There are many reasons why having a big number of followers on Facebook is attractive. For a business or brand, it is, of course, a huge boost to potential sales, to a band it could be more about being heard and getting noticed one day. Both help do that by providing a free word of mouth service as when you like something your friends will get to know about it; Facebook sees to that.

This all sounds very positive, and makes a good case for the benefits of boosting follower numbers, but is the situation different if the followers are not actually genuine? Here we look at both the plus and the minus points of setting up fake followers on Facebook.

The potential positive outcomes

The advantages of buying Facebook likes and follows

1. If undetected, then high-quality followers, real people paid to interact naturally with a page or profile can help boost your popularity and have you appear more often on newsfeeds etc. For example, you can purchase real Facebook followers from Social Media Daily.
2. It’s generally either cheap or quite affordable to buy followers. This could be a deal if you save lots of your on time.
3. If you already have a good number of followers it’s easier to add a few hundred more into the mix.
4. Larger numbers of followers make your brand or image more appealing to investors.

The negative side

1. Facebook openly admit that there’s plenty of fakery going on already with their site, with dupe accounts and completely fake profiles detracting from the genuine users. They work hard to identify and close these accounts, especially as they are often linked to the crime of some kind, so even buying fake followers for less sinister reasons could raise a red flag at their end.
2. If found out it could damage the reputation of your business or brand forever.
3. You could well be removed from Facebook for good if they catch on to what you are doing.
4. Gathering fake followers may bump the numbers up but as they cannot interact with your page this can look odd enough for someone to notice it. At the least, a lack of traffic posting on your page will drop its visibility. Remember that content-wise there’s nothing you can do to engage followers who simply don’t exist.
5. You don’t ever really know who you are dealing with when buying fake followers. Some of them could have less than pleasant intentions, and do your business harm.
6. You could pay more for advertising due to the higher number of (fake) followers!

The verdict

It’s natural to want to grow your audience, and collecting genuine followers is one way to do that, even if it does take time and effort. However, sometimes quality over quantity is the right attitude to take.

Fewer followers who are real, and actually do make the effort to interact are better than hundreds who you never hear from or are not real.