Let’s say you’re CEO of a publicly traded company. Doesn’t matter the industry, but your company is listed on the OTC Markets as a Pink, Common, or even OTCQB penny stock. You’re growing slowly and need the capital from shareholders.

Then someone bearing the title of “marketing” tells you they can give you thousands of followers in 2-3 months. They have a “system” for making followers want to follow you and virtually “guarantee x amount of growth in x amount of months.”

So you, with your pre-2015 knowledge of social media sign the agreement, pay, and you’re off to the races. Almost immediately you’re inundated with new followers. Hundreds of new faces, maybe even thousands. Your heart races as you see the follower count rise!

Then 3 months later, your stock is sitting in virtually the same price point, you have a massive follower base, but no one is engaging with your press releases. No one is caring about your latest acquisition. You log in one day and your follower count is 100 people short, but after lunch you have 120 more then before!

So you call your “marketing” guy and say you’re spending too much money for no results and you decide to cancel the agreement. As the weeks go by there’s a mass exodus from your handles and you watch hundreds and thousands of followers disappear every day.

You sit there saying “what happened? Does social media even work?”

Short answer? You fell victim to one of the biggest scams of modern marketing. You bought fake followers.

Fake Followers

A fake follower (or ghost follow) is a non-engaging, non-active follower on social media with one purpose, falsely enhance the appearance of a brand. See in pre-2015 social media, a follower-count was everything. If you had a 10k or the even more prestigious 1m on Twitter in your following counts, you were legend. In post-2015 social, engagements are everything, follower counts are purely aesthetic.

AT&T recently released a report that said, on Twitter approximately 42% of all followers are fake and on Instagram about 25% of followers are fake on average. That’s insane. And what’s more, it’s damaging on so many levels.

See, you’re not paying to gain followers. You’re paying probably 1 person with thousands of burner email accounts to latch their fake accounts to your profile. You may think I’m kidding, but…

Police raid “click farms” all the time. They’re truly evil organizations that destroy social media marketing for legitimate companies. What’s more, Social Platforms are cracking down and you don’t want to be in that crossfire, you will lose. Oh, and other platforms, like Facebook, they’re coming after companies and brands, and the agencies that do this, and they’re coming heavy. Now, not every seller is a Click Farm operator. It could literally be a group of people doing this process manually. These operations, like all scams, range in size from massive crews automating it on a Click Farm, to one person with hundreds of accounts.

So why is this a problem? Well there’s legal reasons, ethical reasons, security reasons, marketing reasons, etc. In fact, there’s so many reasons AGAINST this practice, those involved with it are almost always willingly ignorant to the risks or apathetic. In Supermassive’s opinion, we want the FTC to start issuing indictments and lawsuits for Truth In Advertising regulations to the agencies who do this and the companies that hire them, which is already happening.

Legality and Ethics

Let’s start with the basics. Buying followers is fraud. And there’s precedent all over the place, people are being taught how to spot this scam and avoid the companies/brands who do it.

I’m not beating around this bush. You’re breaking the law as a publicly-traded company if you engage with this activity. We’ve actually dropped clients for this because of the risks it brings to our other client’s ad accounts. Legit marketing agencies do NOT pad follower counts. Fly-by-night operations do.

There’s that magical phrase called “misleading the shareholders,” aka securities fraud. If you’re making your security or offering appear to be more lucrative, enticing, etc. than it actually is, you’re committing fraud. If you’re paying an organization to falsify your numbers to appear more enticing, YOU are breaking the law. Not them. You.

When the SEC or FINRA comes knocking that gun-for-hire will be long gone leaving you the burden of your mistakes. That’s why this is so important, especially on platforms like Stocktwits.

Anyone who says they can “increase your following by X amount” is a modern day snakeoil salesmen.

Why risk securities fraud as a C-Suite executive of a public firm for 1000s of fake followers? That’s asinine, no matter how you spin it.

Security

Ever had an account removed or restricted for a terms of service violation? There’s virtually no recourse. With Facebook specifically, we issue report tickets on behalf of clients and the average turnaround is 60-90 days (if they even respond). Twitter is easier to get a hold of, but if you broke the rules, they are not forgiving. And just like with real life, “ignorance of the law is not exemption from it.”

When you launch a social media account, you’re required to agree to specific Terms of Service, or ToS. ToS usually includes acceptable use of a platform. Well, have you ever read it? It’s required reading for all Supermassive personnel on every platform on which we operate. Let’s focus on Twitter since the TickerTag, or “CashTag” is available here and most public companies are or should be on Twitter as a bare minimum (LinkedIn too, but we’ll do another post about B2B messaging).

In fact, if you read Twitter’s ToS specifically, you’d see some interesting lines like:

1. Posting duplicative or substantially similar content, replies, or mentions over multiple accounts you control, or creating duplicate or substantially similar accounts, with or without the use of automation, is never allowed
2. You can’t mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts. This includes using misleading account information to engage in spamming, abusive, or disruptive behavior.
3. You can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts or by coordinating with others to violate the Twitter Rules.

And the BIG ONE!

You can’t artificially inflate your own or others’ followers or engagement. This includes:

• selling/purchasing Tweet or account metric inflation – selling or purchasing followers or engagements (Retweets, Likes, mentions, Twitter Poll votes);
• apps – using or promoting third-party services or apps that claim to add followers or add engagements to Tweets;
• reciprocal inflation – trading or coordinating to exchange follows or Tweet engagements (including but not limited to participation in “follow trains,” “decks,” and “Retweet for Retweet” behavior); and
• account transfers or sales – selling, purchasing, trading, or offering the sale, purchase, or trade of Twitter accounts, usernames, or temporary access to Twitter accounts.

If you do anything above, you risk restriction to your reach and/or account or temporary/permanent removal. No if, ands, or buts.

You want to market on social media? Learn the rules of engagement. These companies work rather closely with the FCC, FTC, and other agencies of the federal government. You will be caught.

Supermassive has a zero tolerance policy for clients we find are engaged in this practice. If we discover you’re buying followers, you actually void our service agreement because you’re risking our accounts and other client’s accounts too. We give you a chance to reverse the action, but with a lot of client’s we usually find out after the damage is done. What’s more, our legitimate practices do NOT work on accounts with inflated numbers. You’re shooting yourselves in the foot with a sawed-off double-barrel 12-gauge and you’re going to have to spend even more money to fix your mistake.

Marketing

So, I wanted to cover the legal and ethical stuff first, but at the end of the day, the real problem from this is the virtually irreversible damage you’re causing to your handles. I’m going to walk you through EVERY aspect of this because not many understand this risk.

Fake Followers Destroy Organic Reach

Company A has 100 followers on Twitter. Now that’s virtually nothing in terms of size, but they’ve cultivated every one of them and ALL of them are invested in their brand, their messaging, etc.

Company B has 1000 followers, 900 have been purchased, but 100 are still invested in the brand and the messaging.

So who’s winning the social game? Company A.

About 5-6 years ago, Twitter was the last platform to change to “engagement focused” instead of chronological order. Now when you log in, your feed is stacked based on things like “previous activity,” “type of media engaged with,” etc. Take it a step further, on average organic social media reaches ~6% of your total audience.

So let’s do some math. Without any “ripple effect” (people engaging and re-sharing the content) 6% of 100 is only 6 people. That seems really low… because 6% of 1000 is 60 people. Still low, but seems better right?

WRONG!

900 of those followers are fake, will never engage with the content, and waste your reach. The likelihood of of those 60 people from Company B being one of the 100 interested people becomes so much lower. You even run the risk of your content being seen by no one who cares!

So then you turn to us, your new social agency who’s been with you for only a few months, and say “Kevin, what am I paying you for? We’ve gained 3 followers in a month and no one is engaging. Our stock volume is the exact same.”

And I say, “you’ve destroyed your organic social efforts. We can only salvage your reach with paid ads, flushing the fake followers, and rebuilding your base.”

And then I charge you 4x our starting plan to right your ship. Now you’re out even more money to try to rebuild or worse, you walk away thinking you’re just “one of those companies who can’t make social work.” It’s really sad to be honest. A lot of times, these people just can’t see the forest through the trees.

In all honesty, I don’t even look at your follower counts. I look at your engagement rates. If that dips under 5%, we have a problem and I’ll be the first to let you know! Social media is 100% about engagements now and the brands who understand this are the ones thriving. The one’s obsessed with how many followers they have are getting lapped behind.

Horror Stories

The following are real situations, from real Supermassive clients. Names have been removed for obvious reasons.

Client A

We kicked off with Client A in February 2021. They, on Twitter had ~8k followers. We noticed a problem as we began posting that our content was only going to a few hundred eyes and a handful of engagements. With 8k followers and the slew of active followers, we knew something was weird.

Then the follower count started ramping up again. 9k. 10k. 11k. 13.5k! All in one month, but the engagement rate started declining. RED FLAG!

We started reviewing the accounts latching on and here’s, on average, who they were:

• “egg accounts” – accounts that never completed setup
• spam accounts with malware links
• European/Asian Porn Accounts
• spam accounts with phishing links
• Porn stars, like a lot of porn. More porn than you could ever imagine.

That was about 5-6k of our 13k followers. Now that was only 1/2 of the accounts. The remaining 1/2 broke into a). legit followers and b). Maybe Legit. It’s hard to fully make a decision on this, but ask yourself this, you really think those people are investing in highly-risky OTC companies, when a lot of mainstream investors don’t even know what the OTCs are?

Get outta here!

So we advised our client on the dangers of this practice, they pulled the plug on buying followers, and sure enough, like clockwork, we lost 9k followers in 2 months. You ever see a hemorrhage in digital media? That was this client. We’re rebuilding it now, but wow, that was a painful 2 months.

When you stop paying for followers, the seller pulls the rug and you lose EVERY FOLLOWER you gained. #OTCMarkets #NYSE

Tweet

When you stop paying to inflate your followers, they stop following you. When they stop following you, your reach sinks lower than it ever will because Twitter starts seeing you as spam. Won’t go into too much detail, but this is the quickest way to develop the social media “echo chamber” effect.

Lastly, it takes months to recover this type of issue. They wasted thousands of dollars buying the original followers and thousands more for Supermassive to try to repair this. We ALMOST have it back to where we were… 7 months ago. I shudder at the time we could have invested in growth, not repair.

Client B

One of our clients has an 80% fake follower count. That’s insane to me. They have ~12k followers, but only 2-3k are active accounts on Twitter. Ever screamed into the abyss? It doesn’t actually scream back. That’s this client’s social handles. 12k followers, virtually zero engagements. We’ve tweaked messaging, creative, timing, etc. and nothing produces reach past 2-3 investors who like the product.

What’s worse, I’m seeing unusual activity again (more porn accounts) joining the ranks. I’m 90% sure they’re doing it again and it’s our duty to ask the question this week. So I’m bracing for the inevitable, “See, he’s getting us followers, we’re wasting money with you” this week.

This client will probably walk from us, be happy for 2-3 months, then realize their mistake, but at that point, it’s beyond repair.

Now, I’m not bitter about this. We tried our best. We just can’t help brands cutting corners in digital marketing.

Proper Social Media

We understand the enticement of buying followers. Social Media is more about timing than anything else. When you need to fill an offering or you need new shareholders to fund a new project, you need to make moves! We get it!

You’re also 1000x better off launching a paid ad campaign, through legal and ethical channels, than to buy your followers. Actually, the cost is about the same! The main difference, time.

That’s the biggest enemy in digital marketing, time. You could have the best product, the best service, the best investment, but if your timing is poor, so will be your results. If you rush the process, you’re even worse off!

Proper social media takes time to do it right. It takes proper budgeting, planning, and structure. It requires patience and testing to make sure it’s working. It requires crunching data and making assumptions/decisions on that data. Social Media Marketing is the scientific method in practice.

1. We make a hypothesis based on consumer data and behavior
2. We develop testing parameters (creative, messaging tests)
3. Test the data against a control (current methods)
4. Collect and analyze the data
5. Alter the “experiment” for better results

Buying followers is more like throwing gas on a burn pile.

Were Florida-based in the farm country, and I have 2 massive oak trees and 5 massive palm trees in my yard. During Hurricane Season, the rain and winds knock all sorts of branches around. Ever seen a fully-grown palm frond? They get up to 10-12′. Instead of chopping and bagging them, I burn them.

Now, dead palm fronds burn really well already, but sometimes you have stuff to do so you rush it… so you pour some gasoline in a cup and toss it on the pile. Palm fronds burn quick, but a palm frond covered in gas will burn fully in less than 2 minutes. It’s a gorgeous flame that’s really impressive, but an entire pile of palm frond will burn down in ~30-40 minutes.

When the flames die from the fronds, all that’s left are the embers and the oak. Reigniting the fire to burn the oak, requires… you guessed it more gas. Meanwhile, if I were more patient, built the pile properly by making the base with oak, not palm, I could burn everything without any fuel. It’s not as spectacular, but I have a 100% manageable fire that I can continue to fuel with branches and wood. I never have to continuously reignite the flame with volatile fuel. I’d just have to enjoy my beer and watch it slow-burn.

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So if you’re on the fence, debating where to spend your money, I urge you not to buy your followers. Regardless of how it’s been sold to you, you’re:

1. Most likely breaking the law in terms of securities fraud or misleading the shareholder to inflate your reach.
2. Wasting your money on something that will inevitably backfire on you like it does for literally everyone else. You’ll spend even more money repairing their damage.
3. Ruining the appearance of your brand as consumers in the 35 and younger crowd can spot a fake presence a mile away and are teaching others how to as well. You won’t trick them for much longer.
4. Investors and the various exchanges are not playing with securities fraud and claims this year. How many OTCs are getting delisted for bad filings this year? Like 20% right? How many more are getting delisted when the SEC finds out they’re inflating their follower counts to appear more enticing than they actually are?

If you want help with social from a crew that has 20+ years of experience with a focus on algorithmic social media who will, unapologetically “give it to you straight.” Contact me at kgray@supermassive.media and we’ll show you the ropes.

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Kevin Gray | President & CEO – Supermassive Media, Inc.