"Your SMM services are not producing any results!"
"I paid the money, but there is no results from the promotion!"
"What? Paying for Social Media Marketing Again? We are able to select pictures by ourselves. "
If you've ever heard such objections or voiced them yourself, then most likely you have become a victim of black-hat SMM.
Black-hat SMM is a set of measures that contradict the rules and principles of social media marketing. They are used to manipulate strategically important indicators of a company's success on social media.
The “black” approach originates from the search engine optimization, when SEO specialists 10-15 years ago massively promoted sites to the TOP using dishonest methods, deceiving Internet users and search engines. Such SEO and SMM promotion has one thing in common - manipulation. To promote a group / page, fake accounts, cheats, and inaccurate information is used.
In order not to become a victim of fraud and not to harm your brand by black marketing on social networks, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the main signs of such a promotion.
Many SMM specialists, especially freelancers, sin by creating fake accounts in order to thus increase the number of promoted groups / pages. The first few bots are usually created with maximum efficiency: the user's photo is loaded, the place of residence is indicated in Amsterdam or somewhere in South America, friends are added, etc. When you go to such an account, it seems that this is a real person with their hobbies and social circle.
But over time, the SMM-person runs out of imagination and time, and fake accounts begin to be too unoriginal. Only the names of the actors whose photos are used for the avatars are different.
How to find the bots? It's very simple: if Hollywood stars began to subscribe to a group of a household appliance store in Chisinau, then this is the first bell for the presence of bots and a promoting that will not bring any results.
Some SMM specialists don't bother and just buy subscribers - this is the easiest and fastest way to grow an audience. They register on special exchanges or services, deposit money from the advertiser's budget and advertise the purchase of subscribers.
Remember that you can buy everything on the Internet: likes, reposts, comments. If under the next post you notice some unnatural increase in “Like” marks and heated discussions in the comments, check the accounts of these users. If they are clearly not from your region, and most of them have empty profiles, most likely such social activity is the result of cheating.
This is the dissemination of information that is inappropriate or uninteresting to other users. Here are the hallmarks of spam:
sending invitations to “join the group” indiscriminately;
adding users to the community without their permission;
comments with a link to your page or mentions of the promoted product on non-thematic sites;
using an excessive number of commercial # hashtags;
mass “tagging” users in the picture to draw attention to the post;
publishing only commercial offers (endless “buy”, “order”, etc.);
frequent writing messages to subscribers' feeds;
abuse of photographs that are very eye-catching, but not relevant (cats, children, etc.).
If you ban subscribers for objective criticism, do not answer questions, do not participate in discussions and ignore suggestions / wishes, then this will cause a wave of negativity that will spread at the speed of light.
An example of a company ignoring:
How to properly work with the users activity:
Social media was originally created for a two-way communication, not as an advertising space. Therefore, there must be a response (and adequate) from the company to the feedback.
If posts regularly appear on the page, but there are no likes, comments, it means that your SMM-specialist is doing a very weak job on social media or their content plan is not able to follow the set goals and promotion strategies.
As Sergey Druzhko says: "Lets Hypanem a bit?"
Hype is perhaps the easiest way to induce a person to dialogue and evoke a storm of emotions in the audience. “Hyping” can be done on anything: religion, the Khachaturian sisters, even at Notre Dame Cathedral. But the hype has one big drawback - it doesn't sell! In addition, this phenomenon is very short-lived, and as a result you can get a timeline strewn with stuff, memes that are not themed for your business, and other graphic and video trash.
Usually, giveaways on social networks happen as follows: a page announces a reward that Internet users can receive if certain conditions are met (subscription, like, repost, comment). A large number of people quickly join the activity, especially freeloaders, who, for the sake of a free portion of California rolls, will fulfill all your terrorist requirements. They will not leave alone, but taking with them their 120 "best" friends, without saying goodbye when you announce the winners.
In a global sense, giveaways are good, but if they are carried out often, then subscribers will get used to it and stop being active without any reward. This is a completely wrong way of promoting. In addition, the danger remains that here, too, an unscrupulous specialist can take advantage of markups (likes and reposts for money).
Activity for the sake of activity is one of the most meaningless things in business, but beginners and freelance marketers, who still don't really know what smm is, do not disdain this principle.
How do you know that an SMM manager is hired for a reason? Ask them about the goals of the promotion, what results have been achieved after a certain period. If there is no promotion strategy and systematic monitoring of the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, then your advertising budget is wasted.
This is an extremely wrong approach. You can find out if an SMM specialist is working well only if you evaluate their performance according to a number of metrics. If you don't see instant sales growth, it doesn't mean that you are betting on the “wrong” marketing tool.
Remember: first you work for the reputation, then the reputation works for you. This is exactly how it is on social media. This process is not quick, but without it, it is unlikely that it will be possible to increase sales through social networks.
This kind of social media marketing doesn't work because people are much smarter than many SMM specialists think. As soon as users begin to feel disdainful, see an abundance of advertisements in private messages, ignore opinions, leave stupid memes in on your page, they dramatically change the vector of their attitude towards the company.
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Another side effect of dishonest social media marketing is negatively affecting the ranking of the main website in search results:
Bots posting fake links lead to high bounce rates.
Low-quality content that doesn't fit the purpose of the page will reduce the average time on the site.
Email spam is a source of inappropriate traffic and a drop in conversion rates.
Spam comments on an entertaining post on an uncharacteristic page for this, annoy users and negatively impact the brand's reputation. If you also attach a link to the main resource, then you are guaranteed a negative impact on the behavioral ranking factors.
If you want to order a SMM promotion, that will really benefit your business, then thoroughly study the contractor before concluding a contract: ask for examples of work, cases, “google” reviews of other clients. If nothing is doubtfull, start collaborating. Do not forget to request a content plan to control the frequency and topic of publications.
In one of the following articles, we will tell you how white-hat SMM differs from the black one, and what you really need to do for an honest and effective social media marketing.
