What to do if your page gets scammed on Facebook

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Recently I hosted a free training where I was working with and showing 600 hosts how they could utilize Facebook giveaways to grow the awareness of their hospitality business. And it went fantastically well. We had hosts that were able to grow their Facebook following by hundreds. We had over £5,000 worth of new direct bookings and we had nearly doubled that in inquiries. And the email list of our hosts grew as well. So it was a fantastic time. There was a sour part of it though, and this is something that has has become prevalent over the last six months. And this is what I want to talk about in today's episode and I really need for everybody to let me know if this has happened to you. So make sure that you jump in the comments and let me know before we get started if this is the first time that you are tuning into a Boostly podcast episode. Please make sure that you like this video or make sure that you download this podcast episode. Subscribe to the podcast, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel, make sure you like the Instagra, the LinkedIn, the Facebook so you can get more updates. When I am posting content like this every single day, I'm looking to help host in 2021 with, with short little bite sized videos that you can take away and put into action. So today, what we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about Facebook, we're going to talk about scammers, we're going to talk about potential guests losing money and what you can do to combat that. So like I said, my name is Mark Simpson. I like to give hosts just like you, the tools, the tactics, the training and the confidence to go and get more bookings. And recently I was hosting a free bit of training, giving hosts help and advice for Facebook and Facebook giveaways. And this is not the first time I've done this. I've been doing it for many years. But this is really one of the first times where hosts have been reporting problems. And there are some very sophisticated Facebook bots. And what they will do is they will scan Facebook and they will look now and they will target giveaways and they will target the popular giveaways. So let's just say a popular giveaway is anything that's got more than 100 likes. And what they will do is the program is designed to rip, scam and duplicate the Facebook page that has got the attention and it will use this new page that's been rip and duplicated and set up to be a scam to reach out to the people that are entering the giveaway. And it's the same message every single time. Congratulations, you've won our prize. Click here or call here or do something here to redeem it. And what they're looking to do is they're asking basically for the person that they've messaged to pay one night's deposit or put some money down on a credit card to then redeem their price. And what they're obviously doing is they are scamming the that random person out of money when there's no price to be redeemed. Now, they started with just one or two and now it is multiplied and multiplied and multiplied and they're now tagging so much more people. When this first happened and the first person reported it, they were very panicked, obviously, because what was happening is that they were getting direct messages from their people who entered the giveaway saying, listen, I've just been contacted by you. I've said I've won. I've given them my credit card details. I'm a bit panicky now because it doesn't look like you. You know, people were generally worried and the host getting this as they're doing this training and doing a giveaway for first for a lot of people the first time or really panicking. But luckily we had been given a heads up, so to speak, from a host who had run us in December and said, listen, this did happen to me. Which is why we built into our T's and C's for this giveaway to say that, listen, we will never contact you and ask for payment details in the T's and C. So it covered the host back. But the most important thing, what we had to do now is we had to stop this happening again. So if this has happened to you, I would love for you to let me know in the comments below. If you listen to the audio version of this podcast, send me an email market co.uk because there's something that you really need to do straight away, before we even get onto the Facebook part, what you need to do is if anybody reports that somebody has ripped your page, scammed your page and is trying to rip them off, you need to get them to go back and you get, you need to get them to go report it to Facebook. So instantly you got to do a bit of damage control. Just say, look, really sorry this has happened. We need you to go and report that page to Facebook so it will go away, so no one else will be contacted. And then what you need to do is you need to put a comment in your Facebook giveaway post to say, there are scammers out there that are contacting innocent people, have ended this giveaway and they are trying to get your credit card details. Please do not give it to them. We will never reach out to you and ask for your credit card information, even if you won. So please do not do that. So you've done the damage control and then what you need to do is you need to go and report it to Facebook as well. Now, the annoying thing about this is that we have had multiple hosts who have reported this to Facebook. We've had multiple people that have reported it to Facebook as well, but yet Facebook refused to take the page down or they are very slow in removing it. No. No reason why, no excuses given. And I have seen over the course of the past few days in the BBC News and other reports around the Internet that this is becoming more and more common. So this is why I need to Hear from you if this has happened to you, because we are going to do some about it, we are going to put together a press release and we are going to make the world know more about this and we need to showcase it and speak from the front that this is Business owners who have had enough to worry about over the last 12 months with everything that's gone on, especially in the world of hospitality, who are now having to deal with this as they are looking to reopen and get revenue back into their business to try and make up for any losses from 2020. So we need to hear from you if this has happened to you. Please leave a comment below. If, like I said, if you listen to this on the podcast, Please email market boosley.co.uk put in the subject heading Facebook Scam giveaway and we will do our best to put somewhat together that is quality and we will get it spread around the publications. So again, this is a little bit different daily episode from what I normally do, but it is really important. The main thing is to do the damage control. Make sure you get them to report that page as soon as possible. And the plus point of if this happens to you if is it actually brings your followers closer together. And you know, I've still seen people have a really good end of giveaway and results on the other side, even when this has happened to them, as in direct bookings, inquiries and more people becoming aware of it because, like I said, it draws people together and because you've done the damage control and just not buried your head in the sand and said, oh, it's not happening, then people respect that. So again, I wanted to record this so that if this does happen to you or did happen to you or happens to you in the future, then you've got a place to come to on where you can know what to do next. Every day I come onto this channel and I give help and tactics and tips to help you increase your direct bookings. If you could do me one big favor because of all this free support, just need to do one thing. Tap the like button, go on to YouTube, hit the like button. It helps the algorithms, it helps more people see these videos. If you're listening to the podcast on the audio version, just go and share it with a friend. If you are watching a video on one of the channels, just go and share it somewhere, put it in a Facebook group and just tell hospitality owners about what we're trying to do here. My goal is to help 1 million hosts increase their direct bookings and to do that. I need your help to spread the word. So thank you very much for tuning in. My name is Mark Simpson, and I'll be back tomorrow with another episode.