There was a Reuters article by Jim Finkle in the Chicago Tribune (though you can read it online at the Toronto Sun’s website) about how you can buy followers on social media. This is not new news, but what surprised me was that fake followers now sell for a higher price than stolen credit card numbers. How has this happened? There is a belief online that the more followers or fans a person or company has, the more credible and influential they are. Unfortunately, this does work. Some companies feel they have to fake it until they make it. 
This is nonsense because:
1. You need to know who your followers are, and interact with them because it’s about communication and building relationships with current and potential customers. It’s impressive when you have thousands of followers, but the numbers don’t have any meaning or real potential, other than just window-dressing. Real people do business with you, and having fake followers makes your social media strategy shallow and hollow.
2. If you fake it, even if you think you’re doing a good job at hiding your number-building scheme, people will probably find out, and it will damage your reputation, which in the end can also ruin your business. Nowadays, it’s very difficult to scrub away negative publicity online, so even if just one blogger knows your secret, that information can be repeated all over the Internet and eventually affect your offline activities, too.
3. You are opening up your real human followers to spam and stalkers online, and they’ll quickly remove themselves from your social media accounts and emails. Why risk turning away your loyal customers just to make yourself look good? It’s too risky and dangerous.
When marketing through social media, quality is more important than quantity. Of course, it’s best to have both, but if you’re trying to chase after big numbers in a dishonest way, it’s going to backfire. So don’t do it. Instead, create content that people will want to read and look at, and focus on building a strong client base that will stay with you for the long haul.
It appears that people think that stolen cc number is a scam (not just illegal) driving the perceived value down while the idea of a larger audience, especially if called “followers” is perceived to be just what #oldmedia has. They’ve made great profit from mass audiences, which most people don’t understand.
I have never bought fake followers, but for some reason I occasionally get followed by accounts that are obviously fake. I assume they hope that I will follow them back and end up getting some spammy posts. I even try to block and report followers if they appear to be fake, though that is not a great use of my time. I recently used a website (the name slips me) that went through my followers and highlighted which ones were fake accounts so I was able to block some that had slipped through.
Like you, I can’t understand why any respectable Twitter user would think it is a good idea to have scores (or thousands) of fake followers.
Thanks for the comments!
Know well that book publishers actually put a lot of weight behind a perceived platform size and that means fake followers can tip the balance between being published and not. There are many consumers in B2C and B2B that put inappropriate “weight” behind the size of a following instead of the quality.
Another reason they are so valuable!