Why Quality Over Quantity Matters In Social Media Marketing
Why does quality over quantity matter when it comes to social media marketing? Should you be watching your followers or engagement rates? Let's look into this topic further to establish where your social media marketing efforts should really be going.
I came across a thread on a Facebook networking group where a user asked:
"Does it matter how many followers a social media manager has themselves? Does it put you off if they don't have A LOT?"
The replies on the threat mirror each other, and my own opinion - no, the follower count doesn't really matter especially when you take into account that person can be:
a) Too busy driving client accounts to focus on their own
b) Have a private personal life they don't wish to share
Just a couple to throw out there. But also, regardless of why their follower count isn't in the millions - I hope we're getting past the numbers game in social media. My current Instagram count is around 3.5k followers and it's one of my drivers for gaining new clients and projects. I have worked hard for my 3.5k but I work even harder to keep those who are invested in my journey and into my services - because although the platform is growing nicely organically, I would never want to take my focus away from those people who have been a part of my community longer than perhaps 100 spam makeup accounts. Yes, those 100 will make my follower count go up but will they bring anything to me in terms of value? No.
When I work on strategies with my client social media marketing accounts I always make it super clear that they shouldn't be focussing on follower count - it should be engagement. I would be happier for my client account to have 300 followers and 250 of them be engaged and buy their product/service than have 10,000 and only 20 of those are engaged.
Quality over quantity - always.
When we look for bloggers to work with on campaigns and events, we don't look at their following count but rather how engaged and loyal they are to the blogger or influencer - because trust me, some people go as far as buying thousands of followers but you can easily tell who's account is not organic by checking out their engagement and the types of account following them.
See, following counts can be manipulated. To be honest, so can engagement to a certain extent - but having a community of supportive people who have similar interests and enjoy your services or products is worth thousands of numbers on your following tracker.
If you can change your mindset to focus on engaging your community than chasing new followers, your account will naturally organically grow - here are 3 things you can do today to be engaging and present to your social media community:
1. Bring value. Share a free service tip to help your followers along; share a discount on a product to say thank you to loyal social media followers - bring value to their day and they will thank you for it.
2. Ask them questions. Run a poll and get the opinion of your community on a question - and remember to value that opinion and actually implement the sensible answers. This is how you build a loyal community of trust.
3. Show up in your comments. When someone takes the time to comment on your post or to ask you a question, reply! Sounds simple but it's an easy thing to forget if you 'post and run'. Stick around on your platform after you've posted and interact with the comments.
