But,’ you stammer, ‘I don’t understand. I paid my money and within a week I had 3,000 new Twitter followers. They look like real people. What are you talking about?!’

When we’re just starting telemarketing data out in business, many (if not most) of us feel helpless about ‘getting the word out’. We just don’t know where to start. How do we get people to follow us on social media? How do we get them to read our blog? How do we get business from this? It’s daunting.

Because we’re so overwhelmed, we look for solutions that can help us go from ground zero to…well…SOMETHING – but we’re not sure what that ‘something’ is. People tell us we need to get Twitter followers; but even if we know how to do that, we don’t know what we’re supposed to do with them after we’ve got them.
Unfortunately, there are many opportunistic people out there in cyberspace who prey upon unsuspecting small business owners who are caught in this vortex of ‘I don’t know’. Some of those opportunistic people run scams thinly disguised as marketing services. They set up several thousand bogus Twitter or Facebook accounts, hiding behind different proxy servers (notionally, so Twitter or Facebook don’t realise they’re fake accounts). They might have real sounding names. They might even have headshots. But make no mistake: there’s nobody there except the scammer. The scammer who sold you their ‘marketing product’ will, for a fee, make all these bogus accounts follow you on Twitter or ‘like’ your Facebook page (that is, of course, if they don’t run off with your money without even bothering to give you your fake followers).

Suddenly, you have thousands of followers. You’re starting to feel more confident about the future. You think people are really interested in you and what you are doing in your business.