Anyone familiar with social media knows that this is a lie that the bars bend. If you are not afraid of legal consequences, you can read the tips below without irony.

Best of HR – Berufebilder.de®
Contents Hide

Britney Spears will be….

Become Britney Spears. At least on Twitter. Or any other celebrity. The main thing is known! Really true! A great way to get as many followers as possible is to tweet as a celebrity. Since Twitter, unlike Facebook, nor so-called fake accounts, i.e. false user accounts, this is easily possible: You draw up So just create a Twitter account under the name Britney Spears - of course any other celebrity is also possible - and start tweeting as realistically as possible. When you've accumulated enough followers - say 500.000 - change your account to your real name. Of course, there will be a little dwindling among your followers, but a few 1000s are for sure to get over. Of course, there is also the risk of a warning, even if you remain anonymous on Twitter. But with this one Risks you just have to live.

Using a very similar method, the Vienna MuseumsQuartier has more than 25.000 fans on one Facebook-Side secured. According to the Austrian daily DerStandard, it was founded in February 2009 by student Helmuth Lammer as a private person. As an unofficial page for the MuseumsQuartier. Lammer won more than 25.000 fans within two years. In April 2011, the MuseumsQuartier Lammer offered two annual tickets and a 'goodie pack' for the site. When the student did not want to give it up, the MuseumsQuartier applied to Facebook the merging of your own Facebook-Page with that of the student Lammer. 25.000 fans for free - a successful coup from the perspective of the MuseumsQuartier. The site has over 28.000 fans today.

A well-known American TV broadcaster can only dream of this. There you had Twitter users their own Twitter name for a lot Money bought. It's just stupid that the users could keep the account with many thousands of Twitterers and just rename it. What a business model! German ZDF was smarter: Marco Bereth from Schwäbisch Hall and Michael Umlandt from Heilbronn secured the @ZDFonline account on Twitter in June 2009. Namely, as they charmingly tell the journalist Richard Gutjahr at the Republica 2011, because the account was simply missing. So they did it themselves! And very well: @ZDFonline responds to Criticism, thanks politely for positive Resonance, helps further Ask to the program. They take the @ZDF-Neo account from another fake user. He's glad he got away without a warning. In the end, however, things get too hot for them and they give up the account. ZDF's reaction: surprisingly positive. Instead of legal steps there is an employment contract – because the two have done their jobs so well.

... Or straight to jail?

Things don't always go so lightly: Shortly after the disaster at the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima, the @Atomforum_eV account was announced on Twitter, which went from under 200 to almost 4.000 within a few hours. However, it was not about the real atomic forum, but a satire account, which satirized the attitude of the atomic forum Germany with cynical tweets and used the logo of the atomic forum at times. The real atomic forum distanced itself from the account, and announced to do everything possible to fight the satire account. Legal steps were not ruled out either, the satire account and all followers were temporarily deleted. Surprised by the impending Streisand effect, in which the attempt to suppress information in the network, the exact opposite is achieved, the Atomic Forum finally rowed back.

Who in such methods Anxiety from warnings and criminal prosecution, there is a completely different method. Go straight to jail. A politics student from Berlin was arrested at an anti-nuclear demonstration. About the transport to a prisoner collection point, he tweeted so heartrendingly and polemically about the lack of toilets, the bitter cold and the lack of drinks that one could think he was on his way to Guantanamo. His reward: more than 300 new followers on Twitter in just a few hours.

Is that too risky for you? Don't want to get arrested in the freezing cold in the middle of winter? i have a better one Idea: You can cheat right away!

Mass instead of class: click fraudsters and fake accounts

In fact, it isn't Problemto push his follower numbers up artificially and by hand. For example, by simply relying on the politeness of those around you. Because on Twitter or on Facebook Many follow back out of politeness. Some also do it fully automatically! So follow such people for a few days, then unfollow them again.

Or you use software or a service provider that gives you this or a similar way fast a few thousand fans or followers complain. 10.000 fans for 199 euros for your own FacebookSite is the best value for money that I found on the subject - on Ebay. There is also less: 1000 fans for 39,95 euros. And for Twitter you can buy entire accounts with allegedly active followers - 4000 for 49,95 euros. If you don't believe it: Just look for “Facebook Search for fans ”or“ Twitter followers ”.

offer in abundance Internet Agencies and service providers offer their services without any sense of wrongdoing, with the boundaries between serous Consulting and sold fraud are fluent. The site of Twittcoach Stefan Berns, for example, promises theirs customers: “Through our follower building service, we build exactly the followers you need for an effective and successful TwitterMarketing need for your accounts. In doing so, we proceed extremely sensitively and harmoniously within the framework of the Twitter guidelines.” But (apparent) seriousness is apparently not to be had at bargain prices. 1000 followers cost 140 euros at Berns, for 5000 followers you have to Customer shell out 700 euros. And the video platform sevenload, which belongs to Burda, offers so-called viral seeding for videos on its website, which ultimately involves nothing more than artificially generated user access. On the company website it reads like this: “The sevenload seedingTeam researches the right target groups for your marketing campaign on the web. We sprinkle your videomessage systematically via the sevenload platform and in a large number of social networks. These include, for example, communities, specific forums, blogs and fun and leisure portals. Furthermore, sevenload uses the most important social bookmarking and microblogging services for seeding in order to spread your advertising message. With the seedingMeasures we guarantee you a previously agreed number of video views in the desired period.”

Insanity with a method

But that is exactly the crux of the whole story: even when it comes to real users who, like the more serious providers of such marketing measures, voluntarily follow or click: As long as it ultimately only comes down to one before To achieve a coordinated number of fans, followers or clicks, the actual benefit remains in the dark, as does the origin of the new Internet friends. Apparently, reports DerWeste, there is a lively “fan” trade, with agencies and service providers lively buying and selling fans. In some cases, these are fake accounts or software that generate fake clicks. Or the service provider can apparently quickly establish contacts in Eastern Europe, India or Pakistan. One of these service providers is the Swiss student Pirmin Steiner. Depending on the number of fans, he collects between 2500 and 5000 francs for a Facebook-Profile. His best customer so far: The Facebook-Site of the canton of Graubünden.

There is a method to the madness, as the video journalist Markus Hündgen found out in a self-experiment. He wants to push a video on youtube. Hündgen orders 30.000 video views for $20 from a Pakistani service provider that no longer exists. Payment is made via Paypal. To make it look more realistic, there will be 40 ratings later (including one negative) and 10 comments that he writes himself and that the service provider posts under different account names. No problem, yes Hündgen is even in the Facebook-Chat addressed how such click numbers can be generated for the campaign of a DAX group in North Rhine-Westphalia.

By the way, you're in good hands with that Society: Telekom made the headlines because they had hundreds of fake customer reviews made by a text agency, which were intended to create a positive atmosphere on a Telekom shopping portal. And the Süddeutsche Newspaper apparently bought praise for its iPhone app in blogs and in the iPhone AppStore via the Swiss service provider Trigami - the Süddeutsche speaks of a viral campaign in which the bloggers themselves decide how to find the products.

When the click madness becomes dangerous

But even if such methods are more than usual - they are by no means honest. And not at all safe. Companys like facebook or Google have very strict rules about what happens to such clickers. With Google, for example, there is a threat of lifelong blocking of the YouTube account, which also results in a lifelong blocking of Google Adsense and the associated income. And at Facebook receive Peoplewho click the Like button too often in too short a time, for example because they are paid to do so, receive the following message: “You have been blocked from using the Like button because you have repeatedly abused this function. This blockage can last from a few hours to a few days. Please be careful when using this feature again. Further abuse of this feature may result in permanent suspension of your account. You can find more information about this on the FAQ page.”

As if blocking or losing the account in question wasn't painful enough for one or the other, the legal situation must also be considered. If you follow the Düsseldorf lawyer Udo Vetter, maker of the renowned law blog, the purchase of clicks, comments, ratings, etc. are clear violations of competition law - and warnings and injunctive relief are threatened. So said cousin im Conversation with Markus Hündgen: “The size of the company and the actual interest in products are disguised by fake call numbers. Fake comments give the impression of satisfied customers who don't exist. These are both references that can lead to a purchase decision that the customer would not have made without the fakes."

Fake fan numbers - but how?

How difficult it is with Facebook is to fake fan numbers in large numbers, recently Sascha Lobo impressively clear made: When the former Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned, Facebook launched the page “We want Guttenberg back”, which had over 500.000 fans within a few days. Sascha Lobo then raised doubts about the authenticity of the fans: his Opinions According to him, there are too many profiles that have no further interests or friends and that cannot otherwise be found on the internet. With the help of his readers, he collected data on the increase in fans on the site, among other things, in order to calculate a curve whose regularity provides information about any mechanical support for the Facebook-Page, calculated growth curves that he compared with those of other fan pages, spoke to Facebook-Staff, taking a look at the internal facebook-Evaluation of the site - in order to come to the conclusion that the fans have to be real in large numbers. His interesting conclusion: “Just as you cannot accidentally copy two thirds of a doctoral thesis without realizing it, several hundred thousand Facebook-Users become fans without even realizing it. Despite these and other shortcomings of Facebook one has to admit that in the vast majority of cases the reaction to fakes was quick and technically precise. The creation of fake profiles is possible, but anything but trivial. It should be even more difficult to forge six-digit numbers of profiles in such a way that the technicians from Facebook - who deal with fakes every day - with the possibilities of the administrators not to recognize this after multiple checks. "

Fictitious fan numbers and click fraud ultimately result from the fact that most people succumb to the fascination of large numbers. This is because in our thoroughly rationalized Welt numbers that seem objective are considered more reliable than, for example, trusting one's own instinct. So it's no wonder that PR strategists justify their actions by saying: "The customer definitely wants to be paid - the customer gets paid, no matter how!" But is it really all about numbers? In the course of social development, isn't it also important to think about an ethical component - especially when you read such examples? And what is the point of social media?

The ethical question: social media, PR and journalism

When we discuss ethics, it is advisable to take a look at journalism: Because journalism is considered the fourth power in Germany. Its condition is therefore of crucial social importance: Without independent media, there can be no independent opinion. Unfortunately, the independence of the established media is in bad shape at the moment, critic already see a fifth established force: PR, which can now reach its customers much more directly and unvarnished through social media. Reason: More and more readers are migrating to the Internet, where information is available to them free of charge. The financial consequences are devastating for established media companies.

The American mediaprofessor However, Jeff Jarvis considers the problem to be of his own making: Instead of considering new business models in view of the new developments, media companies in particular are sticking to established structures. In an interview with media journalist Ulrike Langer, Jarvis therefore calls on journalists to look into the matter themselves Hand to take: “We journalists have refused to understand the workings of business… It would corrupt, pollute us… It is our job to take care of business too, so that we can figure out how to preserve and promote journalism. Not only do we have to learn the media business, we also have to learn how to Startups establishes.”

But what does that actually mean when journalists think economically? And what dangers are there in social media from the integration of PR and journalism?

Simply switch off the middleman

British actor and comedian John Cleese, co-founder of the infamous comedy group Monty Pythons, brought the Sinn from social media once to the point: "We just switch off the middleman." What he meant by that: Until a few years ago, people who wanted to address their readers or viewers had to go the “detour” via the press. They had to make contact with journalists, write press releases, and in the worst case even pay for reporting - and all of that in order to be present. With social media that has suddenly changed: you can interact directly with your readers or listeners. The annoying journalists are no longer needed!

At least that's how the PR people see it, ringing in their personal golden age, as the Munich PR consultant Monika Paitl writes: "It's about the fact that social media in general, but specifically a - let's call it - news service like Twitter gives a whole new dimension to the external communication of companies, organizations and yes, also governments. Up to now we have written press releases, sent them out and waited patiently for eventual coverage. We were dependent on the media and had to hope that they would find our topic exciting, pick it up and report on it. Nowadays it's no longer like that. We communicators can decide for ourselves when and to what extent we spread news via social media. This is a relief and helps us strategically Planning our work tremendously.”

In 2007, Daimler was the first DAX company to set up a corporate blog to communicate with customers and the public. In an interview, Uwe Kanus, who developed the concept and maintains the blog to this day, said: “My personal opinion is that the“ social ”in social media does not stand for social, non-profit or even charitable. Rather, it refers to the diverse conversations that take place in a network and are not always easy to locate. This development requires professional listening - some call it monitoring. When I now know where and how my company or my brands are being talked about, social media offers me numerous opportunities to participate in these conversations. " A possibility that the company always makes use of when it gets negative in the headlines. When it became known, for example, that Daimler took blood samples from applicants and therefore came under public criticism, this turned out to be an advantage: Instead of answering each request individually, the company responded to the many critical voices and inquiries with a blog post that informed about the medical background of this measure. With this, the company was able to slightly dampen the criticism, but in 2011 it received the BigBrotherAward, with which data protection violations are denounced.

Help, farmers can blog too!

Social media has made many things easier for PR people and companies. For journalists, on the other hand, that could be a problem. So it's no wonder that some of them are anything but enthusiastic about social media: They simply fear for their jobs. A study by the project team of local journalists at the Federal Agency for Political Education showed: Editors of daily newspapers still give far too little thought to how they could include the Internet in their work. Between December 2010 and January 2011, cross-media managers from twelve German regional newspapers were interviewed. The differences are particularly evident in the personal attitudes of the Employees. A third of the editors surveyed as part of the study are enthusiastic about social media. Another third at least sees the need to adapt to this. But around 30 percent completely refuse the challenges of the Internet.

It is precisely this attitude that sometimes produces strange blossoms. For example, a group of capital city journalists who apparently felt they had been left out by the federal government were outraged via Twitter. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert is also active there: on February 28, 2011, he spoke up for the first time: “Hello, the latest information on the federal government will also be available on Twitter from today. Follow me below @RegSprecher. Yours, Steffen seibert ”On March 22nd, Seibert then dropped the tweet that was to cause so much fuss in the following:“# Chancellortravels to Washington for an official visit in early June for talks with Pres. #Obamaand award of the Medal of Freedom ”Reason for the scandal: The tweet about the Chancellor's trip to the USA was apparently sent before the news was reported on other channels by the Federal Press Office. The minutes of the discussion that took place at the following federal press conference between Deputy Government Spokesman Christoph Steegmans and the journalists consist of four printed pages. And it shows how strong the discomfort and aversion to the social media channel Twitter are.

No wonder that the journalists in the capital became the target of ridicule on various blogs and on Twitter: From the “information elite” who are traveling in a parallel galaxy, there is this Rede or from a deeply insecure profession. And Thomas Wiegold, himself a journalist and member of the Federal Press Conference, would like to give his colleagues extra tuition. You had at least argued your reservations well and, in the discussion with Steegmans, highlighted the security gaps on Twitter. A student in my Lecture, which I presented during a media forum at a German University on the subject of social media became clearer: "Every farmer can blog there," she interjected, clearly showing how great the reservations about the new forms of communication are, even among budding journalists (she was perhaps in her early 20s). It's actually a pity that some journalists find it so difficult to regard social media as a useful communication and information tool. Because they don't really have to be afraid of being abolished: Thanks to social media, critical journalism in particular is needed more than ever before. Just how to make money with it to earn can is still the big problem. Or not?

Buy me now

In May 2010 wrote Zakhar Krivoy, manager Digital Public Affairs at E-Plus wrote a courageous blog post. Courageous because it makes him personally vulnerable:

“Am I for sale? Certainly not. I will never write something good about a product or service if I don't find it at least super-duper. Because otherwise within a few weeks I would tear down everything that I have worked on over the last few years. Am I influenced? Certainly yes. From the people I value, trust and know.”

Specifically, Krivoy responded with a blog post to allegations that were made against him because he had accepted gifts from companies. Even more interesting than the blog post itself is the discussion that follows Article followed. Some find the acceptance of gifts fundamentally reprehensible, for others it is ok as long as the blogger makes it clear that he has received something for free. Overall, this shows how controversial the topic is - and how great the risk that social media will break the boundaries between Communication and blur PR. This becomes particularly clear in the comment by Mirko Lange, Founders and Executive the PR agency Talkabout: ” 'Social media' creates personal closeness (or better: can create it if you do it right). And personal closeness connects. But only if it fits - like in real life... There is no boundary between the 'person Mirko Lange' and the 'PR man Mirko Lange'.

That sounds human, but unfortunately it is exactly this that creates the danger of mutual influence. Because most of us prefer to listen to people who nice and sympathisch find – also journalists. And not just on social media. But that's exactly what social media thrives on. Conversely, does that mean that journalists are not allowed to be friends with PR people – not even in real life? I imagine that's difficult... Or should one, as the discussion goes on, simply put job titles aside and only look at people and their credibility and integrity?

Who makes money like?

But wait: to simply forget the job title, unfortunately, also means to forget how this person earns his bread - and thus also what interests he is possibly pursuing, true to the motto “Whose bread I eat, the song I sing!”. Robin Meyer Lucht aptly analyzed the results in his blog Carta: “Are they still classic press spokesmen or classic lobbyists? Hardly likely. These are people who have stepped into the new digital public - and seem to have found a new place and a new function for themselves there: as micro-media of themselves. The “PR Heinis” are multipliers valued by many users and have become tipsters (while journalists stand by and shake their heads in amazement). A lack of 'independence' in the classic journalistic sense is obviously not a bug, but a feature. " And the journalist Jörg Wagner even goes so far as to speak of PR as the slowly establishing fifth power in the state. Even a lot of PR people are shocked at how uncritically some information is simply adopted. A PR consultant recently said to me: “It's good that you are critical. Some portals simply take everything from me without being seen. That's good for me, but well .. "

However, this is not necessarily just a problem of social media, as a report in medium magazin shows. This text was about travel journalism in the established media. At least since TAZ editor Sebastian Heiser revealed in April how light it is to place editorial content in some media for a fee and reported extensively on his research in the TAZ blog, it should be clear to everyone that the topic is spreading further. Author Anne Haeming found out for the medium magazin: Many people are aware of the problem, but because of the lack of budget, most of them cannot or do not want to do anything other than resort to trips financed by agencies. At Zeit, for example, you use such offers for 30 percent of trips, but 70 percent are paid for yourself, department head Dorotée Stöbener is quoted as saying. However, she does not believe in labeling paid trips. The reason: “Our writing cannot be corrupted.” But even if the causes are not to be found in social media communication, it still reinforces the dilution between interests.

The Federal Association of Digital Economy has already made it clear in his policy paper on media and network policy, the so-called “Goslaer Programme”, where the journey should go from the point of view of the advertisers – namely that the Advertising itself becomes the content: “From an intelligently designed and used targeting in the field of Online-Advertising and thus for the user, the consumer can benefit in such a way that he receives advertising with relevance. Advertising itself becomes valuable for him Information.” Being critical is needed now more than ever. Unfortunately, this is all too often a question of money and time.