Facebook

Is boostlikes.com worth using?

Online Business, 4 Comments

This article first appeared on my personal blog on November 17, 2012.

Before reading this, it is important to note that buying Facebook “likes” is usually a bad idea. It is tempting to use money to purchase fans, but it rarely works in your favor.

The story

I got an email the other day (remember this was back in 2012) from boostlikes.com saying they can help me get more page likes for my Facebook Page.  According to them, they put ads on their big websites promoting my Facebook page and when they reach the number paid for, they pull it off.  If this is what they do, then it is an amazing service.

Doubts

To be honest, I have a lot of doubts about the service of boostlikes.com.  I have hired companies/people in the past to build up fan pages, and they all used fake accounts. The numbers went up, but no one looked at the page.  Having a thousand likes for a page helps build social proof, but I personally only am looking for people who will be interested in my projects (in this case the Madman of Magic Comic Book).

My Hopes

The truth is that I will not know how good this companies service is till I try it, and you will know too once I post my review.  I have used several other products that I assumed could be a scam and was pleasantly surprised at the quality.  I am hoping boostlikes.com is going to be one of those cases.

Research

I did do a quick google search of ” www.bootslikes.com ” and most of the sites have to do with data on the site statistics (ranking, age, domain owner, etc.on).  The two that do talk about the site do not say anything good about it.

  •  uk.answers.yahoo.com someone comments that for boostlikes.com the “Web of Trust has no ratings for them whatsoever…be very leery…..”
  • On chacha.com someone asked about the site and the response was ” bootslikes.com does not have a good rating. People say that you should not trust the website”

Conclusion

Neither of these sites are authority sites on the subject and both answers suggest they never tried the site out.  My solution is to give boostlikes.com a chance and I will report my findings back to you!

UPDATE

I did not have a great experience with the company. They did give the likes I requested, but they were not active on my page.

You can read why I don’t recommend them here.

Are Facebook Ads a Scam

Update, 3 Comments

A recent University study found Facebook ads included similar “fake likes” as “like farms”. We mentioned before how “fake” likes can hurt your business. This brings up an important question.

Are Facebook advertisements a scam?

The answer is no. However, if not done correctly, Facebook ads can be a waste of money.

The above video explains why. But first, an important definition.

A “fake” Facebook like is any “like” from either a software program or an individual that gets paid to like pages.

Principal/interesting points from the video:

  • The Virtual Bagel Facebook Page test was in 2012.
  • Facebook claims they deleted 83,000,000 fake accounts since then.
  • Veritasium bought their Facebook ads in 2012.
  • Fake Facebook likes hurt your page.
  • US State Department paid $630,000 to get two million fans. Afterwards, their engagement dropped to 2%.
  • Facebook charges to increase a page’s number of fans through ads.
    Then they charge to show all your fans individual posts.
  • Even if you target countries not known for click farms, you still get fake likes.
  • Facebook makes a lot of money off of fake Likes.

What has been your experience with Facebook Ads?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Never Buy Facebook Likes!

Websites, , 2 Comments

Starting a new Facebook page can be a depressing experience. Seeing your number of “likes” at 0, 10, or even 100 can be embarrassing. Especially when others in your industry have several hundred or thousands.

There is a temptation to turn to the “Dark Side” of Social Media marketing.

While I don’t see buying Facebook “Likes” to be wrong. Instead, it is self-destructive.

Who Sees Posts on Your Page?

Only a percentage of your Facebook Fans (Facebook “likes”) see each post.

Facebook does this because:

  • It helps reduce the amount of random clutter in News Feeds.
  • They can charge money for pages to get viewed by more of their audience.

“Like” building companies will say the “likes” they provide are from real people. You can not always trust what these companies say. They often pay people small amounts for each page they “like”. Rarely (if ever) are they interested in what your page is about.

Buying “likes” can hurt the number of people that see your content.

Example:

Facebook doesn’t set a particular percentage of viewers. They use an algorithm referred to as EdgeRank to make a decision for each post.

In this example, we will say Facebook will allow 20% of your fans to see your post.

To make the math easy, we will say you have 100 fans. Twenty people (20% of 100) will see each post.

Today you decide to buy 900 new fans bringing your total likes to 1,000. Sounds exciting, yet, for your next post you have only .4% chance of a real fan seeing it.

Protect Your EdgeRank

EdgeRank is the nickname for Facebooks newsfeed algorithm.

It determines who sees your content by looking at a wide variety of factors. The big ones being:

  • If a Facebook user has “liked” your posts in the past.
  • Number of “likes” the post gets.
  • Number of comments.
  • Number of page visits.
  • The number of posts “likes” compared to the number of page “likes”.

Bad “likes” will bring down the total percentage of people who see your post. This is because they will not “like”, comment, or visit your page.

Is it okay to do advertising?

Yes, yes, yes… Well, maybe.

A Recent Study

In 2014, a group of university professors did a study on Facebooks “likes”. They compared those gained through Facebook ads versus companies selling “likes”.

 

We deploy a set of honeypot pages, promote them using both methods, and analyze garnered likes based on likers’ demographic, temporal, and social characteristics.

The study involved creating thirteen Facebook pages that all called “Virtual Electricity”. All pages had no posts or pictures. To ensure people wouldn’t “like” the page, they included “This is not a real page, so please do not like it”.

Some individuals could still “like” a page with this description. This is why they included this with all the pages in the study.

Five pages had Facebook ad campaigns promoting them. The remaining eight pages used “like” generating companies to increase their “likes”. These companies included Boostlikes.com, SocialFormula.com, AuthenticLikes.com, and MammothSocials.com.

I feel this quote sums up the entire experiment.

 

We stress that our findings do not necessarily imply that advertising on Facebook is ineffective, since our campaigns were specifically designed to avert real users. However, our work provides strong evidence that likers attracted on our honeypot pages, even when using legitimate Facebook campaigns, are significantly different from typical Facebook users, which confirms the concerns about the genuineness of these likes.

Remember, these pages were created so that real people would not “like” them. Why would they like a page with no content that says it isn’t an actual page? Yet, Facebook was able to find people to “like” the page for a price.

This doesn’t mean that using Facebook ads on legitimate pages will only bring you “fake likes”. Instead, you need to keep a close eye on your Facebook insight date and make sure that you see a benefit for what you pay.

If you would like to see the specifics of that study, you can see it all through arxiv.org.

Boost Likes

Is boostlikes.com worth using?

Online Business, 10 Comments

NOTE: Comments at the bottom of this page contain experiences from other users.

I used boostlikes.com ‘s services several years ago and was not happy with the results. I don’t have any other recommendations for companies because I find it best to leave Facebook promotion to myself or my team.

I like to keep a close eye on how people find my Facebook page. This is the best way to ensure “likes” are from people interested in the content/website/project of a page.

Also, people get too wrapped up in the number of the Facebook “likes” that they have. While having thousands of people “like” a page feels good, it is more about ego and less about best business decisions.

Social proof?

Social proof is when people make decisions based off of the actions of others. When individuals are unsure about what to do in a situation they often turn to other people’s b to determine their own.

In our case, the action is “like’ing” a page. Some individuals use the number of “likes” a page has to determine if they will like it as well… After all, thousands of other Facebook users can’t be wrong.

Facebook changes

Within the past year, Facebook has changed the way people get updates in their feeds. Only a percentage of Facebook fans of a page see individual posts. This includes both the person that just “liked” a page because someone asked them to and the fan who is almost ready to buy or support your project.

Those that “like” a page who are not an ideal customer or fan is now taking away views from others. You want to be in the feeds of someone who will take action; such as buying, sharing, etc.

With these Facebook changes, it is less important about the number of likes a page gets. Having 50 high quality “likes” is more beneficial that 5,000 none quality “likes”.

Also, most Facebook users care more about a page’s content than the page’s number of likes.

Conclusion

Spend fewer resources on increasing your Facebook likes.

I am focusing on making sure my pages have amazing content that people want to share across all social media. I recommend you do the same.