To pay, or not to pay? That ISN the question

Aug. 21, 2012 - PRLog -- The emergence of "Pay-Per-Like/Follows" services has caused all sorts of controversy over the last few months. A service where companies looking to boost their socialmedia following pay providers who guarantee a certain amount of likes or follows for a fee. Is it right? Should we all be doing this? Will it benefit your business?

Mooshmedia has opted not to go down this route for a number of reasons, but I think as with anything there are pro's and con's to be drawn from it. To write if off as a complete waste of time and resources would be foolish. We have worked with a client who has gone down this route prior to us getting involved. The experiences they have had would suggest it is effective if applied in the correct way.

Before we delve too far into the "Pay-Per-Like/Follow" debate we should draw a comparison to some of the other well used methods of building your network.

Viral, referral and voluntary networking:
This is where an individual or business likes or follows your business on any of the socialmedia networks out of genuine interest in your products or services. They have stumbled across your profile through a friend, made an effort to search for your profile or perhaps scanned in a QR code on your business card or poster. As with any other form of marketing, "inbound marketing" is going to show a higher ROI. This is the slowly but surely method preferred by many. It costs nothing but your time and loving attention.

Incentive based networking:
This is where we start to see a little bit of money coming into the equation. A method of incentivising people and businesses to entreat with your business through a network. By running a competition where people who visit your network have a chance of winning one of your products or services. This is ever so popular amongst Facebook pages and was even more prevalent when "fan-gating" was the norm on Facebook. Thanks to changes in Facebook timeline, fan-gating is not possible now. However incentive based marketing is still prevalent in social media. To answer the question if this is effective, you have to ask yourself another question… Why do the worlds biggest companies use incentive based marketing? The answer is simple. By getting customers to enter a scenario of anticipation and excitement you start to see that reflect in the brand itself and in socialmedia realms this becomes an even more powerful tool with emergence of "viral marketing". In addition to this, you get an opportunity to showcase your offering and have a chance of receiving some product or service feedback. Be careful though, running these types of network building campaigns on the likes of Facebook can see you in hot water. Make sure you comply with the networks terms and conditions. With Facebook in particular these incentives must be run from external pages and not use Facebook features or pages to run them. This is where Apps come into play. The added benefit of these is you get a chance to acquire customers email addresses and more for more specific email based campaigns in the future.

Social media advertising:
You have all seen the targeted advertising down the side of your profiles. Many of us won't bother clicking on them until that one day when, after you have just been looking on ebay for a new surfboard, out pops an ad for the very board you were looking for. Investing in these pay-per-click ads can be a costly experience if not done right. From experience it is worth paying a company who specialises in "key word" analysis and writing.

Now we start to touch on the more aggressive Out-Bound marketing method of "Pay-Per-Likes" which, even with more familiar out-bound marketing practices, has a negative sigma attached to it. Never the less we should not discount it on the basis that we don't agree with it or fully understand it. As with any form of marketing, it is worth exploring the benefits and the impact it could have.

Pay-Per-Likes/Follows
So, the reason you are reading this. Pay-Per-Like's/Follows has only started to emerge as a serious contender in the last 12 months. This is where you, as a Facebook or Twitter page owner pay a company to get you thousands of likes or follows on your network profiles. They do this by paying a database of "likers" a small percentage of what you pay them to like your page. Tread very carefully with this one. Most of these companies will do this using practices which are not compliant with the networks terms of use. To say they are illegal wold be strong but in some cases this practice has seen companies end up in the courts. Legitimate practices are out there, I wouldn't know which to recommend, but they do exists.

So after you have navigated the legalities of the use of this method, you now need to weigh up the benefits. There is no doubt that you are going to get thousands of likes and follows from people who are only interested in getting paid 1 penny or less for clicking their mouse. There are companies who will only target certain demographics of  their database for you. So if you are an accountant, then they will only ask those in their database who fit the criteria of being self-employed, small business, entrepreneur and so on. This in my mind is a better method of working.

As mentioned in our blog "Strategy, strategy, strategy", it is important to consider whether this method of marketing fits with your strategy. If your business is only interested in a local market of a specific category of people, then I would say that this is not worth considering at all and may harm your brand more than help it. If however you are targeting a broad group of people nation wide, or even world wide, then you would have to say that this method is going to see you reap some reward for it. In the same way that pay-per-click advertising is, in a lot of ways, a shot in the dark, this method will enable you to tap into your fanbase at anytime and after your initial investment in the service of getting you those followers, the act of tapping into that fanbase is free, unlike the pay-per-click method which will cost you every time.

Having not used the Pay-Per-Like/Follow method, we could not hand on heart say it is worth every penny. We could't even say it will be the biggest waste of money your business has experienced, but I'm sure we have all said the same about any form of out-bound marketing. Advertising in the newspapers, email marketing, direct mail marketing, all these methods have a negative stigma attached to them, but all of them are being used more and more to great success.

Which method does Mooshmedia use? well give us a call and find out!

In conclusion, make sure your socialmedia marketing drive has a strategy. Ask yourself which method would benefit your brand and business the most. Don't discount a method without analysing it's potential impact on the strategy you have come up with, and good luck.

To read other topics by Mooshmedia, visit: http:www.mooshmedia.com/