May 17, 2016 •mattd
One of our favourite phrases in The Bright Click office is ‘Sanity, Not Vanity’ and in no better case can this be applied than in terms of the number of followers that you have across your social media channels.
Of course it looks great if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of followers, and if you’re a big company or organisation then the chances are that you could well be enjoying that sort of genuine attention.
The main thing you’re aiming for across any social campaign though is to be able to reach a target audience – an audience who are into what you’re doing.
Look at your Facebook news feed – are you following anything that doesn’t interest you? If you were a massive football fan but hated rugby, would you follow rugby teams on Facebook? The likelihood is ‘no’.
So why do your fans follow you? Either because they’re already your customers (and in which case your advocates – incredibly powerful) or because they’re interested in what you have to say.
There’s the ‘sanity’ part – you’ve got an engaged audience who will likely interact / comment / share your content, and as a result, their friends, colleagues and associates become increasingly aware of your brand in an organic way.
So what happens when you have a page full of loads of followers who aren’t into what you do? Well, this is the ‘vanity’ part, and if this is your objective, then you’re probably wasting your time.
Facebook uses algorithms to determine which percentage of your followers see your posts. It’s a complex thing, and it evolves constantly, but only around a maximum of 25% of your audience will see your posts at any given time.
We always recommend adopting a paid strategy alongside your organic strategy too – it’s how Facebook makes its money but it’s also very effective, and probably a topic for another blog post!
However there’s two main things to note here.
The more followers you have, the more diluted your content becomes – if you have 1000 followers then around 250 will see your content.
But if only 100 of these are ‘genuine’ – there’s a good chance that the whole potentially engaged audience following you will miss your post entirely – and how crazy is that..?!
So, you’re not getting the engagement you were expecting and you boost the post. Great idea?
In theory yes, however you’re now paying to reach your 100 ‘interested’ fans, plus 900 who’ve never heard of you, and don’t care about your business, brand, or what you have to say… Not the greatest use of your marketing budget.
And that’s why neither is ‘buying’ fans.
You’ll see loads of sites offering you the chance to ‘buy’ fans and it looks too good to be true – £10 for an extra 1000 fans on your Facebook page seems like an amazing deal, but it’s a false economy and will cost you a whole lot more money, not to mention damage, in the long-term.
Concentrate on growing your audience organically by consistently providing great content, directly aimed at your brand advocates, with a paid boost here and there.
Sanity, not vanity.
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