Paying for Twitter followers is now Possible.
Yesterday I tweeted about an article from the BBC about paying for Twitter followers, regarding an Australian company, uSocial, that have introduced a service that allows businesses to buy targeted Twitter followers. uSocial use the Twitter search function to identify potential followers for the business and then contact them to see if they are interested in following the business to find out more about its products or services.
What's Wrong With Buying Followers?
I have mixed thoughts about this, essentially there is nothing wrong with buying followers on Twitter, all businesses have to market themselves and buying followers is no different to buying a telephone or e-mail list to market to. What concerns me in this instance is what happens after the list is bought. How much guidance do uSocial provide to the businesses using their service about how best to use Twitter to market products? The danger is that businesses with little experience of social media marketing will think all they have to do is buy a few thousand followers, start spamming them with tweets about their service and Bob's your uncle - sales will start flooding in. If this starts happening it will quickly turn Twitter users off to the idea of being marketed to via Twitter and will be to the detriment of businesses that have taken the time and effort to invest in a structured social media strategy.
Buying Twitter Followers Should be Part of a Wider Marketing Strategy
Having looked through the uSocial website I can't find any mention of where their services fit into a wider marketing strategy, this is something that any business considering going social should bear in mind, where does social networking fit into their marketing strategy? Do they have a product or service that lends itself to being marketed in the social space and do they have budget, resources and time to engage potential customers via social networks? There is a risk that businesses will simply rush into this kind of marketing without considering their overall strategy and without developing a social strategy, fail and be forever turned off to the opportunities that social media present.
Finally, should there be a concern over uSocial's credentials? Having looked at their website their core product appears to be a service that games social bookmarking tools in order to drive traffic to websites. Is this ethical? Think of the reaction Google has to websites that try to game its algorithm through black hat SEO techniques, would the methods uSocial use to court social bookmarking sites be considered black hat when viewed form a search engine context? uSocial did receive a cease and desist letter from Digg late last year. uSocial blogged about this saying they have yet to hear anything further from Digg's lawyers. There was outcry when the BNP attempted similar earlier this year. Many people considered this unethical (maybe due to the views of the BNP) but is it any less ethical to exploit the social bookmarking sites for monetary gain than for political ideologies? Is offering this kind of service for social bookmarking sites and Twitter any different to performing SEO for clients?
All things considered it is probably up to the companies supplying social media services to ensure that their terms and conditions of use are robust enough to disallow this kind of thing happening, if their termas and conditions can't stop it then they have to expect companies to exploit their services. I guess we will have to wait and see what Twitter makes of uSocial's follower buying service and whether Digg's terms and conditions have any teeth. What are your thoughts?
