Cheaters Never Prosper

Oh Hai, 

I've woken up feeling irrationally angry this morning. 

I recently started following a woman on social media after I heard people speak about her at a conference I spoke at this weekend. I won't name her because that's mean spirited and I don't want to start a witch hunt. 

No idea what image to team with this post so went for my kittens looking mighty pissed off, probably thinking about bots. 

Having a quick look through her platform, it's clear that being 100% truthful all the time and she uses bots. 

What are bots? Well, there is a way (I'm not sure how but there 100% is) that you can buy followers for your social media. You pay a certain amount of money and your follower/subscriber count shoots up. If you're savvy and know the ins and outs of social media, it's easy to spot. 

I hate this. It's the ultimate cheat. It invalidates people who have worked for years to develop a social media brand, to form good strong relationships with people, to act with integrity. It says, 'why bother putting in the hard work when you can just buy the results?'. 

It is also an insult to an audience. Aren't they worth 'working' for? I say 'working' because I love what I do and although it's my income, it's also my passion. If all the money went tomorrow, I'd still do it happily (like in the beginning when I confidently said to my Dad, 'there's absolutely no money in social media but I bloody love it all the same'.)

Thirdly, as well as being dishonest and an insult to your followers, to buy bots and cheat in this way is incredibly damaging to our fledgling industry as we navigate ways to work with and collaborate with bigger brands. PR companies base who they would like to work with on stats like followers, likes, engagement etc (as well as your general vibe and other elements, but firstly, the stats). Let's say they go for the untruthful blogger who has forged her numbers and say, 'yep, please work with us on this campaign to promote healthy chocolate (a girl can dream eh?!)' and the so the cheating mum blogger says 'yes!'. Let's say the blogger has about 20k insta followers. 

The brand would expect her to post a picture and caption and that that piece of content would achieve a certain amount of interaction. For the purpose of this post I just looked on a fave mum Yter's insta (Emily Norris, seriously check her out) and she has about 27k insta followers. Each of her posts consistently gets around 1.5k-3.5k likes and a good amount of comment interaction. This is in keeping with other insta mum bloggers with similar followings. 

So, we'll go back to the healthy (someone invent this!) chocolate #ad and the blogger who's bought bots. She post the snap and the post gets around 150 likes. Uh Oh! It should be more likes for that ratio of followers. This is because her followers are not real. It's a digital trick. They are not true people like you and I who tapped the follow button because we love insta, love seeing other mum's lives, love being involved and therefore are happy to tap the heart on a picture or leave a friendly comment. 

So Mr Healthy Chocolate now thinks, 'Oh that sponsorship didn't reap many rewards for my healthy choc brand, mum bloggers are a waste of money, I won't work with them again!' and this effects us all. 

In this new industry it is vital that we all work, share and create with integrity. It's not always easy. I've had experiences where I've been offered a lot of money to say something I didn't believe and of course, I always have the option of buying the blinkin' bots. However, the old saying is true and cheaters never prosper. It's not worth it. Audiences (readers, viewers, insta scrollers) are SO savvy and will spot a liar very quickly, as will eventually the brands and PR's in the industry. 

It's saddened me to find a bad apple in the mum community, one that I am so enjoying learning more about and getting to know but, I have to say, the rest are a very, very good bunch. I'm talking, smart, kind, listen-to-you-say-mad-things, good bunch. I would 10 out of 10 recommend them! 

The moral of this story is two fold. 1. Pregnancy hormones make you irrationally angry at things very early in the morning and 2. Don't be a dick, don't cheat the system, stay classy. 

Phewf! Feels good to unload that! (Secretly glad barely anyone reads this old blog anymore because this was a brave move to be so un-vanilla!)

Happy Friday!

Toodlepip!

xx