In an attempt to clean house, Facebook has vowed to “aggressively get rid of fake likes” and has claimed to have won more than £1.3bn in legal judgements against scam artists who have sold fake likes to public figures and businesses.

In a recent blog, the world’s biggest social site said that:

“Fake like peddlers tempt Page admins with offers to ‘buy 10,000 likes!’ or other similar schemes. To deliver those likes, the scammers often try to create fake accounts, or in some cases, even hack into real accounts in order to use them for sending spam and acquiring more likes.

“Since these fraudulent operations are financially motivated businesses, we focus our energy on making this abuse less profitable for the spammers.”

Besides trying for legal judgement, Facebook has stated that it has also limited likes per account in order to make spammers less efficient, as when liking activity is deemed to be suspiciously high, the site takes additional steps to ensure that likes are legitimate.

For businesses that are on the look-out for a bigger audience, the company advises against purchasing fake likes, as they are more likely to do harm than good.

Facebook goes on to warn would-be buyers that the social network has also ramped up its algorithm, and will take engagement rates into account when deciding “when and where to deliver a Page’s legitimate ads and content,” meaning that a Page with artificial likes will find it harder to reach its real audience.

Fake audiences aren’t just confined to Facebook however, as fake followers have long plagued the likes of Twitter, with celebrities and politicians having been accused of owning a large percentage of fake followers in the past.

But what is the best way to attract natural Facebook likes?

No respectable marketing agency will ever tell a company to purchase fake Facebook likes, not now and not ever. What businesses should be doing however, is exploring ways to gain legitimate likes and followers through intelligent, informative or entertaining marketing.

Here are a few tips:

Run a contest

An old favourite, but a good way of gaining new likes and followers, as contests have a way of garnering thousands of new likes and followers for small businesses.

The first thing you have to do however, is to ensure that your planned contest follows Facebook’s promotion guidelines.

You should also be using the Facebook Contest App so that you can create a fan-gate; this is a great way of ensuring a larger audience for your business as only people who like your Page may enter the contest.

Pay for advertising

The good news is that you can pay as little as just £1 a day for Facebook advertising and still get some results. Like PPC, there are multiple bid types, so you must pick the appropriate structure to fit your campaign objectives, and depending on whether you want clicks or impressions.

There are currently four bid types to choose from:

• Cost per mile (CPM): This will increase brand awareness by bidding per thousand impressions and will help people see the actual advert on the premise that they will then engage with the brand.
• Cost per click (CPC): A bid type to get users to click on the ad. This lets you choose a maximum bid per click.
• Optimized cost per mile (oCPM): This type of cost per mile is when Facebook shows an ad to the people it believes will be more likely to interact with it.
• Cost per action (CPA): For those looking to get people to like their Page, this will be the best bid type, as it encourages users to take a specific action.

Facebook has also been kind enough to publish a video for those who want to know more about bidding:

Use Facebook Social Plugins

Facebook social plugins enable to you to use and advertise your Facebook Page on your website. It is fairly easy to add them to your site and creates a greater online presence. Here is a quick breakdown of what’s available:

• Like Button: This allows users to share Pages from your site and back to their Facebook profile with a simple click. So when the user clicks the button, a story appears in their friend’s new feed with a link back to your website.
• Like Box: The Facebook Like Box lets users like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly from your website. You can also add your Page name, logo and Like button.
• Recommendations: Facebook Recommendations gives users personalised suggestions for Pages on your site that they may like, based on what other people are sharing.
• Comments: You can even let users comment on your site’s content and will actually work to reduce the amount of spam comments, as users will need to be logged into a real Facebook account to post.

You can use Facebook insights to see how they’re all doing, but like many free things, these plugins aren’t without their faults.

For example, bloggers might well prefer to use their Google, WordPress or Blogger profiles to comment. If they aren’t logged into Facebook when they want to make a comment, it might prove too much of a stretch to do so.

There was also a fear that Google was not capable of indexing Facebook comments, however this rumour has since been put to bed by Google’s Head of Webspam, Matt Cutts.

Create great content

This is something that has been clear for years. Great, informative and exciting content is a definite winner for gaining those much needed likes. So once your Page is up and running, it’s time to create content, so here are some tips:

• Feel inspired by what’s hot: If something has worked before, or you’ve found yourself experiencing a “eureka moment” by something that you’ve read, there’s no reason why you can’t build on that and create something special. Try and work out what your audience wants to hear and what they’re likely to share online.
• Ensure a call to action: Many posts that don’t have a call to action usually end up falling dead in the water. Your audience needs to understand and take something away from each and every post that you publish. Getting them to add their own opinion is a classic way of getting your audience to interact.
• Vary your content: There’s nothing worse than a Page that posts the same garble every single day of the week. People will tune out. If you can, try and mix the content that goes up, from pictures to videos, you will eventually be able to find out what works best from the insights bar on the side of the Page.
• Keep on top of your Page: By using the Pages Manager App you can stay engaged no matter where you are. From scheduling a post through to merely checking the insights, you can do it from your smartphone or tablet. This is great for small businesses that don’t have the time to sit at computers all day.

Let us know how you’ve found advertising with Facebook with a comment below.