerful ways to get the word out.  A great post titled Authentic Blogger Outreach by my friend Katie Van Domelen talks about just how to do that.

But of course, you can pay for the VIP Membership so they will not use your account for promotional purposes.  But what happens if the service doesn’t perform on it’s ridiculous range of followers from 400-1300/day?  Oh yeah, bullet number four, NON-REFUNDABLE.  To close your account you need to login first, and on the very bottom of the page buried in the footer, is the link to close your account.

Final Thoughts: Again, there are situations where this type of service is valuable and there are companies who do it well. However, I believe those situations are few and far between.  I do not believe that Twitter should be looked at as a popularity contest or that the number of followers makes your account any more or less effective – it all depends on why you are there in the first place.  I heard it said by Gary Vaynerchuk at the 140 Characters Conference, which focuses on Twitter, that people should be incredibly happy if they have even ONE person who cares enough to follow them and wants to know what they think and I agree.

For some truly great advice on how to grow your Twitter following, I suggest checking out this article from TwiTip – How To Increase Your Followers.

If this is something you think you really must do,

1. Be clear about your goals and the results you want to achieve
2. Be sure you research the company and that they are reputable
3. Get some feedback from people who have used it

Which are to me, some basic steps you should follow before using any new social media tool.