You’re a business owner and you want to make a big impact in social media. You want that impact as soon as possible and not waste any time building an online reputation. Maybe you have a social media team at the ready to push and pull at your will. You still want to find an easier way to get your product out to the public and let your presence be known to the online communities.

There is an easier way. But is it a better way? I’ll let you decide.

Click farms. Where you pay a price and can essentially have shares, likes and followers all manufactured to your liking. There are companies out there making a quick buck off of aspiring companies and established corporations alike. For example, here are some companies and their service prices:

BuyPlusFollowers: 250 Google+ shares for $12.95

InstagramEngine: 1,000 Instagram followers for $12

AuthenticHits: 1,000 SoundCloud plays for $9

So for a pretty reasonable price you can make your social media page seem quite popular. There are plenty of more services out there from various companies, many of which have their hand in almost every popular social media platform available. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, SoundCloud and even YouTube. It brings to question the integrity of many companies who have been involved with paying click farms and brings up a valid concern. Is paying for click farms a good business decision?

YouTube reportedly wiped away billions of music video views in a way to eliminate the click farming effect. Facebook has reported that 14 million of their 1.2 billion users are fake accounts used solely for click farming purposes. The sales of fake Twitter followers have garnered an estimated $360 million. This is quite a lucrative and booming business on the click farmers side of things, but can get to be a bit expensive for the buyers of click farming services. And we still haven’t figured out if this is even a good business model. Is paying for these services going to help out in the long run (is there an echo in here)?

Put yourself in the consumers mind. If you came across Company X’s Facebook page and saw it had a few million likes, you may take it at face value and like their page assuming it must be worth the like due to the vast amount before you. Then you come across Company Y’s Facebook page and there are only about 5k likes. Both Company X and Y are reputable companies that you are interested in, but would you be as fast to like Company Y’s page versus Company X’s? Chances are you would be quick to like X but that doesn’t mean Y won’t get it’s fair share of likes. Garnering authentic shares and likes make social media analysis much easier for companies. It gives you less variables to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of your business. It may take longer to get your likes and shares to grow but it won’t cost anything extra and gives you better analytic data.

While I don’t believe indulging in click farms will get you more likes and shares in the long run, in the short run it does serve a purpose. It can promote real authentic impressions and clicks. But for how long will that last? YouTube docks views, Facebook eradicates fake accounts and Google is acting on both YouTube and Google+ click farming activities. In the long run seems like businesses are paying for shares, likes and follows that could have been obtained through a bit of time and work. Now they paid for this service which is being reversed or stopped completely through the platform admins. Is it a waste of money? Time will tell. I believe it is, but click farms are striving and it seems like they are only going to become more popular.

Let me know what you think about click farming in the comments below. If you liked this article go ahead and follow me on WordPress by clicking the button up and to the right. If you have a Twitter you can get updates there by clicking the handle below. As always, thanks for reading and don’t forget to check back in. I appreciate all of my views and they are all organic, no farming here 😉

@TysTake

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