Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound social media. I must say I am really thrilled to announce that my Dogpound twitter account is growing by leaps and bounds. I now have over 1,500 faithful pack members who receive the regular morning joke, and are able to follow the daily antics of their beloved dog Max and the adventures of his handsome Master – me. Now some of you could care less about my Twittering…you are not on Twitter or Instagram…or anything else. However, there are a number of you that do use these social media outlets and are a bit intrigued or even drawn to the fact that the Dogpound is trending so well; you might even be thinking right now about joining my Twitter pack.
Well, to be honest, there is no Tweeter account, but I did want to demonstrate the power and social magnetism that followers of Tweets generates in today’s modern society. For example…Hillary Clinton claims to have over 3.5 million followers…that is a lot of people, however, studies have shown that upward to two million of these accounts are fake. That is right, you can buy fake followers for Facebook or Twitter, and it does not cost that much.
I read an article where a guy had 2,600 followers, but he wanted to have more so he went on-line…found a site, paid $5 for 4,000 additional accounts, and presto the next day he had over 6,000 followers. Presto! So what is the big deal? Just someone beating their chest and inflating their ego? Run of the mill advertising?
It is not that way anymore. The number of followers is an instant magnet; it makes people think there must be something there to draw that many people to this account, and it also influences people to join because they want to be part of the “posse.” In addition many sites, like Google, Bing etc. will use these numbers to push you up in their search engine priority. Interesting enough you can even purchase followers for someone else’s accounts.
Assume you are a publisher and you want to promote a book…so you purchase followers for the writer hoping to draw interest to him which leads to more sales of his books. That is all well in good…advertising at its most digital level, “look at me,” “follow me,” “buy me,” however, there is a dirty underbelly to this magical way to increase your popularity. Let’s say you went to a store and were not happy with their service so you go to their Twitter or Facebook account and tell the world that you thought their service was slow or their food was cold. You are just one voice. However, what happens when more people join in agreeing with you; saying they have had similar experiences, or they will never go back there again. If you are new customer, were looking for a place to eat and see one negative comment, versus a dozen of good ones, it will probably not sway you to go to somewhere else. However, if the reverse is true, there are dozens of not so nice comments and then you will definitely go somewhere else. You trust the social media versus finding out first-hand if the restaurant is a decent place to eat or not.
As above, where you can purchase friends, there are people out there that can create various Facebook and Twitter accounts that appear to be from different individuals and even generate a variety of different comments all related to your type of complaint. As a warning, with the Presidential elections starting to heat up, you are going to see more and more of these social media programs. So be careful about the man/woman behind the curtain. Do not become one of the mindless masses that roll like a steel ball to the biggest magnet on the internet. A side-bar – just to show you how big this can get, the State Department recently was busted for using over $6 million of our hard earned tax dollars to generate fake Facebook friends to make itself look popular. “Oh look, we have over 100,000 likes from Iran. I guess they like us after all.”
That is all I have today. If you would want me to setup a Twitter account, go to my email and let me know. Otherwise, you will just have to be patient and wait for the weekly publication of the Dogpound. As always be good, do good, play safe, and remember popularity is just a number.
JR and Max
