No, Really, Size Isn’t Important…
Does the number of connections your company has on Facebook make a difference to your bottom line? Do more followers on Twitter translate to more money in your bank account?
Image by Martina Rathgens via Twitter
To some degree the answer is, of course it matters. If people don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you or spread the word about how fabulous you are. When I attended a live interview with Guy Kawasaki via Skype, he said, “There are two kinds of people on Twitter. The ones who say they want more followers and liars.” My clients ask me all the time “How can I get more Facebook fans?” In some ways, yes, size matters.
How you interact with people matters more, because if your interactions are in line with your goals and strategy, your numbers will grow – or not, depending on what you are trying to do.
On July 26, on Entrepreneur.com there was an article titled “Five Lies About Social Media Marketing,” which has 136 comments as of now. The debate in those comments is lively, and a few days later, July 29, a rebuttal appeared, titled “Five Truths About Social Media Marketing.” The same five points are covered in both articles.
The point that both articles seem to miss is that everything depends on a multitude of factors, with the biggest one being what, exactly, you are trying to accomplish by making social media a part of your marketing plan in the first place.
What is it that you want from people when they connect with you? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to tell their friends about you? Are you simply trying to gain or retain their loyalty? What is your goal?
These are critical questions that you should answer before you ever try to increase your numbers of friends, connections or followers, and the answers to them will inform your marketing strategy. If you sell luxury items, scarcity may well be part of you marketing strategy. Exclusivity can be a powerful selling tool. However, if you sell $3 widgets and make a $1 profit on each one, you probably want to reach as many people as possible.
For just about any approach you can think of there is somebody out there using it successfully. Pretty much everything you read about social media talks about engagement. Then there are people like Seth Godin who, famously, does not engage. He does not allow comments on his blog, does not respond to comments on his Facebook page and doesn’t do much of anything at all with Twitter. Yet his books are best sellers.
Regardless of the approach that works best, one thing remains important: content. The information you provide, the tone of your communication, the status updates are all the ways your customers gauge whether or not they want to do business with you. Your content tells your story so make sure it fits into your strategy.
Have you found that increasing the number of social media connections you have makes a difference? Do you have a strategy for using any of the marketing tools you use? Do you find the tone of your content matters?
Excellent points, Dava. Social media novices (and those who just behave like novices) seem to miss many of those points. Sheer numbers don’t tell the whole story, because quantity and quality are related but not equal. Yes, the larger your number of followers, the greater likelihood that your target audience will be among those numbers, and the greater likelihood that your non-target audience readership might tell your ideal clients about you, but we’re talking in likelihoods and not guarantees.
People often note that they’d rather have 100 loyal customers and ideal clients following them than 1000 lookie loos, and that’s certainly valid, but as is the desire (followed by actual EFFORT) to appeal to 1000 loyal and ideal clients. But no matter the numbers, all you can really control is your content, so, as you note, it’s what you say and how you say it that requires the greatest consideration, as it has the greatest potential to deliver.
Spot on!
I think, too, that the idea of needing massive numbers is first intimidating, then intoxicating. So many business owners are put off by the idea of “needing” so many connections, on top of having to learn how to navigate social media. All of the contradictory information is confusing for those novices, and really, good, common sense is what’s called for.
Another great post Dava. Thank you.
Too many people and organizations use marketing tools without considering what they want to accomplish. Twitter being one great example. It’s so easy to get followers and then to broadcast that number of followers and quantity of tweets becomes the end-goal. It wastes time and energy for most marketers though. Tweets to random disengaged followers are no more effective than random unqualified phone calls.
Doug, that’s a great analogy – the blast style of tweeting and random, unqualified phone calls. Thanks for your insightful comment!