Conned by Social Media

When I'm trying to figure out if a company is legit or not, I usually ring up them up OR see what other people are saying about this particular company/service being sold.

one of the easiest way to see what the hype is saying about a company, for me,  is through the internet  :

Social Media, particularly  Twitter / Facebook  can often provide an insight into what other people have to say about them,

and their "popularity"    Number of Likes // Followers

But if you can now buy

10,000 twitter followers for £3

and

500+ facebook likes for £3

without any of your accounts being banned    

do either of these reflect anything at all?

plus anyone can post "useful content" on twitter and facebook and have "conversations" with accounts of people that don't even exist!

which brings me to the question:

Do the number of FB likes or Twitter followers of a person OR company influence the way you see them?

Well, it shouldn't do, the thing about likes and followers, they don't really mean anything unless you are getting engagement from them.

If you have a look on their pages, and they have say 20,000 likes, but only 20 people liking their statements/posts etc, you can tell they're not worth their salt. I've never ever bought likes or followers for anyone, and never would. 

Rather than letting yourself being influenced by numbers, be influenced by content. Do you like what they're saying? Do you agree with it? 

I would say social media is only a very small part of any due diligence exercise before you use a company for a big project.  As opposed to just facebook likes and twitter follows I would also be checking for recommendations on LinkedIn as these are written by "real" people, also do they have testimonials on their website, are they part of organisations such as 4N, do they have any references there?

I would never rely on twitter and facebook alone to make a judgement.

Yeah I understand where you coming from Helen,

Still anyone can post content from a load of fake accoutns and mould the chat into whatever they want.

But your right.....persoanlly, now I do look for engagement. I know I'm able to tell if its real or not, but then I'm aware loads of it can be complete sh1t...maybe others are less aware ....

I guess alot of the times when I see adverts for a company,

I'll see twitter / facebook icons/links everywhere before  linked in or any site that shows any "proof"

I think for something small and simple like an online shop you could scam a load of people by appearing to be popular as anything through social media, and people might gain confidence through that alone,

perhaps its more in the younger genreation,... that or I am naive... :)

cheers for your replies i was looking for other opinios :)

I should prob get on the linkedin hype !

MB

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Numbers of Twitter followers and facebook page likes will inform you about how a company uses social media, but that's about it. There are plenty of legitimate and highly successful companies that don't have a presence on social media, are relatively new to it, haven't given it any degree of priority or are pretty clueless about how to use it. Equally there will be companies on there that have plenty of followers, loads of likes, are brilliant at engaging with people but aren't that good at producing the goods.

Social media is the very last, so last in fact I never use it to work out if someone is going to be a customer or supplier of mine. As you say it is far to easy to manipulate and not at all regulated.

At least if someone has a web site or article in print I can complain to the Advertising Standards if I think they are being economical with the truth. With social media anyone can say anything as it is all (allegedly) personal opinion.

As they can if you're talking to them face to face. Or on the phone. Or on email...

these days it's difficult to tell what's 'real' and what's been paid for.
..it even goes on in the video world too. Youtube video views can also be 'bought',  making a video seem a lot more popular than it is. It's a trick used by cheapo  video companies to upsell their video SEO products... (look for the suppliers whose videos all seem to have between 1000 -1500 views, no matter how long they've been on YT for, be it weeks or years) . Dead giveaway!

Paul   

Agreed, but at least face to face I get to evaluate the person not their on line presence.