Is Investing in Fake Followers Really Worth it?

Fake accounts are becoming increasingly popular in social media. In fact, it is found that 8% of Instagram accounts are fake, 8.7% of Facebook users are fake and 15% of Twitter accounts are fake. This is partially due to the rise in brands and individuals buying fake followers to further increase their actual followers and engagement. These fake accounts are usually replicas of real users and provide fake followers, engagement and views.

 

With so many brands and influencers purchasing huge amounts of fake followers it makes building reach organically take way too long. It makes sense for brands to only join them since they cant beat them however getting more engagement and followers don’t necessarily increase lead generation. Since a high amount of those followers and engagement are fake, it is likely that not many people are actually interested in the product or what you have to offer.

Further to this, social media company’s are now investing in tracking down these fake accounts. Facebook now have new artificial intelligence based tools which are used to find fake accounts and spam. In fact, Facebook have recently said that these tools found 98.5% of the 583 million fake accounts they recently shut down in 2018. Therefore spending money on fake followers that are most likely going to get deleted doesn’t seem so wise.

 

Lastly buying fake followers isn’t ethical. By brands and influencers purchasing fake followers they are being dishonest and consumers are now losing trust in the brands and people they love due to this which can impact negatively on those doing so. As a result brands and influencers can be at risk of losing their real followers and real engagement.

Do you think that brands and influencers should invest in fake followers?

Let me know in the comments below 😊

Why did Heineken take on controversial issues rather than avoid them?

Controversial issues can be very sensitive topics that are difficult to discuss between people with opposing views. However, in Heineken’s Worlds Apart ad campaign, the brand decided to use current societal problems in their advantage to make the campaign go viral.

If you aren’t familiar with the ad, it features a social experiment of teams of two who had to build a mini bar type set up. Each team had opposing views on social issues including the environment, transgender issues and feminism that were revealed to each other after it was built. They then had a choice to either stay and discuss their differences over a Heineken beer or leave.

 

It was interesting to see the result and the campaign managed to leave a lasting impression. Considering Kaplan & Haenlein (2011) advice, Heineken used highly provocative and edgy messages even though they are considered a double-edged sword. A campaign like this can so easily be misunderstood and go completely wrong as seen in the Pepsi ‘Join the Conversation’ ad. However, Heinekens campaign made people think and triggered emotions in a positive way  which made it a success and generate over 14 million views.

In the past it seemed to make sense for brands to avoid sensitive topics as they wouldn’t want to get involved in any sort of conflict or have associations to anything someone may view negatively. However nowadays brands aren’t afraid to support issues that they believe in and use current issues into their marketing strategies by taking advantage of them to make a campaign go viral.

Do you think that this is morally right? And do you think brands should use controversial issues in their marketing strategies although it can be risky? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂

 

3 Ways to Increase Your Visibility on eBay Using SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a “structured approach used to increase the position of a company or its products in search engine natural or organic results listings (the main body of the search results page) for selected keywords or phrases.” (Chaffey et al, 2012)

 

In this week’s blog I’m going to teach you how to use SEO techniques to increase your eBay listings’ visibility and gain more traffic:

 

1. Include as many relevant key words in your title as possible

On eBay you have up to 80 characters in your title so you should use as many words as possible to describe the detail of your product including the brand, colour, size, condition, material etc. By optimizing titles with relevant key words this creates on-page optimization

2. Make sure to fill in the item specifies (filters) for your products

This allows more buyers to efficiently find your products when they click on the filter and if not entered you could run the risk of not showing up when buyers filter a specific detail of your item.

 

3. Spend time on creating your eBay profile page

It is important to provide information about your business, products, shipping options and other details on your eBay profile page. You can also display some of your best sellers with internal links to your store, and reviews which can further convey trust to buyers.

 

Ravi Sen and I also believe that “on-line sellers should undertake search engine optimizations (SEOs) to improve their rank in the search-result listings.” By implementing these 3 techniques, it is likely that more potential buyers will be attracted to your products on eBay as these tips help products to be ranked higher in the search results.

Do you think that these tips can help you and/or other sellers on eBay?

Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂 Thanks

 

The APPetizing Oreo Game

Oreo is the world’s favourite cookie, one of the most loved brands and was the #1 game in the App Store not long ago.

The brands advertisements have focused on consumer enjoyment for many years but decided to now incorporate the fun of eating Oreos with the OREO: Twist, Lick, Dunk game. The game enables users to twist, lick and dunk their favourite Oreo cookies into a glass of milk which allows Oreo to use mobile entertainment to engage with their target audience.

What made the game so successful appears to be that Oreo incorporated the four I’s of mobile social media;

 

Individualize

Oreo took account of their consumers preferences and interests by considering the fact that one of their primary target markets being mothers were spending a lot of their time on mobiles and a significant part of that time was playing casual mobile games. Therefore, the brand combined their users interests into a game with a hidden marketing strategy.

Involve

Clearly the game involved consumers as they were the ones playing the game but they were also engaging with the product and entertained for hours whilst playing.

 

Integrate

Oreo did an amazing job of integrating their marketing activities into their user’s life by influencing them to play a game, which they already do in their spare time. This enabled Oreo to avoid being a nuisance and discretely use mobile marketing.

 

Initiate

What a better way to create user-generated content than to create a game. By creating such a game, people automatically start talking about it with their friends to compete with each other. Each time consumers mentioned the game to anyone they were creating brand awareness and initiating content. Oreo even influenced users to compete with their friends with an online Facebook leader board.

 

Did you ever play this game and/or do you think this marketing technique would be successful?

Let me know in the comments below 🙂

How the Fidget Spinner Suddenly Became VIRAL

The fidget spinner has been around for years, marketed as a stress reliever for those who suffer from ADHD, autism, anxiety and attention disorders to help them concentrate. But in 2017 the fidget spinner became a viral trend that took the internet by storm and suddenly everyone had one.

Once YouTube videos of people doing tricks with fidget spinners including spinning them on their noses and shoes they exploded in popularity and people started using them for entertainment. Kumar stated that the fidget spinner phenomenon has generated over 5 million YouTube videos with 110,000 searches on Google a month.  Suddenly everyone wanted one, they became in high demand and millions were sold.

Once brands noticed the craze, many of them started to associate themselves with fidget spinners by latching onto the trend and selling the viral product with their logo printed onto it. These toys were so damn popular that even Monash University sold them at their book shop.

They were affordable, easily available in the market and you could get them in all different shapes and colours. The fidget spinner had the features of a viral trend; being new, interesting, different and fun but it was also interactive by having active consumers in the media creating videos, tagging friends in memes and sharing their thoughts about they new toy.  Even Google has caught on to the trend as when you search fidget spinner on Google, you can spin one with the click of your mouse. This interactive part of the fidget spinner enabled the fad to become so popular, not only among kids but also adults as it spread from person to person.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂

What Goes Around Comes Around: How brands are not only deceiving us but getting deceived

Brands are paying big bucks to feature on celebrities Instagram’s that have the most followers even when they have nothing to do with their brand image just go to get awareness and boost sales. However, this technique used by many brands of choosing their endorsers just based on following alone has come back to bite them as social influencers on Instagram are buying fake followers to get brands to sponsor them.

When brands are choosing which celebrities and social influencers they want to work with on Instagram, they look directly at who’s got the most followers without taking into consideration which of them actually use their product and relate to their brand image. The products celebrities endorse in these posts usually sell out immediately due to their huge following but do you really think that they use all of those products? I don’t think so.

 

A popular tea detox brand MateFit, pay many celebrities including Britney Spears, Hilary Duff and Nicki Minaj thousands to do a post on their Instagram featuring their tea. The brand MateFit is a appetite-supressing weightloss tea that Nicki Minaj also features in her famous Anaconda video clip that has over 747 million views on YouTube. What seems to be deceiving viewers here is that Nicki does the teatox when actually she sings a line in the song ‘I aint missing no meals’. Contradicting, don’t you think?

Not to worry, karma is getting back at brands.

These deceiving posts are causing problems for brands in the future by decreasing brand loyalty. The Sensis Social Media Report from 2017 shows that there is a decline in users following businesses or brands via social media from 36% in 2016 to 24% in 2017. Not only does choosing endorsers based on the most followers alone loose trust between brands and their consumers, brands are now also getting scammed as they are investing lots of money and products into social influencers with a fake following as famous YouTuber Chloe Morello explains in her video ‘Beauty Blogger’s committing FRAUD!’. The Australian sweetheart doesn’t name names but explains how brands are sponsoring bloggers that have purchased fake followers based on their following.

Do you think its only fair that if brands are deceiving us with their marketing techniques then they should be getting scammed as well?