Fake engagements skew our social data, which makes it far harder for us to work out which posts are genuinely getting the best reaction from our legitimate followers. We would much rather have a modest number of great genuine engagements with our content than such a large number of fake ones. Comments like these do nothing in terms of enhancing our representation or stimulating positive dialogue on our channels.
“Nice thanks a lot really love,” says ‘I Love Making Money With The Internet’. “Anything about this is really important,” says ‘Agile Social Media Marketing Warriors’. For one thing, they clearly are not real comments. In fact, fake social engagements are a real thorn in our side. On the surface, this might seem like a good thing for us – who could complain about all those easy-earned likes and comments? Well, it’s actually very hard for us to tell what we’re getting right and what we’re getting wrong in our social media strategy – because most of the likes and comments on this and many of our other posts can be traced back to social media spambots. Look at all those engagements! What are we getting so spectacularly right?
Here’s a post on Target Internet’s Facebook page… What exactly are social media spam bots, who is behind them, and why are they used to create fake engagements on social content? Let’s get to the bottom of this strange online phenomenon.