Should you Buy Twitter Followers? One Business Woman’s Story
Today’s guest post comes from Jacqueline Reed who is a marketing and writing freelancer. You can read more marketing articles on her website, jacquelinereed.com.
As a small business owner, I’m eager to get my name in front of prospective buyers. The more people I get in front of, the more business I can drum up.
To bring more readers to my website, I turned to Twitter. I began to tweet my blog headlines with links, asking for opinions on key questions. I also looked at profiles and followed the ones that interested me the most.
Making Slow Progress on Twitter … Sound Familiar?
Sure, I was building a stable following. Every day, I added a handful of followers. In a matter of two months, I had 240 followers and averaged three visitors a day to my blog. But it was slow going and I was spending a lot of time looking for people to follow, so I needed a new way to find Twitter followers.
I posed the question on Twitter: “How do I get more followers?” Two people suggested that I buy more. I had read buying Twitter followers was frowned upon in the social media community, but I wasn’t clear on why. So I set out to find out for myself if buying followers was a bad idea
Buying Twitter Followers Didn’t Sound So Bad
I began my experiment by purchasing 1,000 Twitter followers for $15 from a site called Just Twitter Followers. Within one day of my order, I had an extra 1,000 followers.
I was excited until I started looking at the followers. I checked every single new follower and found they were all bogus. This made me mad, so I wrote an email to customer service basically accusing them of being frauds. (I tried to make it sound nice; I really did.)
The not-so-polite customer service representative explained that I had asked for 1,000 followers and that I had not asked for “real” followers. Confused, yet? I was. Then she added links to the ‘real follower’ web page.
Apparently I had bought the $15 package that gave me 1,000 followers in name sake only. In other words, to look better in Twitter search rankings, I needed a higher follower number. If I actually wanted to engage with real people, then I would have to pay more money.
I Followed You … You Follow Back
Obviously, I had done something wrong by selecting the $15 option, so I chose a discounted option of $24 for 2,000 followers. Three days later, my mailbox became flooded with Twitter followers. At last count I had a little over 1,500 followers and it was growing. The question remained, was it worth my $49 investment?
To get followers, I had to follow others. It was the same basic principle I was personally pursuing, but on a larger scale. The vendor I chose called it “inviting others to follow.” In other words, using my account, the company went out and followed a bunch of people.
The Drawbacks of Buying Twitter Followers
On day one, I went from following 471 people to following 1,205. Many of these people I don’t really have an interest in. Some speak another language, many tweets are about nothing at all, others are vulgar and distasteful, and others tweet other people’s quotes. (I just hate that.) Now my tweet feed is overcome by dumb tweets which make it harder to find the stuff that actually interests me.
I also learned that Twitter has a maximum number you can follow, but they won’t tell you what the maximum number is for any one account. According to the Twitter website, the system will lock you until you have the right ratio of following to followers. At one point, I wasn’t able to follow anyone new because my ratio was off. As more people accept the invitation to follow, my ratio became more in line.
Here’s the bottom line: if engagement is what you are looking for, buying Twitter followers is probably not the best solution. Similar to the old fashioned direct mail that went out to every person alive versus to a targeted list of buyers, Twitter numbers can be a false illusion that you are reaching more prospects than you really are. I have come to believe that I may have wasted my $49 and will spend hours un-following a lot of folks.
Have you ever purchased (or thought about purchasing) social media followers? Let us know in the comments section below.
32 Responses to Should you Buy Twitter Followers? One Business Woman’s Story
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Hi Kelly
Here’s hopes that your horror story buying twitter followers is enough to put anyone else off for life
Seriously though. It makes sense that people or followers that are bought are not the least bit interested in you or your business/products. It would be far better to have less followers who genuinely care about you and your tweets and they will then retweet to their followers OR better still come over to your blog and add a short comment
Karen @ Pledging for Change recently posted…Are You Experiencing Technology Overload?
Hi Kelly,
I did not buy Twitter followers, but I never understood why Twitter came to be and why it’s so popular. I think tweeting is like talking to an empty room in 140 characters, hoping someone will hear. Do people REALLY read tweets? If you follow 500 people, how can you EVER read anything each of them has to say? It’s ok to follow 2-3 that you really care what they say, but who has time for more? I think the whole Twitter era will end soon because no one reads but just talked and follows. And precisely because it’s so easy to buy followers who will never read what you’ve got to say. Just my two cents. Ah almost fogot – I bought a service on Fiverr from someone who said she will tweet my website to her 10 000 real followers. Well she did, but to this day I only had one visit from her twitter, probably hers
Svetlana recently posted…Jan 24, Job Interview Preparation – Enhance Your Job Interview Skills
Interesting approach. I would probably not pay for twitter followers. There are better things to spend your money on – good food and water. Simply following others is a very cheap and easy way to attract reciprocal members. What you put out is what you get back. Simple law of physics.
Jordan recently posted…The Health Benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar
I couldn’t agree more about buying your twitter followers because it’s just like something a waste of money. It is nice to have a followers that heartily followed you and loved you.
Juliana recently posted…Pivot Doors for a grand entrance..
Interesting post you got there. I never bought twitter followers but I like your insights and everything that you posted really makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
Vernette Carbon recently posted…MLM Coach – Home Based Business Success Story
exactly buying them only makes it worse, you’ll never know many actual followers you have, and they unfollow at some point in future.As they say rome is not built in a day, people should have patience and confidence in themselves
Hi Kelly / Jacqueline,
I was thinking to buy Twitter followers as a solution for my blog, but as you said, I am looking for engagement with my followers. So I think that your review just saved the day.
Thank you so much for your helpful article.
Keep up the good work!
Nick recently posted…Sierra Trading Post Coupon and Review
Very interesting, Jacqueline/Kelly. I have seen Twitter be very helpful for some companies but not nearly enough. It seems that people want to follow very specific users that suit their style of entertainment/humor/music or simply friends keeping up with friends. For small businesses if you can’t keep it exciting enough for everyone they lose interest very fast and it becomes difficult to keep people engaged. I use Twitter less and less these days and business isn’t suffering. I know it can be very beneficial for some but in my line of work it is a hard push to get results. Thanks for sharing your story !
Phoenix Tree Trimmer recently posted…Tree Trimming in Mesa
This is very useful to me because I have over 300 followers on Twitter, yet rarely get any click throughs to my blog. But, having said that, and as you mention, more twitter followers doesn’t mean better engagement. I would rather have one person LOVE what I write about and find it useful and maybe make a connection with this person, rather than have 500 people come by my site who really don’t care about it.
Thanks for the post. It was helpful.
Chris recently posted…HostGator Web Hosting Cyber Monday Deal
Companies that buy Twitter followers remind me of companies that used to sell (and still sell?) those cheap SEO “services” for a few bucks a month and nobody really knows what anyone is doing or what good it is.
To Svetlana’s point that Twitter is like talking to an empty room, if all you’ve got are bots, creeps and spammers, you’re probably better off talking to an empty room. It can take time to build a following organically but in the end you have a real following. Personally I don’t automate anything on Twitter. I pay attention to everyone who follows and who I follow back and message them purposefully. Besides, if you can engage meaningfully with just a handful of people and they are willing to help promote you to their handful of people and so on… you’ve got a lot of handfuls!
Having lots of followers doesn’t make you seem important, at least not in my mind. People who have something valuable to say have lots of followers and you can tell there’s a reason for it. But if you take one glance at some of these account with 20,000 followers you can tell they’re just spamming out junk and it hardly matters who’s listening.
Carol Lynn Rivera recently posted…Public Speaking for Fun and Profit Part II: You – Yes, You – Can Do It!
Sometime we consider quantity is the solution. Marketing is not to create the need but its process of creating influence. Getting more follower does not make things go well, priority is to get interacted with those followers and the most important that these follower would only interact only if we had something useful for them, they find something interesting on our blog or website. It better to have quality rather than quantity. Only quality products gets promoted and allow others to indulge accordingly.
Kelly you have great web and with good content. I really appreciate your effort in writing this article.
Regards.
John Cooper recently posted…Dinosaur Bedding
I have seen Twitter be very helpful for some companies but not nearly enough. It seems that people want to follow very specific users that suit their style of entertainment/humor/music or simply friends keeping up with friends
Mike Colly recently posted…How to trade forex successfully
I don’t think you should ever buy Twitter followers. You can gain them simply by following people and unfollowing anyone who didn’t follow you back a couple days later so you can follow more people. I use TweetAdder to automatically do all this for me. Within just a few months I have over 5000 followers.
Katie Woodard recently posted…Cris Cab – Echo Boom Mixtape Download
no, I haven’t bought any followers and since you told us your experience, I think I will never make and investment like this… I have the feeling that a handful of targeted people is much more important than a huge number of non-targeted followers
sorry for your 49$ and thanks for letting us learn from your lesson
Thanks for the recommendation, Katie! I’ve heard people criticize this follow-unfollow strategy in the past, but I don’t have a problem with it — especially if you’re actively conversing with the people you follow.
Thanks, Mike. Any company that expects to get results from its Twitter page needs to have a very specific strategy in place. That said, the medium is definitely better for some markets than others.
Thanks, John, but all the credit goes to Jacqueline!
I completely agree. From what you’ve said about your Twitter strategy, I would guess that you’re making lots of meaningful connections there.
Great point, Chris. I agree. Success with click-through rates has a ton of variables: how often you post, how many links you post, what time of day you post, etc. It can take a lot of experimentation to land on a rate that you’re happy with.
Glad Jacqueline could save you the $15!
Thanks for your input, Svetlana. I think Twitter definitely has its purpose, but it depends on your target audience and how you use it. I follow between 300-400 people, and it helps me keep a finger on the pulse of the marketing community. But I probably wouldn’t go a lot higher than that.
Thanks Karen, but the credit goes to Jacqueline
Buying twitter followers never works well, having less number of follower with real interest in your tweets better than that, its only matters in numbers but not in real quality.
Thanks for eye opening post!!!
Lol..do people buy followers..absolutely…just like they buy YouTube views(1 million fast views will run you about 12k)… I have bought followers..and you can buy targeted followers.. I also follow back to fill in the gaps..so for every 10k in followers I purchases I add about 2500 in the I follow-u follow me method..this is very popular in the entertainment industry..an analysis of one popular entertainers did found that at least 60 percent of the people followed had inactive accounts/eggs/foreign…but this celeb is known for following fans..the same for the fans following..many are in the same category…simply this is no different than paying to advertise a particular product, or the 3 million spent for a Super Bowl ad to get views on a product..the whole idea is to find what drives the ability to get your name or product out there in social media..the rules were made by these companies such as twitter,Facebook, and YouTube and whether you agree with it or not “the rules are made to be broken”..PS..review how record companies BUY the ability for their artist to list high on iTunes..
Interesting techniques, Mary. I agree, it’s surprising to discover just how easily visibility can be purchased, if only you have enough money. I’ve even heard that certain companies are now “selling” spots on the NYT bestseller list.
I actually became frustrated with not being able to push myself to 2,000 full, real, and very attentive followers. I engage with over 70% of my timeline over a day & a half, I’m responsible in answering my mentions, and I’m often chatting up whatever topics come to mind, which some of it makes it to the blog.
I almost clicked the ‘purchase’ button tonight out of that frustration, just wanting to see my reach grow. Then, I decided, at the last hour, to look online for other people’s experience were with doing this.
I’m glad I did. Back to the drawing board to figure out new and interesting ways to continue engaging my TL.
Great article.
Tracie as The Undiagnosed Mom recently posted…Duodenal Switch: When I Didn’t Have To Worry About Protein
We were contracted to work with a business to work on their social media presence. When we sat down, they showed us their twitter profile which had over 10,000 followers. We asked them what the problem was. “They’re all from Sri Lanka,” our client exclaimed. “Nobody speaks English, and people will see right through it.”
Once they follow you, there’s nothing you can do about it but block them or start over. If there’s no real community behind your brand on twitter, starting over isn’t really a loss. Thanks for the great post.
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Awesome post that answers the question so many people wonder about. I have only about 1500 followers but Twitter has been so kind to me…I have gotten more than half of my client base from it alone. I think it is about how you use Twitter, not about who follows. I think people will find you if you are doing your best to be accessible.
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Thanks for your comment, and the link on your blog! I’m glad the post resonated with you. My experience on Twitter mirrors yours. I find it a great place to have conversations with clients, colleagues and new friends.
Thank you for a great article. I think people buying followers and likes without knowing what to expect is a big problem. Personally, I’ve found that purchasing followers and likes is the best way to avoid your company being seen as a “failure” on twitter which is important for larger, well known companies.
I’ve helped a few sector-leading organisations get set up on twitter and facebook and they all asked “What will people thing if we only have a handful of followers in 6 months time …”. They all purchased followers and likes from sites like http://www.socialkudos.co.uk to put their minds at ease. These follows and likes will not have interacted with the companies, but that wasn’t the intention.