Getting 2,000 zombies for your Facebook page is easy

A friend of mine phoned me up today, asking for advice about a job offer she got. An automotive company wanted her to create a Facebook Book page, and bring in 2,000 members each month. The guy knew the going rate for each new member – it was 35-45 cents – and he wasn’t going to be fooled, so there was no sense for her to give him a more expensive proposal. “It’s easy,” he told her. “You bring in the 2,000 members as I ask, and you’ll get $800 a month. Simple.”
guaranteed
And yes, it really is that simple. Put your ads in the right place, shill the product to the right people, and you can get 2,000 members just like that. Social Media Marketing, right? Right?

Wrong.

A large number of small businesses haven’t understood how Social Media Marketing works. Or, even worse, they’ve been given the wrong advice by SMM people standing in the shallow end of the pool. It’s not about the number of members on your Facebook page, or the number of followers you have on Twitter. It’s about the members themselves. Are they active? Do they really promote your product? Are these people that you want associated with your company? 2,000 zombie members, with no one contributing content, ‘liking’ your product, or with no networks of their own are worthless. Oh wait – they’re worth $800, thank you very much.

It’s like putting a price tag on visits to your site. If you are paying somebody for the traffic to your site, and you’re paying per visit – you’re losing money. Today, you pay by action. You pay for a user that downloads, or registers, or signs up for your service. Anyone can bring in a visit – the people who promise to bring in thousands of people a day to your site  will probably deliver. But they will deliver visits that last 13 seconds, and don’t engage a single user.

What’s even worse, is that these small businesses look at this as a test. They are ‘experimenting’ with Social Media. And when they get burned – because anyone who guarantees 2,000 members each month, almost certainly won’t get worthwhile members – they will say, “OK, we tried Social Media Marketing, and it doesn’t work for us.” And those businesses will lost customers to the businesses who did Social Media Marketing the right way, and saw what it can really do for your business.

And what CAN it really do for your business?

A lot more than “2,000 members a month”.

She turned the job down, by the way.