You don’t need fake friends because actually, you have customers! Isn’t it what we are all looking for? True love? True love is natural particularly when someone comes to you, you were asking for nothing, and this special someone buys you a drink. Congratulation that’s a customer, so now what about working on this relationship.

Netflix is so damn good about many things, I mean look at them, great tv show, excellent brand footprint, but when it comes to showing me, love... it can't do it correctly. He's like this great boyfriend directly coming from a Hallmark movie: sweet, always supportive, but entirely bland, you know it, you'll quit him someday because he can't surprise you.

Success is not granted, showing a great product is not enough, that's exactly the point where sometimes we lose brand manager and marketing director into very dark doubt times. "Why my competitors X have more likes than me?" "Why my competitor Y has more influence love that me?"

Your first reaction to those questions should be "Should I care about ambient sound?" Or "What my significant one want?"
You don't need to be a couple therapist to know that "listening" is essential in a relationship.

Let's go back to my Netflix example: he thinks he's giving me a personalized experience, and he brat about this in so many articles that he might even believe it's true: FALSE.
All my family don't use those "profile" thing, (by the way who does it properly? (should a "proper way" have to exist by the way?))

So thanks to my wonderful family I never find in the first 10 minutes what I'm looking for, leading humourist to even joke about this. (and in the end I fall in HBO or OCS in France because of content of course!)

Come on! LISTEN (I know it's hard, but you really should)

Why are we talking about the poor Netflix customer relationship weren't we talking about fake friends? Yes, sure. It's connected.

Brands usually want a lot of friends, sometimes even more than the number of customers they have: why? They believe that the more they have their boss will be happy, their community will be happy, their customers will feel happy there is only a big problem: all this is not authentic, this "happy feeling" is fake.

It's like being Neo in Matrix, waking up and realize that in fact, you are bald.

Reality is fantastic. (yes you can quote me)

If you don't have all the friends you would like for your brand online you need to ask yourself a few questions before starting a quest to get more : 

- What value would I bring to my brand's friends?
- I mean what kind of real value would make me be friend with a brand on Facebook or Instagram?
- Can I bring value properly to a huge amount of new friends?
(you can try rephrasing that with: "Am I ready to welcome five new babies in my family?") I promise it's the same answer!
- Are my existing friends already satisfied with the relationship they have with me?
(you can rephrase that with: is my direct message inbox full of compliment with nearly 0 technical issues about my product/service?)

If you can reply to all those questions by YES: You need to call us right away because we are going to develop incredible digital properties that will bring you a lot more!

If you can reply to all those questions by NO; great you are in the real World, a world where promotion and conquest can't happen without feeding properly your existing real true friends AKA "paying customer".

Do you remember last time your phone operator made that great promotion for new customers...and because you are a ten years customer old you can pay that old plan with this high price...because after all you are already a customer.

It's a double battlefield: recruiting new customers and make existing proud to be your customers, they even want to take the credit to bring more people onboard.

Usually, it all starts with an audit, what do you have, what you don't have, what you bring, and what your existing customer is crying for. Doing your best is fine... but doing what your customer is expecting from you is better. 
It usually happens when customer revolt and says, we don't want CO2 deodorant or cosmetics to be tested on animals.

Then you start asking yourself what your existing customer would like before he would even know what he wants. Tivo suppressed commercial; Tesla introduced the ludicrous mode.

And by the way, can you measure all that?

The conquest then is a process very well known, but you need to take all your existing customer with you

Are you going to have a lot of new friends fast this way? 
It's gonna be slow, and you are not going to hit big numbers in weeks... but you are going to get not fans but new customers, it's a far better relationship that allows a lot more interactions.

If you are still reading this article, it means you are ready for the biggest truth of all: it's not about the numbers: it's about the amount of Love you are gonna received (business).

One day a customer ask me: can you get me more likes on my page? I replied watching already a big community online "don't you wish they would be client instead?"

Let's talk about your existing friends and let's see how we can make this relationship an everlasting love.