This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.
Soon after the first status messages go up on Facebook, there is a panic when the number of people following your accounts don’t reach critical mass within the first two weeks. The comparison to mailing lists and distribution databases start to come up. (Can’t we BUY followers?) More followers equals more people to broadcast cleverly-crafted marketing messages to. What good is spending all this time (a.k.a. money) on these channels if we don’t have a hundred thousand followers consuming our messages? Why don’t more people want to read what we are broadcasting? Why don’t they like us?
To put it bluntly, numbers matter.
Collecting numbers just for the sake of having numbers isn’t the goal. Often times the quality of “the numbers” is overlooked. Easy question – would you rather have 10,000 ‘fans’ that don’t really care what you are about and ignore you, or 500 ‘fans’ that are actively seeking information on your products or services? Of course even with 500 ‘fans’ you can get impatient and wonder why your widget isn’t flying off the shelf or customers aren’t lined up out the door. Christopher Penn has always said if you are selling Gulfstream G5 jets, and only need to sell one every two years to live like a king – you only need two followers, one of which is ready to buy a jet, and one that knows someone that wants to buy a jet. You need to find the right numbers. [Read more...]
