(Psst) I have to let you in on a little secret. How many followers you have on social media doesn’t really matter all that much! There I said it…
Growing the number of followers on platforms like Facebook and Instagram is the one thing almost every business owner I talk to is concerned with. While it’s true that this used to be very important, the truth is, that is one of the last things you should care about when it comes to social media.
That is of course, as long as you have some social media followers and aren’t starting completely from scratch. I’m not saying you don’t need any followers on social media (because you do). I’m just saying, the number of followers isn’t all that important. Your time is better spent focusing on something else and here’s why…
1. People Don’t Like To Follow Brands
Our news feeds are filled more click-bait and ads than ever before, and the amount of spams emails we get on a daily basis is overwhelmingly high. The worst part is, once it all starts, it feels like it’s almost impossible to stop, no matter how many times you unfollow or unsubscribe.
Consumers have taken notice and now they are much more guarded with their online activities. They know once they follow your brand on social media, they are going to hear from you, consistently, and that you are going to be selling to them.
They also realize that the algorithms are going to show them other, similar content because it is something they are “interested” in. That can easily start to take over their feeds, which ruins their social experience (and frankly, annoys them), so they would rather just not follow you.
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but think about it this way. Can you think of 5 brands/businesses (that aren’t your friends or family) that you like to follow? What about 10? If the answer is no, you are just like most people, and that’s perfectly okay!
2. You Can’t Take Likes To The Bank
It’s as simple as that. Even if you have the most likes, comments, shares, and followers in the entire world, you can’t walk into a bank and cash them in. It doesn’t work like that.
On their face, followers are worth a total of $0. Leads, sign-ups, and sales are where the money is at and that is what you should be focusing on.
Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean they are going to buy your products/services. In fact, most purchasers don’t like, comment, share, or follow the brands they buy. They linger.
Most people are too busy with their normal lives to take time out to engage with a brand regularly. Instead, they poke around, quietly doing research until they are ready to buy. Those are the people you want to focus on, not your social media followers.
3. There Is A More Important Metric
Follower count is nothing more than a vanity metric. It looks nice to outsiders, but it doesn’t give you an accurate idea of how many people are actually seeing your content on a regular basis. That is where Custom Audience’s come into play.
Facebook and Instagram allow you to create Custom Audiences based on people who have engaged with your pages, in a custom time period that you set, up to 365 days. (Personally, I like to set it for at least 7, 30, and 365 days). From there, you will be able to see how many people engaged or took some action (like, comment, share, click, etc) on your page.
When you compare those numbers to the amount of new followers you got in the same period, 9 times out of 10, you will see that the engaged with the page numbers are much, much higher. It all goes back to people not wanting to follow brands and quietly engaging in the background instead.
The real beauty of this metric is that it can also be used to retarget those who have engaged with your content in the past. That means that you can show those people, who already like you at least a little, your high converting sales content in an effort to make money!
As long as you have some social media followers (500+ is a solid number), you probably don’t need to worry too much about gaining even more. That fact of the matter is, gaining followers is hard, and it doesn’t necessarily do much for your business.
People are hesitant to follow brands because they are already annoyed and bombarded with marketing messages; followers do not equal sales because most buyers are quiet lurkers; and there are simply better metrics to measure your success.
At the end of the day, social media followers look nice, but they don’t bring home the bacon!
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