I make it my business to always stick to my own.
I’m not out there getting in the affairs of others. What they do is between them and God. And I rarely EVER, shine a light on anything negative. It’s my belief to always be focusing on the positive. My personality, is very much Pollyanna-style.
But there ARE times when I don’t sit back. When I stand up and say, hey…this is wrong.
Today, is such a day.
While inside the blog of a client (who is NOT faking shares), I happened to see a news article that I couldn’t help but click to read it, “Introducing Fake Share Counters,” the title read.
Wait, WHAT?!
INTRODUCING….FAKE….SHARE COUNTERS…
You said that in one sentence, right?
I was in shock!
Faking Social Proof – Do You Really Need to Stoop That Low
As I’m reading the TERRIBLE article, first, it’s just poorly written. While I understand there will be errors on a blog, when there’s SO MANY, it’s just so detrimental to credibility in the first place.
They are saying “heart” when they mean hurt in their click to tweet: 
They say took when they mean tool:
In fact, even in a click button: learn is missing the “n”.
And there are more errors than that.
But errors like this, don’t usually bother me too much. I KNOW that ALL bloggers, big AND small, make errors. This isn’t the Bible; it’s not perfect, inerrant, infallible.
But what really upsets me is they are, yes, introducing a new feature in Easy Social Share Buttons.
Please, do NOT use this fake social proof plug in. I don’t care HOW good it is for social proof marketing, if you have to fake it until you really have results, it’s pathetic, okay.
It has NOTHING to do with honor, integrity, and above all, BEING HONEST!
It’s LYING to your readers. It’s lying to the world and you know what, you WILL be found out as such because of these terrible tactics, and your blog won’t make it!
Why?
Because your audience wants to know YOU and they want the truth. We should not be faking stuff, inflating results, using false social proof tools etc.
This is exactly why I am NEVER impressed with someone’s traffic amount.
They say, “Oh, I get 1 million traffics a month.”
Sounds impressive, right?
What you DON’T know, is that there is, yes, an EASY (like Kindergarten-easy) way to double-triple your pageviews in Google Analytics.
While it may be tempting, if you have to resort to these measures, that’s not honest blogging and gives bloggers everywhere less credibility.
If you want a blog that has the REAL results, you MUST BE real!
SCAMS like this are exactly the type of stuff that takes away our credibility as a blogger.
I am simply appalled.
I’m personally BANNING this social share company and I will not promote it to any clients. Any clients that do have it, I will refer them to this post and encourage them to go with a TRUSTED social share counter like Social Warfare (the one I use) and it’s free (although I personally have the paid version). Another good one to use is Genesis Simple Share.
If you want to know if your or another blogger’s social share counts are correct, here’s my full tutorial on it. What you need to keep in mind though, is that very few social shares are accurate in the first place. However, if it’s not fraudulent, they will show LESS shares on the share buttons than in the tutorial. If the buttons are showing a lot more than the link in the tutorial, it could very well been fraudulent.
If you want to know if another blogger is using the Easy Social Share Buttons, or simply what plug ins/themes they DO have, there are two sites I like to use to spy on my colleagues:
Be careful who and what you get mixed up with online as a blogger.
Your trust as a blogger is THE most important thing!
As I always say:
The whole, “Fake it ’til you make it,” advice is total bunk. DO NOT buy into that junk! Ever!
Another thing that stinks is that, this is now going to take credibility away from the honest bloggers. Audiences are not going to take social proof as seriously. They are going to think we ALL fake it, when we don’t. It gives us a bad rap!
And what about when I’m doing my roundups? I’m scouring the internet to bring you the BEST content, the most popular best of the best. While that’s definitely not the only thing I look at when bringing you that type of content, it IS something I highly consider. With shares being faked now, how can I know what is really a good and helpful article for many people and what isn’t?!
This new feature just stinks on so many levels.
I mean, we teach our children not to cheat. “Don’t cheat on tests we say,” yet, we are willing to do cheat?
I’m appalled and you should be too!
Be real, be genuine, be consistent. Be helpful, serve others and you will get the shares coming. Even if it’s slow, it’s better than faking it!
What are your thoughts? I’d love to know them in the comments below.
