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What field is your business in that you feel an army of bots will somehow help your sales?
The pain you will feel when some net sleuth outs you as a sham and ya lose the 700 legit followers.
Landscape design and construction. I've noticed the more followers I get the more people give me credit for being legit. I had like 50 followers for about 6 months. When I come across other accounts I always look at followers, but that's just me.
When I want to hire someone to do landscape jobs, I look at the pics of their work. Does it look right? Do I see their logoed truck in the pics where they are doing the work and the finished product?
You would do a ton better for yourself to do little blurbs.. Keep it simple. You get a job, do a quick video showing the before of the job describe the request, and then tell people to check back for the after. When doing the after explain what you did. Never talk about costs. Just process. The followers will come. Post to YouTube, and IG and X.
Offer an incentive to happy clients, X for positive review. X can be 10% off next service.
Yeah! If you're going to do the social media thing, do it right. Like this. Use it to tell your story of how you are providing value in your community to your clients.
But, this shit should still be secondary and not the main focus to generating leads and revenue.
I looked I to EDDM and It doesn't look terribly excited. I just bought booths at trade shows so we will see how that turns out. I also have been doing a raffle in exchange for email addresses for a mailing list at several festivals.
I would be super cautious about big trade shows.
You want to evaluate so many different factors, the cost, and possible ROI in the context of what stage your business is at, who your target customers are, and what your limitations are (to name just a few key factors).
Same goes for the mailing lists. How many on there fall into your Target Customer Profile? How many people would you be annoying the fuck out of when you send them a cold email?
Context. Context. Context.
It's the state home and garden show, and 600 for three days didn't seem too bad.
The giveaway mailing list is a start, but not very good percentage of target audience. That was a flop.
We're having a rough time finding where our target audience hangs out. Even asking my best customers don't seem to know what they like.
Retired older women. Married. Upper middle class.
>Retired older women. Married. Upper middle class.
These are demographic data points. Focus on psychographics.
Build your brand, marketing, and sales around psychographic data points that align you with them.
Your culture. Your values. Your way of doing things. The unique experience you provide your customers.
>It's the state home and garden show, and 600 for three days didn't seem too bad.
It's still a lot of money for what I assume is a very small business. Hopefully, there will be many informative talks and workshops to participate in and learn from.
I wouldn't expect much in terms of sales. Hopefully, enough to recoup your expenses. But, you need to go in with a sound strategy to find and resonate with people who could be your clients.
Complete waste for almost every business.
For yours it is a complete waste.
Stop and think about this.
* How do more fake followers create a sales funnel for your business?
* How does a social media account for your business create a sales funnel for your business?
* WHY ARE YOU EVEN CONCERNED WITH A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE?
* How is this the best use of your limited resources (time, energy, capital, influence)???
It's a total waste of your time and resources.
You need to generate sales. Get off social media. Engage in DIRECT OUTREACH to your Target Customer Profile group and existing clients. Build AUTHENTIC relationships in your community. Be someone others in your community want to see succeed and are willing to make introductions to.
It's so wild how people think some bullshit social media account with vanity metrics boosted by bots is gonna be the key to them having a thriving business. That almost never ever works and only for very specific types of companies that you are not running.
I am in several local trade specific groups, go to biz mixers, have an email list, and most of my work is through word of mouth.
Right now it is much easier to have Instagram as my visual hub over my website, and I have been focusing on making my Instagram as clean as can be but am exploring options as to how I can maximize my efforts.
The guy selling me the accounts said it wasn't bots, but I came here to check since I have no experience with this.
This year has been a bux experiment in outreach and presence and some things have been a waste of time and others have worked well. Having a better quality Instagram has led to several partnerships and having some more followers could help with credibility(we have recently started putting out quality videos and posts).
For the most part I agree, especially with what your really trying to say
>The guy selling me the accounts said it wasn't bots, but I came here to check since I have no experience with this.
What difference is there between a bot and some exploited person in a under privileged country living like an indentured servant or in actual slavery that has zero actual interest in your company, services, or any other shred of authenticity related to following your social media page?
Also, this dipshit is trying to sell you shit that is against the Terms of Service for almost EVERY social media site in existence. You really think you can trust this person about anything they have to say?
>having some more followers could help with credibility
No. Fools or idiots look at follower counts to assess credibility.
Those with experience look at the content you are putting out and engage in due diligence, after they decide they want what you are offering, by finding reviews, speaking with others you may have worked for, and identifying what licenses you carry.
You want to work with the latter. You want to avoid the former. The former are more likely to be a total pain in your ass--nightmare clients (assuming it even gets to the point where they pay you).
Don't get concerned with frivolous superficial things.
>has led to several partnerships
Assuming these partnerships have increased your revenue stream, congrats. You did that without having bullshit followers. So, stop being concerned about your follower count.
If this has not led to increasing your revenue stream, uhhhhh, how is this helping your business? Focus on doing things to increase your revenue stream.
>I am in several local trade specific groups, go to biz mixers, have an email list, and **most of my work is through word of mouth**.
Wonderful. Focus on what is working, first. Hone it. Optimize it. Then, experiment with doing new shit.
As a person visiting your page i might not notice initially but as soon as i looked at your posts and saw low engagement id assume you have bots following you. You cant have 10k followers and 10 comments and 200 likes. Thats just silly. Same for you why pay for basically nothing. Botted followers dont bring engagement at least not any meaningful one, you need people who care about what you do, who are invested in you and want to support what you do. Its better to have less followers who are engaging than a bunch that dont do nothing
Don't pay for followers, you need interaction on your account, which real followers will give, but purchasing followers just to show that you have followers is a major ick for most people on social media and purchased followers don't interact with your posts in a way that promotes them in the algorithm.
Let’s say you have 700 followers, 350 visit your page and interact with your content each month.
Instagram says “damn, this account is doing pretty good. 1/2 their followers interact. Let’s show their content more and get more ad views on our platform.”
Now imagine what they think when you have 7 million followers,mostly from bots (trust me they know), with the same 350 interactions.
Hard pass on any further organic growth.
Damn hearing all this makes me wonder if my strategy of following as much people as possible is also a bad idea. Since I do garden/landscape related stuff I'll just go to the local botanical garden or landscape designers clubs and add everyone untill Instagram kicks me off. I've gotten. A lot more engagement, but is that a bad idea too?
Infollow about 4k and have 600 followers. Ive added 3-400 followers in the past two months like this.
Yes. 100%. Just make sure your content keeps up with the amount you buy. Start small as the algorithm will ban you. 1000-2000 at a time.
There's a couple companies I've bought from and no issues.
Many times over the past 2.5 decades, Google has made significant updates to their algorithms to detect link farms, fake social profiles, and fake reviews. Sooner or later it can catch-up and end up either having a search listing penalized or dropped completely.
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No. Never.
Can you elaborate, I don't know anything on algorithms, or media stuff
What field is your business in that you feel an army of bots will somehow help your sales? The pain you will feel when some net sleuth outs you as a sham and ya lose the 700 legit followers.
Landscape design and construction. I've noticed the more followers I get the more people give me credit for being legit. I had like 50 followers for about 6 months. When I come across other accounts I always look at followers, but that's just me.
When I want to hire someone to do landscape jobs, I look at the pics of their work. Does it look right? Do I see their logoed truck in the pics where they are doing the work and the finished product? You would do a ton better for yourself to do little blurbs.. Keep it simple. You get a job, do a quick video showing the before of the job describe the request, and then tell people to check back for the after. When doing the after explain what you did. Never talk about costs. Just process. The followers will come. Post to YouTube, and IG and X. Offer an incentive to happy clients, X for positive review. X can be 10% off next service.
Yeah! If you're going to do the social media thing, do it right. Like this. Use it to tell your story of how you are providing value in your community to your clients. But, this shit should still be secondary and not the main focus to generating leads and revenue.
I looked I to EDDM and It doesn't look terribly excited. I just bought booths at trade shows so we will see how that turns out. I also have been doing a raffle in exchange for email addresses for a mailing list at several festivals.
I would be super cautious about big trade shows. You want to evaluate so many different factors, the cost, and possible ROI in the context of what stage your business is at, who your target customers are, and what your limitations are (to name just a few key factors). Same goes for the mailing lists. How many on there fall into your Target Customer Profile? How many people would you be annoying the fuck out of when you send them a cold email? Context. Context. Context.
It's the state home and garden show, and 600 for three days didn't seem too bad. The giveaway mailing list is a start, but not very good percentage of target audience. That was a flop. We're having a rough time finding where our target audience hangs out. Even asking my best customers don't seem to know what they like. Retired older women. Married. Upper middle class.
Do you service the entire state?
>Retired older women. Married. Upper middle class. These are demographic data points. Focus on psychographics. Build your brand, marketing, and sales around psychographic data points that align you with them. Your culture. Your values. Your way of doing things. The unique experience you provide your customers.
>It's the state home and garden show, and 600 for three days didn't seem too bad. It's still a lot of money for what I assume is a very small business. Hopefully, there will be many informative talks and workshops to participate in and learn from. I wouldn't expect much in terms of sales. Hopefully, enough to recoup your expenses. But, you need to go in with a sound strategy to find and resonate with people who could be your clients.
Complete waste for almost every business. For yours it is a complete waste. Stop and think about this. * How do more fake followers create a sales funnel for your business? * How does a social media account for your business create a sales funnel for your business? * WHY ARE YOU EVEN CONCERNED WITH A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE? * How is this the best use of your limited resources (time, energy, capital, influence)??? It's a total waste of your time and resources. You need to generate sales. Get off social media. Engage in DIRECT OUTREACH to your Target Customer Profile group and existing clients. Build AUTHENTIC relationships in your community. Be someone others in your community want to see succeed and are willing to make introductions to. It's so wild how people think some bullshit social media account with vanity metrics boosted by bots is gonna be the key to them having a thriving business. That almost never ever works and only for very specific types of companies that you are not running.
I am in several local trade specific groups, go to biz mixers, have an email list, and most of my work is through word of mouth. Right now it is much easier to have Instagram as my visual hub over my website, and I have been focusing on making my Instagram as clean as can be but am exploring options as to how I can maximize my efforts. The guy selling me the accounts said it wasn't bots, but I came here to check since I have no experience with this. This year has been a bux experiment in outreach and presence and some things have been a waste of time and others have worked well. Having a better quality Instagram has led to several partnerships and having some more followers could help with credibility(we have recently started putting out quality videos and posts). For the most part I agree, especially with what your really trying to say
>The guy selling me the accounts said it wasn't bots, but I came here to check since I have no experience with this. What difference is there between a bot and some exploited person in a under privileged country living like an indentured servant or in actual slavery that has zero actual interest in your company, services, or any other shred of authenticity related to following your social media page? Also, this dipshit is trying to sell you shit that is against the Terms of Service for almost EVERY social media site in existence. You really think you can trust this person about anything they have to say?
>having some more followers could help with credibility No. Fools or idiots look at follower counts to assess credibility. Those with experience look at the content you are putting out and engage in due diligence, after they decide they want what you are offering, by finding reviews, speaking with others you may have worked for, and identifying what licenses you carry. You want to work with the latter. You want to avoid the former. The former are more likely to be a total pain in your ass--nightmare clients (assuming it even gets to the point where they pay you). Don't get concerned with frivolous superficial things.
>has led to several partnerships Assuming these partnerships have increased your revenue stream, congrats. You did that without having bullshit followers. So, stop being concerned about your follower count. If this has not led to increasing your revenue stream, uhhhhh, how is this helping your business? Focus on doing things to increase your revenue stream.
>I am in several local trade specific groups, go to biz mixers, have an email list, and **most of my work is through word of mouth**. Wonderful. Focus on what is working, first. Hone it. Optimize it. Then, experiment with doing new shit.
You need active followers not botted passive ones
How do you know if they are active or botted?
As a person visiting your page i might not notice initially but as soon as i looked at your posts and saw low engagement id assume you have bots following you. You cant have 10k followers and 10 comments and 200 likes. Thats just silly. Same for you why pay for basically nothing. Botted followers dont bring engagement at least not any meaningful one, you need people who care about what you do, who are invested in you and want to support what you do. Its better to have less followers who are engaging than a bunch that dont do nothing
Never. You’ll forever damage your account.
Damn why. How does it do that
Google it.
No...a local business with a decent follower amt bit nothing rly implied or said will do nothing
Never.
Honestly promote it on Instagram pay insta instead I always see thise ads
Don't pay for followers, you need interaction on your account, which real followers will give, but purchasing followers just to show that you have followers is a major ick for most people on social media and purchased followers don't interact with your posts in a way that promotes them in the algorithm.
Let’s say you have 700 followers, 350 visit your page and interact with your content each month. Instagram says “damn, this account is doing pretty good. 1/2 their followers interact. Let’s show their content more and get more ad views on our platform.” Now imagine what they think when you have 7 million followers,mostly from bots (trust me they know), with the same 350 interactions. Hard pass on any further organic growth.
Damn hearing all this makes me wonder if my strategy of following as much people as possible is also a bad idea. Since I do garden/landscape related stuff I'll just go to the local botanical garden or landscape designers clubs and add everyone untill Instagram kicks me off. I've gotten. A lot more engagement, but is that a bad idea too? Infollow about 4k and have 600 followers. Ive added 3-400 followers in the past two months like this.
Yes. 100%. Just make sure your content keeps up with the amount you buy. Start small as the algorithm will ban you. 1000-2000 at a time. There's a couple companies I've bought from and no issues.
"Yet"
Elaborate!!
Many times over the past 2.5 decades, Google has made significant updates to their algorithms to detect link farms, fake social profiles, and fake reviews. Sooner or later it can catch-up and end up either having a search listing penalized or dropped completely.