A new article at the New Republic caught my eye this morning. It is about Facebook (and other social media) click-farming.
I encourage everyone to read the entire article. Yes, it will require some time and attention, but I found it very informative.
For those without the time, or inclination to read it, here are some of my takeaways:
- Facebook Like Farms are real business. The one in the article discussed is as noted, more a ‘start-up’ type business than the old spam-factories of days mostly gone by.
- Paying Facebook to boost your reach can be dangerous and destructive to your marketing efforts. One case study explains how a music company basically destroyed their accounts usability by paying for increased traffic from Facebook itself.
- Facebook plans to further dilute organic exposure of posts, specifically from business pages. Currently that organic exposure is approximately 6%; unless you pay Facebook for more. But that comes with it’s own pitfalls.
- Marketing on Facebook is going to become more and more difficult for small business to effectively use Facebook to market and grew community. This gives me serious pause to a current initiative that is requiring significant development time in an attempt to integrate with Facebook.