Purchasing social media signals like retweets and likes usually gets a bad rap in the news, as well as from people in the marketing industry. Most of the negativity is due to ignorance. However, just because they tell you not to do it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

The legality of buying these services is another thing that often comes into question, especially for those who don’t know much about the subject. In reality, buying retweets or likes isn’t breaking any rule, much less a law. At most, it violates Twitter’s TOS, but even that won’t risk your account.

You’d be surprised at how many successful online marketers have seen huge increases in legitimate social media traffic as a direct result of buying retweets and likes. The fact is, you’ve probably never noticed because bought engagements are the most effective when they’re the most realistic.

The Retweet Test

Think about retweets and likes in a social way through a little experiment. We’ll to take two tweets on the same subject, and see which one you’d be more likely to retweet to your followers:

You would probably retweetShower Thoughts, simply because it has a significantly higher number of retweets and likes. Think about it – the seemingly more popular Shower Thoughts tweet has more engagement, so it’ll probably be popular among your followers. You can’t really deny that the 565 retweets and 1.1K likes drew your attention, and you’d probably be willing to make the same bet with your followers, too.

The Social Proof Factor

Social proof, or the idea that decisions made by others in society affect the way you make decisions, is the scientific reasoning why higher social metrics numbers work.

For example, think about how traffic often moves faster than the legal speed limit. Regardless of your normal driving speed, you’ve probably been in this situation and simply gone along with the traffic. Most people do this simply to adapt to what is going on around them, and would be going at a completely different speed if they were driving on the road alone.

The same concept is true with the retweet test: people are naturally inclined to retweet something with a large amount of retweets and likes. They do it to adapt to what others are doing, and is the basis to why buying retweets and likes is a successful marketing strategy.

If you’ve ever wondered why a really great tweet can sit at just 4 or 5 retweets and likes while others take off into the thousands and tens of thousands, it’s because the great tweet had no initial growth. Content can only go so far without some sort of push into the top results for popular hashtags, and this push doesn’t always come naturally. However, once the push has been made, you can let social proof take its course.

When To Use Retweet Services

If you’re looking for a list of appropriate times to use Twitter retweet and likes services, well, it’s really long – so we’ll do a short summary: pretty much all of the time. As long as you’re purchasing these retweets and likes from a reputable vendor who isn’t going to jeopardize your account, there is not a time where they wouldn’t be an effective part of a marketing strategy.

These extra retweets and likes will help squeeze out every possible retweet and like you can get from your audience, as well as your extended audience. It’s about social proof and its effect on social media. And since it works, there’s no reason to think it would stop working if you continued to use it on a regular basis.

Keep purchased engagements consistent, and you’ll add to the illusion of having a much larger following than you really do (this is how you manipulate social proof). If you’ve only got one or two tweets that have a bunch of retweets and likes, while the rest have considerably smaller amounts, people will be less likely to feel inclined to do the same on any of your other tweets. If budget is an issue, try to evenly distribute the likes, but make sure you allocate some money for spontaneous retweets.

Crucial times to use these services

There are a handful of times where you may want to consider doubling down on your retweet and likes services, as they can help you recover from dire situations. Some examples would be when you’re trying to push traffic to a brand new product or press release, climbing to the top of a current trend or to jumpstart a new hashtag.

One of the most useful times to take advantage of retweet and likes services is right after you’ve just received some bad press that is taking a serious toll on your reputation. You can use these services to boost your apology tweets and make it seem as though most people are on your side of whatever is going on. Yet again, social proof will take over and cause others to sympathize with you because they see that others are doing it.

Pushing a new product is another time that is ideal for buying a bunch of social media signals. If people see a large amount of people are endorsing the product, they’ll be more inclined to at least share the product if they’re interested in it – or better yet, they’ll make a purchase.

A quick re-cap

Hopefully we’ve cleared up some of the common misconceptions about buying Twitter likes, retweets, and other engagements. Although there are some valid points about how it can be a bad idea to buy these services, we’ve shown how they can easily be negated with a bit of knowledge and caution.

Retweets and likes can be valuable to your brand, regardless of whether they’re from a real or bought audience. The nice thing about any type advertising power is that it can easily be magnified with the right twist.

If you aren’t seeing the organic results you had hoped for, keep trying different strategies and vendors to see what works best. Buying retweets and likes will certainly help, but remember: without good content to promote, no amount of bought engagements will help your online brand grow.