Showing posts with label Fake Followers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fake Followers. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Fake Followers & Social Media Hype?


5 reasons to stop posting hype on social media..

Customers are wising up to the over-exaggerated lifestyles they see online.



I'm sure you've seen the fancy cars, houses and wads of cash that social media influencers love to flaunt. In hopes of attracting fans, these influencers like to use hype and fake followers, and for a long time it helped bring in sucker customers.

As social media use has risen, I'm not surprised that reports show a growing trend among millennials trust influencers less and less. The hype, bragging and self-aggrandizing make it hard for any of us to believe it's authentic. While there's no harm in a little bragging, Harvard Business Review reports that too much of it or the wrong type of bragging can hurt your chances of getting a job, being trusted or being liked by strangers.

It's time for entrepreneurs and business owners to stop posting hype -- and instead get real with us.

If you're wondering why boasting on social hurts you and your brand, here are five reasons..



1. Hype is hard to keep up with.

After a while the the grandiosity becomes too much, and you have to lie to keep the hype sounding great. And as you already know, one lie can quickly snowball into more lies... and then it's not just one lie you've told but many.

Many people have used hype to help sell their courses -- and in turn have become widely known for being scammers, con artists and frauds. As much as I love money, I know that my reputation is everything and I'd prefer to stay away from the hype, verging on lying or embellishing and instead treating my fans with authenticity and honesty.



2. Post too much hype and you will be hard to trust.

One of the quintessential tales of hyping and bragging gone wrong is in the story of formerly iconic actor Charlie Sheen. After going on a tirade of blowing up his value by posting online about how he was #winning, Sheen became a laughingstock in Hollywood and across the world.

While Sheen is one of the more memorable culprits of over-using hype, he's not alone. I'm sure if you take a moment you'll easily think of someone in your social media feeds who you got tired of seeing brag and hype themselves up. And in the end, you turned off their notifications and decided you'd never do business with them.



3. Too much hype can ruin your reputation.

Reputation is everything, and someone who constantly brags is annoying. The problem with bragging and posting hype online is simple -- we overestimate its positive impact while underestimating its adverse effects on our brand and appearance.

I've been a victim of trusting hype -- and it cost me $12,000. Now I know, don't trust the hype. If it's too good to be true, it likely is. That was a hard-learned lesson. When I've gone back to check on the guy who sold me shiny objects I notice he doesn't have many fans and he's had a long streak of failed business relationships. His reputation isn't holding up. Initially, the hype he created helped dupe people like me, but now it's hard for him to stay in business.

At first, the hype is like good clickbait -- it gets people curious, but once they find out it's not real they'll stop paying attention.



4. If the hype is the norm, your excellent stuff won't stand out.

Not long ago, there was a big boxing match-up between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor. It was hailed as a super fight, a boxing legend versus a renowned mixed martial artist.

As a big sports fan, I knew it was all hype. Large press conferences, commercials, social media and every kind of advertising tool was used to sell it. The fight brought in millions of dollars -- but only because it wasn't the norm. If match-ups like the McGregor and Mayweather were normal and the press tours and advertising for it were typical, people would tune out.

The same goes for your business -- if hype and bragging is the norm, it will be hard for your "new and best" to stand out because you've been crying wolf too much. So, if you must use some hype and some bragging, do it sparingly and it won't ruin your reputation or be dull and boring because it'll be novel and different when you do use it.



5. Who you are online is what people will expect in person.

Just a few years ago I got serious about this online thing. In one year, I amassed a good-sized following, brought in countless clients and was asked to speak at events around the country.

Each time I spoke, I met more and more people who I had watched online. On many occasions, I was surprised by people -- sometimes in a good way and others in a bad way. In some cases, people who I didn't like online were cool people offline and vice versa.



In the end, I realized I wanted to be as close as possible to my offline self while I'm online and whenever I'm in the media. By doing that, I'll have fewer surprises and it'll assure I don't create some image that later I'm expected to be but doesn't match up with my internal ethics.

As an entrepreneur or business owner, I advise you to do the same. Do as the famous Oracle of Delphi advised Socrates and "know thyself." Be true to yourself when you're online and when you're offline. Being authentic, real and genuine will guarantee you'll never have to live up to some facade or get caught up in telling lies.

Guest Authored By Luis Congdon. Luis is CEO of Thriving Launch, a consulting company that teaches individuals and companies how to use digital marketing to increase profits. He and his partner co-host the Thriving Launch Podcast. Follow Luis on Twitter.





"If people buy from people that they like, know and trust -- it's crucial you start being transparent online, tone down the hype and instead focus on serving and helping your fans.." -LuisCongdon


    • Post Crafted By:
      Fred Hansen Br@nd Alchemist at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

    Tuesday, October 17, 2017

    Blockchain - The Next Social Media Revolution?


    Social platforms have exploded in popularity over the past decade and are now a cornerstone in our daily interactions.

    People around the globe use these networks to share information with each other and mutually create value..

    That's the theory, anyway. Many social networks are plagued by trolls, fake news that spreads like wildfire, and antisocial interactions between users.

    Currently, the main objective of social media providers is to attract more users to their platform. According to Metcalfe's law, the value of a social platform is proportional to the square of the number of users contributing to it.

    However, this takes the focus away from the most important aspect of a social platform: building a healthy community that actively produces high-quality content.



    Modern Social Platforms Are Broken

    There is currently no focus on ensuring the quality of user-generated content shared on today's social platforms. Lack of regulation results in a marked decrease in quality content over time. This is to be expected since there is no clear way to control the quality of content in a centralized architecture once a large number of users are active. The situation is akin to a city or a country with no law-enforcement agencies.

    As an example, take fake news posted on social media that has been known to cause social discord, may have influenced election results, and even may result in rioting. Cyber-bullying is a major cause of concern, especially on platforms like Twitter. Politicians often use paid trolls to bully their political opponents.

    Some of the most common misuses of social media platforms are: spreading fake news, posting fake pictures and doctored videos to harm someone's reputation, harassment through paid trolls, posting abusive posts, creating fake accounts and posting fake reviews.

    This is by no means an exhaustive list. It's about time social network providers start paying serious attention to these problems.



    Social Media Companies Should Be Worried

    Abusive and antisocial interactions can lead to a mass exodus of users, the most valuable asset of any social media company. This can have catastrophic consequences if it's not addressed immediately. Social networks have proven to be highly efficient mediums through which cyberattacks can be performed. This is usually done by the publication and promotion of posts with malicious scripts or links.

    Many social media companies have been called out for outright content manipulation to attract more advertising revenue. The most notorious example of this is social media rating site "Yelp." Some small business owners claim that this platform is purposely manipulating reviews to generate more revenue from ads. This claim has even been brought to court.

    Social media firms urgently need to realize that we live in an era where the value of a network is not only determined by the number of active users, but also by the quality and trustworthiness of the produced content. According to data scientist Professor Jeff Salz:

    "Data quality is a subset of the larger challenge of ensuring that the results of the analysis are accurate or described in an accurate way."



    Some social media companies have started taking corrective action.

    For instance, Twitter has introduced new privacy features on its platform to help users fight spam and abuse. However, it's important to note that the line between freedom of speech and social media misuse is often blurry.

    Social media provides an open and distributed platform where users can freely express themselves - at least to a certain degree. However, users of today's social networks have no incentive to provide quality content, since they don't benefit from it in any way. There is no reward for providing useful content and there is no penalty for being abusive. This is by far the biggest issue with existing social media platforms.

    Blockchain Might Be The Answer

    The Blockchain is a natural solution to the challenges faced by social networks today, since it provides a decentralized and trusted framework. There is no need to impose any external regulation since it is inherently self-regulatory. It is a peer-to-peer distributed network in which all digital events are recorded in a public ledger through a consensus of the majority of participants.



    Three important characteristics of Blockchain are: immutability, provenance and distributed consensus.

    The Blockchain is essentially a distributed database in which all records are cryptographically linked to each other. It is not possible to change a record without changing all subsequent records. Additionally, all entries are digitally signed and thus the source of each digital event is public.

    The next big question is what assets of a social network need to be cryptographically protected. A possible answer is all user-generated content; this includes but is not limited to posts, comments, reviews, photos, and videos. However, the most important asset is social reputation. This is an area in which today's social networks are horribly failing. An example is the practice of purchasing fake followers on social networks like Twitter. This has proven to be a simple yet highly effective strategy to fraudulently boost one's online reputation.

    There are three main ways to ensure the quality of social media content: peer review, social cryptocurrency and recording of events on the Blockchain.



    Peer review can be an effective tool to self-regulate behavior in a social network.

    One good example is LinkedIn. People who post on that platform are usually quite reasonable, since it is important for them to maintain a good professional reputation. Peer reviews could be used to perform social ratings of a network's participants. This data could then be made available to smart contracts, which would use it to rate users. Other users would have the option to automatically block users below a certain "rating."

    Social reputation can also be used to provide financial incentives. A public Blockchain like Ethereum's can be used to financially reward social network participants for their contributions. This is a radically different approach to existing models, in which social media firms are the sole beneficiaries of user-generated content. In this model, a portion of the ad revenue is shared with the users for creating quality content.

    According to Gaurang Torvekar, CTO & Co-founder at Indorse, pairing the Ethereum Blockchain with other emerging technologies like payment channels and IPFS will lead to the next social media revolution."



    Gaurang Adds: "Combining the Ethereum Blockchain with payment channels opens up a gamut of features and autonomous abilities, aligned with financial incentives.

    Smart contracts paired with payment channels provide the computation and logic layer upon which the core engine of such a platform can be built."

    Blockchain also makes it possible to maintain an indelible record of all digital events in a social media environment. This implies that a user can't simply delete an inappropriate post once he has published it. Other users will always be able to trace a post to a certain user.

    Guest Authored By Sanjeev Verma. Sanjeev graduated from University of Toronto with a doctorate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Since then he had 18 years’ research experience working in Fortune 500 organizations such as Nokia and Samsung on variety of projects. He has made several contributions towards the development of many industry security standard specifications. He has 12 granted and eight pending US patents. Follow Sanjeev on Twitter.




    Into The Future - Blockchain-based social networks have seen a massive jump in popularity in the past months.

    A number of very successful ICO's have already been launched in this space. But only significant user adoption and time will decide whether they (or others) will develop into the Blockchain-based social media platforms we all want and deserve.." -Sanjeev Verma

      • Authored by:
        Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

      Tuesday, October 3, 2017

      Do Social Media Cheaters Prosper?


      I remember watching Lance Armstrong storm up a mountain during Stage 13 of the 2003 Tour de France only to get his handlebar caught on a spectator’s jacket and flip over..

      He untangled himself from the wreck, got back on his bike and ascended that mountain at a pace that seemed out of this world — and it turned out it was..



      With nearly 3 billion social media users worldwide – growing at an astonishing rate of more than one million per day – social media influencers have a large megaphone for impacting the world.

      The top 10 most followed celebrities on Instagram — including Selena Gomez, Beyonce and Cristiano Ronaldo – collectively amass an estimated 954 million followers. That kind of power brings enormous responsibility.

      Unfortunately, some folks on social networks have started to game the system for profit, primarily by buying fake accounts. An influencer can easily buy up to 100,000 more followers for a few hundred dollars on Instaboostgram, a small price to pay to significantly increase one’s rate and reel in premium brand sponsors.

      With influencer marketing steadily becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, the temptation to cheat is real. It offers entirely new income streams with attractive global brands and lets young entrepreneurs raise their profiles on the world’s largest stage.



      But the fallout is already tangible.

      According to a study of millions of Instagram accounts conducted by my company, Fohr Card, nearly 10 percent of influencers buy followers to inflate their numbers, meaning nearly $80 million could already be wasted in brand dollars this year. If what these early warning signs show is left unchecked, deceptive practices could ruin social media’s promise of becoming a respected and authentic brand activation channel.

      No one likes being duped. When the US Anti-Doping Agency published 1,000 pages of damning evidence against Lance Armstrong in 2012, the athlete lost eight sponsors in one day -- including Nike, his longest supporter since 1996.

      A recent study reported that as much as 20 percent of total digital ad spend was wasted last year. So advertisers heavily consider follower count as the best gauge for reach. But solely relying on this metric is risky without proper policing, and no one wants to be the brand that partners with a Lance Armstrong.

      Luckily, our industry can self-regulate as more sophisticated technologies emerge to tackle tougher problems. By taking on a fervent commitment to preserving influencers’ integrity, we put ourselves in a prime position to rid the category of bad actors before it’s too late. Left unchecked, brands could begin to lose trust in influencers and potentially leave influencer marketing as an engagement channel and allocate their dollars elsewhere.



      Here are a few additional solutions:

      Raise The Bar

      A commitment to authenticity is the first step to fighting fraud. It’s time to weed out the cheats and prop up the real stars who have organically built solid followings over the years through hard work and high-quality content.

      The practice of buying fake followers needs to be condemned and stopped by brands, influencers and the agencies that service them.

      It’s imperative to raise public awareness of deceptive practices now so that stakeholders across the ecosystem know what to look out for and can incrementally address the issues. Dialogue around inauthentic accounts hasn’t gone mainstream but I see it becoming a robust topic in op-eds and conference panels in the future.

      Guest Authored By James Nord. James is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fohr Card, an Influencer Marketing Platform that connects Brands and Influencers. Follow James on Twitter.




      The practice of buying fake followers needs to be condemned and stopped by brands, influencers and the agencies that service them.

      It’s imperative to raise public awareness of deceptive practices now so that stakeholders across the ecosystem know what to look out for and can incrementally address the issues.

      Dialogue around inauthentic accounts hasn’t gone mainstream but I see it becoming a robust topic in op-eds and conference panels in the future.."

        • Authored by:
          Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)