You are in an environment, where one side all the experienced channels already present and working with well lead customer base as well has a good overview online. The problem of competing with traditional channels has caused many content creators and brands to use fake metrics as a tactical mechanism to balance the field. These fake metrics have offered a workaround to increasing brand visibility, and expansions with Fake likes, views, comments, and follower counts which means that relatively newer or smaller players could compete better as they can artificially inflate these.
While there is no denial that these tactics are controversial, the use of fake metrics in digital marketing has surged as a silent widespread tactic to create a fake perception of success and credibility. In 2020, over 40% of social media influencers confessed to employing some artifical engagement to one up the competition in a saturated market. Although this approach may have been dubious, it resulted in a lot of immediate benefits that paved the way for many popular channels.
Why fake metrics are so alluring in competitive markets
Compared to the old days of broadcast television, even now established channel usually dominates; they have top audience stickiness, best content recommends and a huge viewer attention. Many of these things are done over years, with sustained commitment applied to the major social media strategies. Catching up with these players can seem like an impossible task for new brands or channels, who may not have years to build momentum organically.
Fake Metrics: This is when they churn out great numbers for various areas, but they are not truly accurate. Smaller brands and content creators can make their posts to look more popular by faking views, likes and shares. Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, for example have algorithms that favor content that is being well-engaged with which pumps up these posts to a larger audience. In 2021, the YouTube algorithm surfaced content that had better engagement metrics 50% MORE of the time — so it’s important for new channels to generate those numbers fast.
Why Fake Metrics Play a Role in Generating Brand Visibility
In a competitive market, the visibility of your brand is paramount! Without visibility, its tough for new channels to be in the ranks on a sea of established competitors; and even if you have great content, no one will know it. Semi-solutions: Fake metricsWhen a post is fake news or low-quality, there isn’t any cost of producing more detailed information as long as the person read it already and thus has some desire to see better content in place of awful content.
A study in 2020 found Instagram accounts with purchased likes and followers were 40 times more likely to be on the Explore page, or the trending section of YouTube. All of that added visibility made more people find the content in question, which resulted immediately in higher organic traffic from being discovered. Fake metrics out the audience perception and allowed new channels to compete with real followers better, The New Zealand Herald reported.
- If you want to share this information, here is an infographic that illustrates the effect of fake metrics on visibility.
- ! Fake Metrics Visibility(Graph: Fake-metrics- Impact on Content visibility)
- Channels experienced a 40% boost in visibility within the first three months (Channels that used fake metrics)
- Videos supplied with fake views: 14.3% higher recommendation probability
- This chart showed how bogus metrics overtly inflated impressions, enabling start-up channels to compete with giant players.
When deploying artificial metrics to gain a temporary competitive edgegetResource constraints are no longer the focal point when exploiting artificial organizational conflict, actions needed to sustain such false economy for extended periods that could span over months or years is merely diverted to administrative helms.
To win the race (gain a competitive edge) many brands utilized unrealistic metrics called artificial metrics to show scale quickly. Having these metrics in place helped channels quickly gain credibility; the more likes, views and followers a brand had, the better potential viewers (and other collaborators) would gauge its success. Influencer marketing was very much a handed-down victim of this in days of yore… marketers sought out influencers displaying high engagement whether that engagement was authentic or just inflated made no real difference to the brand.
Though, in 2021 over 60% of brands acknowledged that they were prioritizing follower count and engagement metrics the most when deciding on which influencers to work with. This metric dependency gave rise to a trend where influencers could pad their stats, making themselves more appealing to brands who were willing to pay top dollar for sponsored posts. Fake metrics: The race in the influencer space is more competitive, hence fake metrics provided a way for some to shortcut their way into partnerships for increased money.
The Drawback: Reputation Management and Audience Retention
[Fake metrics] had immediate advantages, but they were fraught with long-term risks to your reputation and your stay/ remain / linger duration. Although fake numbers could paint a rose-tinted picture that all was well, they did nothing to foster genuine viewer engagement. If users were interacting with content and understanding that the interaction was not authentic, then it could diminish the credibility of the channel.
The more recent 2020 survey also found that 45% of consumers would lose trust in the brand if they found out the levels are fake and way too inflated using unfair competitive methods. Now, this culture of trust might just be slipping and the implications could last a long time, especially on channels that built their ability to deliver growth off true relationships with its users.
In Instagram and YouTube, more stringent measures were implemented to counter fake engagement; as there are routine purging of inauthentic followers who have no real engagement with your photos/videos or artificially inflated likes and views. In 2021, YouTube purged over 2 million fake accounts from their platform, causing many of the influencers who leaned heavily on smokes and mirrors to see drops in engagement.
- Infographic: Consumer Trust and Fake Metrics
- ! Read Pie Chart: Consumer Trust and Fake Metrics
- 45% of consumers said they had lost trust in brands based on fake measures.
- 30% of influencers saw a decrease in engagement when fake followers and likes were removed from platforms.
The produce graph below emphasizes the capacity for doing trust-breakage in using Phoney Metrics, rather than building an audience based on faux-engagement.
Growth Strategies and Long-Term Success.
Although fake metrics could generate an appropriately-sized burst of exposure, enough to help new channels stay at par performance-wise with long-time streamers, they were not the way forward for true growth. The channels that achieved growth leveraged artificial metrics in conjunction with real content promotion and connection to the audience. Channels can use fake metrics as a temporary tactic to seed the initial traction but slowly build a (real) following that it engages consistently and is loyal.
The performance in general and the longevity of success after an initial hit strongly indicated that high quality content was much less likely to be a fluke and were more indicative of growth strategies than simply great ways to promote. May 5, 2021: A report by Hootsuite in 2021, said that channels only using artificial means to grow their audience lost around 30% of engagement within six months, while accounts with organic followers grew retention rates higher by about 20%.
While fake metrics might give them the initial market advantage, at the end of the day, they had to be deployed cautiously, and more importantly strategically in order to steer clear of the dangers of an artificial engagement. With an emphasis on a genuine connection with their viewers and on providing good content regularly, channels could still be competitive while keeping their integrity and reputation.
Level Up Fake Metrics with Real Engagement
The secret to competing against the big channels was finding that sweet spot between fake metrics, and real engagement. Though, buying fake likes, views and followers may get your channel in to temporarily, true growth came from actual engagement and viewers watching the video all the way through. Channels that depended too much on fake metrics ran the risk of losing their audience and jeopardizing their public SEO presence in the long term.
By last year 2021, 30% of brands initially boosting visibility with vanity’s focus eventually moved to then propelling their campaigns via organic engagement and reputation management (for sustained efficacy). In doing so, they did not lose the virtues of their early-stage growth but also built the basis for the next level of expansion.