A dive into the Mislead World of Bots
Social Media Fake Accounts Effecting Marketers
Social media bots are not a new thing. They are as old as the getting more followers race. Whenever there is a situation like this, many crooked programmers come with a “cheat code”. A company called Devumi provides its customers with over 200 million twitter followers. Their 3.5 million automated accounts stock is all bots which sometimes have stolen identities of actual Twitter users. Similarly, on Facebook 60 million automated accounts are present. These accounts generate fake engagement, impressions, views and followers count, which is hurting the honest brands that have organic following.
If you are a marketer of an honest brand, I am already sorry for you. Because you are not being able to maintain a presence as huge as your competition that uses bots.
For you it has become…
More difficult to get followers
There is no surprise that the algorithm of all social media platforms is unable to differentiate between fake and legit accounts. These fake accounts steal identities of actual people making them appear legitimate.
This same algorithm is designed to boost posts with most likes and profiles with most followers. Your honest content is sadly out of sight. And it doesn’t matter if it’s good…
Impossible to mitigate them
NEWS Flash “Automated Accounts are NOT illegal”. Social media doesn’t care and is not after these bots. They increase their traffic which means more money for them. People using it only get the thrash of moral policing without facing any legal consequences. And the morals won’t hold people back either, because they just pay a fraction of amount of money they earn by buying these fake following. Not illegal plus a good business deal is a recipe for success.
Now what does this mean for you?
You probably have to get them too
If you work for a company that only cares about the numbers and not how they were achieved. Sooner or later you have to invest in these bots.
It is time you just accept the fact
At the moment there is no way to tell for sure if an account is a bot, at least for the good ones. So just go with the flow. Do what is required in order to get noticed. A more moral way would be making a quality product and marketing it to the right people. But if you think bots are the only thing holding you back, level the playing field. It all depends on your company’s moral values and the market you are competing in.
Read The New York Times article on social media fake following here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html
