If you’re a business owner, it’s important to stay current on new social media trends. And for some business owners, the lure of gaining popularity is so strong they are now seeking service providers to buy them online supporters, such as ”likes” on Facebook pages, to boost the number of seemingly happy customers.

With social marketing evolving, companies are increasingly inventing and reinventing ways to create more clever and successful marketing campaigns, than their competitors.

The latest trend a lot of businesses appear to be following is buying “friends” on Facebook. With countless sites dedicated to boosting online popularity, such as www.getmorefansandlikes.com , www.likesandfollowers.com and www.fanpagehookup.com  , Facebook followers can be bought for as little as $30, for up to 20,000 Facebook followers.

Nicole Coughlin-Smith, the managing director of the Institute of Online Business, which provides customised social media training, said the growth in boosting Facebook ”likes” was based on the theory that the more people who followed a business, the greater the increase in sales.

A lot of small businesses are taking this opportunity to increase their following believing that the more followers you have, the more dollars you make.

Online retailer CatchOfTheDay has almost 227,000 Facebook followers, and company founder Gabby Leibovich said about 6 per cent of sales were generated through the site.

”You know what they say about social media, it’s word of mouth on steroids,” he said.

Social marketing becoming more and more popular by the day, as it helps reach a large number of people in such a minimum time frame, from all across the world.