Is Your Social Media Manager a Shadowy Figure?

So if you wonder if freelance social media managers deceive their clients, maybe the following questions will answer that question. Do leopards have spots? Does Saved by the Bell have a fond place in the heart of Jimmy Fallon? Is there a tall building in New York? Is the Atlantic Ocean deep? Does Tim Tebow play football?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes… and yes.

In April, I had someone who runs a crowd funding site ask me to do their social media. Of course, they will go unnamed. My job would have been to tweet and post to Facebook. They also wanted to integrate the use of twitter hashtags with their tweets and their crowd funding campaigns.

I explored their site for days. I didn’t find many successful campaigns and it bewildered me why they had more Twitter followers than other more successful crowd funding websites. I mean, really, why would anyone follow this website? They offered little of value and they never conversed with anyone. This is what I call a self-follower. Really, they’re a self-promoter and that’s all.

Fake Followers? No, They’re Real

I asked the person in charge if their followers were bought or organic. “My social media manager says they are all organic Twitter followers,” I was told. Hmmmmm.

Then one day I heard about a new tool that can determine fake twitter followers from authentic Twitter followers. You can sign up to use their service here. It’s a tool from statuspeople.com. Just click on fakers at the top of the page.

That tool came in handy to find out the answer of whether or not the social media manager for the website, the person I would replace if I were to take the job, lied to their client. From using the tool, I found out that 66% of their Twitter followers were fake. The tool also shows the number of inactive users and theirs were 22% and good Twitter followers were 12%.

I’m not sure how often freelance social media managers lie to their clients, but in this case, the client was absolutely convinced they were being told the truth. Common logic told me that wasn’t the case. The Fakers tool, proved my point. And no, I didn’t reveal my discovery to the website owner. I’m sure when news of this tool spread, they checked their stats, or maybe not. It simply wasn’t my place to do so, since we both agreed another social media manager would be a better fit for them.

As with every business, there are unscrupulous people ready to take advantage of you, yes, even in the realm of social media. Be careful everyone because for every ten ethical and extremely honest social media managers that are out there, you’ll find at least one who isn’t.