The Talent Industry is currently buzzing about bots and automation coming for our jobs thanks to the widespread alarmist articles filling our news feeds. But don’t worry – this isn’t one of those blog posts and we aren’t about to dive into the issues with those bots.
Oh no, the bots we are concerned with are the ones that strike in the busiest online marketplace of ideas – the Twittersphere. These bot accounts are skillfully disguised as real engaging followers, making them harder to detect with just a quick glance. For those of us who are unfamiliar with these types of fake Twitter account bots let’s break it down:
“On Twitter, bots are accounts that are run remotely by someone who automates the messages they send and activities they carry out. Some people pay to get bots to follow their account or to dilute chatter about controversial subjects.”
So for the low price of $14 you can gain 5,000 Twitter followers overnight. Doesn’t sound half bad to any Recruitment Marketer trying to grow their social candidate audience, right?
It sounds like you just bot into the ploy (pun intended). Low risk, cheap, social statistic builders that sound too good to be true almost always are. Check out these key reasons why you should resist the urge to buy bots when building your employer brand on Twitter:
I. Bots crush your credibility: Picture this – you are perusing a company’s Twitter profile and you glance at their follower count.
Wow, 34,000 followers? That’s impressive. But then you click around to get a better look at these following accounts. You quickly realize that the account profile pictures don’t exactly match up with the handles and that each “follower” has single digit follow counts. Don’t even start on the socially awkward bios and cryptic copies they are tweeting.
Congratulations my friend, you just found bots – now you are questioning every one of the 34,000 so called “followers” and the company itself.
Twitter users are smart – they can spot these bots and their fake tweets just by looking at basic profile information. Your potential candidate might see these quick fix Twitter bots as a direct reflection of your social recruitment marketing efforts and your company culture as a whole.
II. Twitter has declared war on bots: We are not the only ones keeping a keen eye out for automated accounts – check out this quote from the Twitter Help Center.
“We monitor all accounts for aggressive following and follow churn… Aggressive follow churn is when an account repeatedly follows and then unfollows a large number of users. This may be done to get lots of people to notice them, to circumvent a Twitter limit, or to change their follower-to-following ratio. These behaviors negatively impact the Twitter experience for other users, are common spam tactics, and may lead to account suspension.”
This means that those bots you just blew your weekly social media budget on can disappear without any notice. Sure, 200 more automated accounts will pop up in their absence, but guess what? You’ll have to pay for them again.
Wouldn’t it just make more sense to target potential candidates with your awesome content by paying for actual promotional ads and tweet visibility boosters?
III. Bots do not equal fans: Ask yourself one question – why is your company on Twitter in the first place?
We use social media to grab the attention of potential candidates, clients and other people interested in what we do. It’s a space to share content that promotes our brand, supports our credibility and most importantly – engages our audience.
These bots aren’t interested in engaging with your employer brand. They won’t follow links to your website, check out your company blog or even apply to that open position on your homepage. They are programmed to do one job already – and that is to spam the Twittersphere. And let’s face it, you are too good for spam.
So there you have it – money can buy (fake) popularity but at the expense of your employer brand.
Pro Tip: Crowdfire is a great way to find and follow real accounts that share your company’s interests, and can help steadily grow your Twitter follower base by targeting quality users.