Even in digital marketing, where it can feel like attention spans are getting shorter by the day, making an impact on your audience is still as important as ever for brands and content creators. As the need to garner attention on social media platforms ramped up over the years so did fake likes essentially as a tool for manipulating viewer retention, and audience engagement. While this is often seen as controversial, Fake likes actually had a large influence in the way that content was perceived and how it performed among other viewers.
Before, being sold fake likes in digital marketing was not something unexpected. It had long been used to drive early traction and improve a brand’s online visibility. Brands faked likes to create a positive initial impression, which in turn affected how content was consumed by viewers. Last year, social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and YouTube noted that impressions on posts showing more likes were 55% more likely to get organic engagement from actual users. This highlighted just how critical first impressions are nowadays when people are flooded with information.
Influence of Fake Likes on Viewer Retention
One of the most important metrics for a brand’s success on social media was viewer retention, or how long did a viewer watch before they clicked away. A study from 2021 found the average viewer intention to keep viewing a video or engaging with a post only within 10 seconds. Therefore, retention strategies relied enormously on the first appearance of a piece of content — no matter if it perceived or not as popular.
Fake Likes used to give the new views an illusion of Audience Attraction making the new viewers feel it is a content worth their time. A 2020 study by Social Media Examiner saw that even the viewer retention was 38% higher in content with more than 1,000 likes compared to content with less than 100 likes. This could be a strong example to demonstrate how first impressions can influence viewer loyalty and maximize the retention of viewers.
They allowed for artificial popularity through fake likes – wherein a brand could already show it had some kind of credibility before being interacted with by real users. Content with a lot of likes was seen by the audience, and they were more likely to spend their time watching or engaging as liked content is also assumed to be valuable or relevant. This was essentially playing with the psychology of social proof, where if something looked like it was popular then people were likely to trust it far more than if that popularity didn’t exist at all.
Infographic: How Fake Likes Affect Viewer Retention
- ! In this example, a graph viewer retention based on like count
- (For posts with 1k faux likes: viewer retention jumped by 38%)
- Videos with fake likes got 45% rise in organic lead response after first 24 hours.
- For example, this graph shows how fake likes impacted content performance, i.e. viewer retention and call-of-action engagement.
First Impressions and Audience]
The first thing people would see on social media were all largely engagement metrics—likes, comments, shares. In 2019, however, 71% of people were more likely to interact with content that had already received likes and comments, even if that engagement was rigged. This really drove home the impact fake likes can have on audience engagement, and how this can motivate viewers to interact with content.
C: The trick of fake likes was, they changed the perception of content performance. The thought presented here suggests that if a user interacted with a post, as long as it had hundreds of likes on it (not even thousands), then users were more likely to assume that content in the post itself was legitimate and something worth at least considering. This compounded into a feedback loop where fake engagement preceded genuine self expression, increasing both audience interactions and watch time.
Brands + influencers utilized real vs. fake likes to fuel their wider social media strategy Early on, they exacerbated the view counts for their engagement which was seen by social algorithms across the board and helped drive exposure. Increased visibility produced more organic engagement, because it attracted users to content that seemed popular. 2020, 60% of brands had a 20% organic engagement boost in the first month after using fake likes, according to one survey.
Fake Likes & Its Impact on Brand Perception & Viewer Loyalty
Besides just inflating engagement metrics, fake likes were essential in molding brand perception as well. This was a very competitive room – and in this new era of emerging brands, Audience Attraction is difficult without significant numbers. Fake likes Brands used fake likes in order to appear more popular and gather positively skewed followings. This helped build viewer loyalty (readers who would check out your stuff more willingly when they realized others were doing the same) and was especially critical in persuading users to follow along as a favourite show was featured, with some users eager to watch their responses aired.
A report by Hootsuite In 2021 found that 68% of consumers, which means it is quite crucial for a brand to get followed if has a better engagement rate. This number shed light on how fake likes is a way to try and give some legitimacy and credence to viewers. It was simple to turn a viewer into a follower as long as the brand seemed to have a big, lively community.
But, fake likes was going to get risky. Even though they might look like something that could boost brand perception, they could turn out to be far from at all, if discovered. 49% of consumers, however, would lose trust in a brand if they learned that the brand had bought artificial engagement to appear more popular (according to a 2020 survey). Consequently, shapes have had to configure their application of fake likes along with its authentic engagement tactics inorder maintain, “`reputation management“`.
Infographic: Consumer Perception of Fake Likes
- ! Consumer Perception Pie Chart of Fake Likes.
- When we asked consumers how they would feel if they found out a brand was using fake likes to promote their products, 49% of consumers said that would impact how much trusted in the brand.
- If engagement metrics are through the roof, 68% of consumers are more inclined to follow a brand whether they believe the engagement is genuine or bought and paid for.
- Technique: Pie This pie chart is used to present the dual impact of fake likes in relation to consumer perception, which rises between both values on the positive and negative side for this tactic.
Retention Strategies: The Era Of Fake Engagement
Brands started using a combination of described practices in order to get the most out of fake likes, while also not doing too bad when it came to viewer retention Though Artificial Popularity could get the ball rolling on engagement, it then became imperative to back this up with ongoing high quality content and real interactions… which in turn lead to Audience Retention. Brands that used fake likes, and did not provide anything of value were bound to lose their hard earned audience eventually.
In 2020, brands utilising both artificial engagement and real genuine engagement as strategies experienced 25% higher retention rates, discovered a study by Buffer (\[source\]) than Brands with only fake likes. This was a telling statistic that highlighted the importance of creating a strong content strategy with viewer value in mind and sustainability.
Brands also used marketing strategies like responding individually to comments, making content interactive and updating regularly to build familiarity with their audience. They helped to create a space where true viewers who meant something, and an actual chance at return[visits], could grow out of the initial success of fake likes.
In this digital marketing era, we could often see these first impression is the last impression and here Fake likes were playing a vital role in making Online Presence, multiplying Audience Engagements & even increase the Viewer Retention. That said, their win hinged on balancing calculated with organic methods to win over the hearts not only of viewers but to keep them there.