How To Find Out If That Legal Marketing Expert Is The Real Deal, Or A Poseur

You’re at a convention and there’s some guy talking about marketing. He spends an awful lot of time trying to sell you training programs. Now you can tell if he’s the real deal.

Fake Follower Check is a terrific (and free) online application that will show you how many of a person’s Twitter followers are spammers, bots and fake.

StatusPeople, the folks behind the app, is a company that makes “social media platforms for business.” Seems as if everyone does that these days, but these folks are proving their value in the marketplace.

Here’s how.

The application looks as a Twitter user’s followers to tag which of them have few or no followers or tweets, but follow a lot of people themselves. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty accurate in the macro sense.

I ran myself through the machine, and was pleasantly surprised that only 2% of my followers were fake. Here’s my report:

The party gets a lot more fun, however, when you run that legal marketing dude through the system.  Pick a Twitter user and enter him or her into the application.

Here, for example, is the result for one major self-professed legal marketing guru:

Over half of this guy’s followers are fake.  This, from a guy who spends every single business day telling you to buy his legal marketing materials.

Why Would Someone Want Fake Twitter Followers?

Lots of people use follower counts as a measure of whether a marketing consultant is successful.  Newt Gingrich did it in the political arena, so why not professionals trying to sway the public elsewhere?

Besides, success (real or imagined) begets success.  It’s what’s known as social proof, the psychological pull to be where others flock.  You want to buy the book everyone is raving about, get into the club with the red velvet rope and the long line, eat at the restaurant where you can’t possibly hope to get a table for the next six months.

Same with Twitter users.  You’re more likely to listen to someone with 6,000 followers than someone with only 1,500 followers.  One person is automatically considered more successful.

Now, thanks to Fake Follower Check, you won’t be a sucker anymore.

Don’t Trust – Verify

President Ronald Reagan used the phrase, “trust, but verify,” when dealing with the Soviet Union.  In other words, consider your sources of information to be reliable but always  perform additional research to verify that such information is accurate, or trustworthy.

I’m not quite as nice as Reagan; then again, this isn’t international affairs.  It’s your wallet.

When it comes to legal marketing consultants, don’t trust until you verify.

Before you take someone’s word for it that social media and, in particular, Twitter, will save your soul and your practice, run his name through Fake Follower Check.