By Adam Ward 
When I was in high school, my neighbor’s dad paid one of my friends to take her to a school dance. I always wondered whether she knew what her dad had done, and if so, whether she enjoyed the date less because of it. They didn’t go on a second date, and I’ve maintained that you can’t genuinely pay for people to like you. Apparently, the world of social media is proving me wrong.
Fast forward 20 years from my high-school days. Businesses are now trying to figure out how to capitalize on social media. Companies large and small are tripping all over each other trying to get Twitter followers or to get people to “like” them on Facebook. But what is interesting is how businesses are paying for those.
Last week I attended a Utah Technology Council forum where Randy Scott of SnappConner PR showed us a statistic that 75 percent of all Facebook “likes” are a result of paid ads.
And then there are the consultants. In June I attended the Internet Retailer show in San Diego. There was booth after booth of new businesses (some a few months old) that were talking about how, for a fee, they could get people to “like” us on Facebook. It struck me as funny that there were grown people in business attire talking about paying to get people to like you; but they were completely serious. Such is the state of business in the social world. They even had a new word for it: Social Commerce (well, maybe not so new, since it has been attributed to Yahoo! coining it in 2005).
Between the ads, the consultants and the promotions (e.g. “If you get 100 of your Facebook friends to like us, we’ll give you a free iPod Nano!”), it makes you wonder whether people actually are fans of a particular business, or they are just willingly giving away part of their social credibility in hopes of landing some swag.
I’m not saying companies shouldn’t have followers or fans. But given a choice between a thousand fake fans and a hundred actual customers, I’d go with the later. Same as in high school: I’d rather go to the dance with someone who genuinely wants to be there with me.
