Mass twitter followers/ facebook 'likes' - how do they do it?

Ivan,
You've taken the words straight out of my mouth
I couldn't agree with you more. When it comes to FaceBook, Twitter and other social media, what counts is quality and not quantity.

I take great care to delete from my FaceBook fanpages anyone who promotes porn - it is my central policy to keep all my fanpages and websites porn free.

However with Twitter - How do I unfollow members from my account who promote porn?

I tried advertising through those methods before on Fiverr, and they weren't helpful.

The audience is real, but it's not targeted. It's usually a bunch of teens who Farmville each other, or they're into movies and friend each other. But you can never truly tell because half the time they don't even think about it.

I asked one girl what her demographic was, and she was like "Uh...teens". That told me right there.

I'd say 8 out of 10 times the folks are not from US or Canada even though the Facebook owner claims such.

You gotta be careful dealing with some of these youngins. They mean well, but I've encountered some of the lousiest customer service from them.

I literally lectured this one Australian kid. I wished him well and he had bright ideas, but communication was seriously lacking. He just dropped off scope, wouldn't keep me informed, didn't tell me a timeframe. Nothing ever got done. He had a lot to learn about dealing with customers. So I lost $5. Not a big deal. But I could have done without the hassle.

Not every provider is a teen. The older ones tend to be really good. And the ones from India and Pakisatan -- stellar service.

Fiverr is good for getting services done like: backlinking, creating a quick Animoto video so you don't have to pay for Animoto membership, creating an ebook cover, someone placing your article on their Google news site, etc.

Truly, anything of quality, you should pay the proper price for. It's worth it. As for social media followers...I'd say you're better off nurturing your own.

Let's say that you are walking down the street looking for a good place to buy a lampshade and come across two businesses side by side that sell shades.

One window has nobody in front of it looking at the shades while the other window has a small crowd that is very active.

If your intention was to buy a lamp shade that would impress your friends, you could already see from the amount of folks gathered around the second shop, that these shades seem to be more popular.

Both shops could in fact be selling the very same merchandise but the second shop has the appearance that it is more popular and therefore creates the perception of the value you are seeking.

Even if the group of people standing there gawking were paid actors, the perception was formed.

Agree with the methods or not but a lot of marketing is creating this perception of value and when it comes to social media marketing the value is on followers.

Most people don't go to a Twitter page and start looking through the posts that the person made first. They look at the profile description and follower count.

So like the example above with the paid actors at the window, if you can get thousands of followers fast then you start to get the "targeted followers" faster too.

Or, you can stand out in front of your shop telling everyone that walks by that your competitor doesn't really have customers either.

Just like you.

That doesn't work real well when trying to convince people that you have popular lamp shades.

Or Tweets.

The profile description that people provide is largely useless. I, for one, find it to have little or no value. People write 'bait' type profiles and then tweet about other things. A far more useful guide are the tweets a person actually sends. Or at least the last tweet that was sent, as a minimum, along with the date of the tweet, to indicate recency.

Admittedly, the bots are getting far more sophisticated and, to begin with, can fool the unsuspecting. However, a pattern is soon recognized and the clever bots also can be identified.

I understand the supposed value in having a bunch of sham followers who will mistakenly give the impression that a Twitter account is more popular than it actually is. To some extent, this will work in that targeted visitors will see that there are followers in place. However, it's questionable that this is of great value.

For instance, I'm more impressed with a prospect who has only a few hundred followers than one who has, say, 50,000 followers. The smaller account is more likely to actually read my messages, whereas the one with many followers will be lucky to ever see my messages, much less respond to them.

As well, those with large numbers of followers are almost certainly using software to manage their accounts and to select followers. Just a casual look through their list will often indicate that few are actually interested in the niche and most are heavily promoting their own interests.

It doesn't take long to get a few hundred followers, even when doing it manually.

Also, it does not take long to accumulate a history of tweets to show that there is a real person behind the button and not just a robot. In just a couple of weeks, you can have a hundred tweets which make it clear there is a human mind at work rather than an automaton.

That first two weeks of manually building followers and sending tweets is invaluable experience in learning how to manage an account more effectively, gather suitable content, as well as establishing trust and credibility.

This provides a core on which you can build a worthwhile and responsive list. Even so, it is not for those wanting a quick fix, or a hit and run type business. However, for those wanting a long-term, ongoing business, it provides a good basis to work from, especially for building an email list and marketing to that list.

Every day I have confirmed that the number of new followers I receive is very sensitive to the last message that I send, especially as it will be the most visible. Those who are interested in the niche - and especially those experienced in it - will often check my account to get an idea of the sort of messages I've been sending.

I keep a daily record of response rates (new followers, retweets, visits to website, etc) to see what works best. If you act like a poser, you'll attract others and be abandoned by those with a genuine interest in the niche. If you send garbage, it'll be returned.

Ivan

l23bc,

The link for your service is broken.