When a business creates a page on Facebook, the more “connections” (formerly called fans) you have, the more your social media efforts are looked at as being successful. A large number of connections means you’ve found your target audience and your message was effectively communicated to them. While interacting with them, you were able to gain some insight as to what changes and improvements you need to implement in order to make your customers feel appreciated and increase sales. To address this need, there’s now a company selling Facebook “connections ”. How much are your connections worth?
The company, uSocial.net targets “connections” based on your basic demographic preferences. They’ll bring people to your page so that you won’t have to spend time doing it yourself.
The concept sounds good, but there are potential pitfalls.
Social media is supposed to be social. The communication between people in your network is the engine that drives the interaction of your network. Being able to have that one-on-one dialogue at the beginning stage of your page is critical because you really get to know your customers.
A large part of being involved in creating your network is learning how your connections communicate with one another. Learning their lingo allows you to talk with them — not to them.
But what happens when your connections begin to disconnect?
Pages lose “connections” all the time for various reasons. If you’ve never spent the time trying to get recruit connections, then you’re not going to know how to replace the ones lost.
Ultimately, what are the consequences of paying for connections? What if the turnover rate proves you wasted your money because you could never establish a real connection with your customers?
A service like this works for companies who are more interested in quantity than quality.
Whether you’re trying to increase your following on Twitter, connections on Facebook or subscribers on YouTube, you want to know who is in your network, what they talk about, and what their “social reputation” is.
Including the purchase of a few thousand “connections” in your social media marketing plan may be an easy way to spread your message, but that page will have to be managed after the initial launch.
If you only saw your connections as demographics in the beginning, how will you value and interact with them once they are brought to your page?
