I’d start this short post with “Imagine this happening to you”, but it’s unfortunately more than likely that you don’t have to imagine, since you’ve already experienced this. So you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed and you run into a post from a strange page — could be betting tip, could be links to a strange viral content site, could be a completely unfunny joke page. You simply wonder why somebody would like something like this, remember that there are people outside your usual bubble, shrug and scroll on.
Then you run into this again. And again. And the time after that you finally must check who in your feed is responsible that this mediocre content keeps popping up. Surprise — it’s you.
How could this happen? Let us take a stroll down the memory lane, back to the olden days of Facebook when everybody suddenly found out they could create their own Facebook page. The brands weren’t yet in — if you wanted to tell the world you liked Adidas, you created the Adidas page on your own and “became a fan”, as the world’s most popular social network called “liking” back then. And when the ball started rolling, suddenly you could become a fan of anything, from elderberry juice, over “10 000 fans and Domagoj has to join Facebook” to “Thanks to Aleister Crowley for everything that he has done for the Serbian people” (no, this isn’t made up, and I don’t intend to give you a link. Feel free to find it for yourself, but caveat emptor). Most of those were single-serving-joke pages, meant for you to have it shown in your friends’ news feeds, as yet another way for you to express yourself and your individuality.
The names of these pages were the important part, and as such they rarely focused on providing quality (or any) content. Some of them put out a post or two and then got bored, some would event share a funny link once in a while, but most just sat there in the “liked” section of a casual user who for the most part forgot he ever clicked on them, let alone became a fan. The cool name, pun or a gimmick of the title, though, was enough for some of them to rally thousands of fans — a noteworthy audience. This audience gathered around a passive Facebook page is, simply put, unused potential. Until someone chooses to use it, or even abuse it.
You probably know that changing an owner of a Facebook page is as easy as selecting another Facebook friend as an admin. Changing a name of a Facebook page was a different thing, because Facebook feared that this option would enable abuse and misdirection of existing fans. After many complaints (and even some workarounds) Facebook amended their rules and made changing the page name an available and simply accessible option. With this obstacle removed, manipulating (and, as Facebook feared, abusing) pages became as easy as ever, allowing anyone with a page with a half-decent number of fans to sell it to the highest bidder who could then simply change the name of the page and start serving own content to its fan library.
This is a situation where no one wins. Why?
- The old admin betrayed the audience.
Whoever the previous admin was, he gathered fans that showed their appreciation by liking their Page, even if it was nothing but a single-serving joke. The only reason there was no relationship further that the initial like, is that the admin chose not to provide content that could add to it. Even still, we as fans offered our trust and this should have been appreciated.
2.) The audience gets no relevant content.
So you have a shareable content depot — your own 9gag or Funnyjunk — and you need a quick way to share it out to the public. The Page you just bought off someone has 5000 fans so you assume it’s a good way to start. However, these 5000 fans were gathered by liking a nice little period-relevant joke a 5 years ago. Not only was this possibly the only thing that connected them all, but they are different people than they were back then, and possibly wouldn’t even click on the same page today. Ask yourself, how do you know that any of them would be interested at all in what you have to offer? Common marketing knowledge is that a newsletter sent out to 50 educated and interested recipients is worth more than to 1000 random e-mail addresses off a bought-off database. How is that any different.
3.) The new admin should beware the backlash.
As soon your new posts start popping out in your audience’s feed, the fans of the old page will be confused. You’re unfamiliar, you’re not relevant to them, you’re… who again? Each follower will go through the same process as I described in the beginning of this post, and once he finds out what actually happened, he will not be pleased. Unfollowing the page, writing angry comments, spreading bad word-of-mouth… all the way to reporting your Page, are all the probable acts of any of your disgruntled followers.
It all goes to show that buying off an existing Page with its following simply doesn’t pay. You won’t get any loyal followers for the content you aim to provide — we, your audience, are simply too educated to fall for this. You will gain, if any, bad publicity. And in the end — you won’t get your money’s worth, however much you’ve spent to get yourself this Page. Gaining real followers is hard work, but the followers you gain that way give so much more back. You’ll become a valued guest in their feed and someone they like to interact to, and you can be sure that when they go through their liked Pages to clean out the garbage (as I intend to right now), you’ll comfily remain there.
