Hey guys, received an email last night in my soundcloud from a company that advertises selling “fans” for all your social media services. They said that they could help me expand my fan base.
They advertised that you can literally buy “fans” from them for facebook, soundcloud, twitter, mixcloud etc.
Have you heard about this before? I always thought that quality > quantity was better. Whats the use of having a huge fan base, but that don’t actually do anything for you? How would buying these fans for your social media sites help you improve, and get more recognized? This site seems like spam but they look legit. how do they do it?
Had a few similar emails, and I totally agree that quality is infinitely preferable to quanity … what’s the point of having a load of bot accounts as followers that never interact with you?
If you have to pay for them are they really fans? The way it should work is you start out and have 4 fans, your’re best friend, you’re girlfriend, a spammer and your mother. Over time as you put more stuff out there and you slowly add fans. Over that same time you keep doing what you’re doing getting better. Because you’re getting better you get more fans. You don’t get better overnight because you bought 500 fans.
I was having this discussion with somebody the other day, we came to the conclusion that the main advantage is the old ‘Bullsh*t baffles brains’. If a club owner goes to your facebook/soundcloud/twitter account and see’s you have 4000 fans, they may be more likely to take you seriously than somebody who has 30 real fans, also, doing quite a bit of research into the subject, ‘likes’ attract more ‘likes’. It’s human nature to want to keep up with the jones’ and not want to miss out on things. My day job is selling solar panels so the standard pitch is your neighbours are doing it, people then think oh no I don’t want to miss out!
i’d rather have 870 FB and 230 SC fans that at least 90% started following me without spamming the shit out of them
To OT, the only benefit I see if they aren’t active (or even real) people is for guys who get asked to have X facebook followers to get a gig. If that is the primary condition I personally tend to avoid those places.
Very legit answers and I agree. I’m quite happy with my 500+ fans cos I know that they liked my page cos they want to, not some bot boosting up your fan base.
it would be a fun experiment to see if it actually works. Just make a fake “DJ” persona for your area, put together a cheap press kit and then start sending it off to promoters and club owners/managers and see what happens
it’s no coincidence that these days google cares much more about social media when ranking web pages before there were companies selling backlinks to help your site/page rank better and now there’s also people selling fake “social media” interaction…
very true, more likes = higher up in the google foodchain..
however, much better to have high quality output and be more elusive on the internet these days IMO - then people come to you for what you’re doing, not because of the top40 music mentality (which i boldly assume no-one here is particularly interested in)
i find it quite depressing when i stumble across dj’s in my town who i’ve never heard of or about - who have their own website with a long bio written in the third person (all about how they grew up listening to their mum’s jazz collection, and played the west indian nose flute as a child) - when in fact, they’ve played a couple of houseys, a school disco, and a few opening slots in terrible clubs. they’re often the kind of people who have 5000 likes on facebook, and their own ‘record label’ and pr company (all of which have their own facebook pages)
Quality, over quantity. (then quantity should ensue as a natural result)
i do find it funny when so called “labels” etc only have facebook pages and haven’t even bothered to buy their own web address and/or pay for some decent web design. ofc u also need a facebook page these days, if only for the extra social interaction, but it shouldn’t be anyones main page…
I know a few people who have “bought fans”. It does make them look big and well known, but there are a few problems that come with this.
a) promoters think you have a big fan base and are going to bring out lots of people to their gigs. When no one turns up for you, its going to look really bad on your part.
b) Its really easy to get caught. If you don’t have any plays on your mixes, don’t play big gigs and don’t have a lot of friends, its going to be very obvious that your buying fans if your page has a lot of “likes”
c) you feel like crap about yourself. how could you not?
If you want to “buy” fans there is definitely a better way than one of these companies. Create something. IE, a mash up, a mixtape, something. Something digital. Then either buy a fan page template that lets you give this away as a free download but only to people who “Like” your page or do the research and build that template yourself. At that point you can create a Facebook Ad campaign based around geographic area and music tastes of people that you would want to target with your digital media. This ad campaign would cost you money to get in front of people and those who thought they would like to hear your stuff will “Like” your page to get it. Basically “buying” fans but also building a base of listeners who might actually come see you play if their location info on Facebook is accurate.
I don’t personally do this for my DJ Page. However, I have other business presences on FB that I give stuff away in exchange for a “Like” which most people will never Unlike your page unless you spam the shit out of them. Or create ad campaigns that send them to a tab on my page that gives them something in exchange for their name and e-mail to add to my mailing list. They get e-mailed the link when they join.
before there were companies selling backlinks to help your site/page rank better and now there’s also people selling fake “social media” interaction…