Why the market of zombie powder exists

Despite the idea of buying zombie powder, despite countless social marketing articles telling you over and over again, the quality of your fans is more important than the number of fans, it's better to focus on how many people interact with your brand. But the fact is that, whether it's Twitter abroad or domestic microblogs, buying and selling fans has become an industry, and occasionally you can see the tiny boga of how much a fan has written on the head that you're paying attention to or sending you some spam comments.

A British company that specializes in and exposes fake fans has recently claimed that many celebrity Twitter fans are mostly zombie powders. It is said that 70% of Obama's 19 million Twitter followers are "zombie powder".

Zombie powder In the vast majority of people's eyes a bit rat smack feeling, but it seems that since the Twitter, micro-bo, zombie powder like ghosts can not disperse, this is why? Recently read a foreign author Lorenzo Gonzalez An article, think he said a few points is still quite interesting. He believes that the main reasons for people to buy fans are as follows:

#1 Gain fame and authority

Social media, like institutions of higher learning, has unique value in building awareness. Having tens of thousands of fans on Twitter creates an "impression" in the public mind that you are popular, respected, and worthy of listening. And so on, your influence on the Web will enhance your social status in real life, make your personal website more advertising revenue, and some brands will give you some product trials to get the effect of Word-of-mouth marketing.

#2 get more Real fans

As with the Matthew Effect, an account with a lot of fans is more likely to get more attention than an account with few fans. If a person's Twitter profile matches your interest and looks more influential from the number of fans, will you try to focus on him/her?

#3 expand the scope of content dissemination

When your followers reach a certain range (which is true and false), you have the equivalent of gaining access to the audience. The content will be more widely shared and more exposed. Moreover, the wider the audience, the greater the likelihood that the content you produce will be spread by opinion leaders in the community.

After reading Lorenzo Gonzalez's article, there are several feelings.

1. Whether you admit it or not, social media is the trend.

How to use social media to promote the popularity of individual or brand is a topic that many people pay more and more attention to. Using the platform is conducive to enhancing the influence of individuals and brands, thereby bringing with it a multiplier value and tangible benefits.

2. The number of fans, related to the interests.

At present, the number of fans whether in the brand's social marketing KPI assessment, or in relation to the brand impact of the rankings, all occupy a large weight. The number of fans means that the ranking is more than the front, can gain more benefits. Some micro-blog marketing companies, through the purchase, operating a huge number of fans large grassroots, the release, forwarding brand information to obtain profits.

3 vanity is the eternal humanity.

The fundamental reason some people buy their fans is that they want to look more popular and more famous. So there is an interesting phenomenon, some people scold the "zombie powder" hateful, while very concerned about the number of fans. When the fans count out, the heart is sad or a micro-blog complained, "Ah, why do you lose fans?" Therefore, how to meet the user's vanity, so that users have to show off and happy to show off, is a community to consider one of the important issues. For example, one day received a mail from TripAdvisor, told me to write a review of how many people to help, at that time, the heart of the flattered also dedicated micro Bo to praise some. This corresponds to a bad case is the level of a site settings, in addition to let users feel that they have wasted so long time on this site, there is no sense of honor, not to mention show to fans to see.

The number of 4 fans is a reference value, but not all.

The important premise of Lorenzo Gonzalez's article about the reason for buying fans is that the individual or the brand already has certain famous or very famous, then buys "the corpse powder" is "the icing on the cake", if a person or the brand unknown, publishes the content also is worthless, does not have the real person and he interacts, So even with a lot of zombie powder, is still an influential account. So the number of fans needs to be the name of the account owner, the value of the account content combined to measure.

5 The impact of community users needs to have a more reasonable measure.

Recently focused on a foreign web site, Klout, which helps to calculate the overall impact of user accounts on social networking sites by directing users to more than 10 social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and shows trends over three months. This site is very helpful for brands to measure their influence and find valuable users. At present, although there are also research influential media companies, Sina Weibo's own data platform will also calculate the user's influence index, but did not really play its role. In my opinion, the influence index, in addition to the fans as a measure of the influence of a person or brand with whom he is concerned, who forwards comments about him, his influence on other people's consumption behavior, he and others are closely related to the frequency of interaction, and this influence can eventually translate into tangible benefits, Become a more important indicator than the number of fans, so as to achieve the user, brand, social networking site three win.