Today this happened on Facebook.
I reposted it to see the reaction on my personal account. I often post stuff on my page for a reaction or when I'm teaching a client social media. Its part of my business to do this. A couple people said it was a scam!
I did it because I opened Facebook and my newsfeed was full of Qantas shares. Everyone was sharing it left right and centre, I mean free First Class flights were on offer, why wouldn't you.
I follow Qantas both on Twitter and Facebook, so I knew straight away something was up. Aside from the horrendous way it was written and the complete lack of T&C's, there is NO WAY a large company like Qantas would have a "First Class" competition simply from liking and sharing a post. No way in hell! The logistics of having to sift through the hundreds of thousands of "entries" alone would have taken a team of 100!
No, a promotion like that would have taken weeks (sometimes months) of meticulous planning. There would have been mass advertising for it through their eDM and social media channels as well as conventional media. The entry would have been a long process of your name, address, etc plus a photo or 100 words (or both) as to why you deserve first class flights and the winner would have not been announced within 48hrs. No, it would have been in one months time. It would have been a pretty epic campaign.
In a nutshell, if you want free First Class flights, you gotta work for your entry. First Class doesn't come without a bit of effort.
This also proved to me how the internet dumbs people down AND how imperative it is to have sexy content.
People are mindlessly scrolling, constantly. You need to jump out and grab their attention. An offer like free First Class flights (brilliant social media comp if it were real btw) is of course going to grab peoples attention. Even with the shitty quality pic they attached to the post, it was simple and executed brilliantly.
So how do you know whats real and whats not?? How do you protect your page in case a duplicate is created?
Well stating the obvious, if you are a follower, always check the official page first. Official pages get verified by Facebook so they have a blue tick against their name. If you are an official page/brand/business who has had their page duplicated report it to Facebook here
I looked on the official page and saw they had said it was a scam. But I also went back and looked at the scam page. Instantly a few things stuck out at me which I have listed below.
- The Page Name
The scam page is called "Qantas Airline", not simply Qantas.
- The Page address
This is always a great indication. Real companies spend the time to giving their page an official address. This is why its so important you set up your page address with your official name. It instantly creates brand awareness, plus it saves it from being taken at a later stage.
- The "About" section
The "about" section is also filled out with great detail. The more detail you put in the about section the better for your business. Qantas went so far as to include a video.
- The length of their timeline
That post on the scam page was their one and only post. The page appeared to have just been open a few days. Real brands have quality content spanning over weeks, months and years.
So there you go. Big lessons learned for everyone from followers to businesses.
To all those who shared the post, next time look more closely at the post before sharing. As the age old saying goes........
If its too good to be true, it probably is.
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