If you are involved in social media, you’re aware of the fact that people follow you, or friend you. More and more people are talking about social media stars or influencers who get paid to post and endorse products on social media. Everyone from the Kardashian family to the recent Enessa O’Neill drama, with their hundreds of thousands of followers, makes us believe that follower count matters.
But here’s the question… does follower count ACTUALLY matter?
The answer that seems the most obvious is, yes. These social media stars get paid more if they have more followers. So, if your goal is to be a social media star, sure, you’re going to want to build a large following. Most of us, however, are running our lives and businesses aware of the fact that social media is a powerful tool, but we’re not focused on follower count. We’re focused on results for our business.
But here’s the question… does follower count ACTUALLY matter?
The answer that seems the most obvious is, yes. These social media stars get paid more if they have more followers. So, if your goal is to be a social media star, sure, you’re going to want to build a large following. Most of us, however, are running our lives and businesses aware of the fact that social media is a powerful tool, but we’re not focused on follower count. We’re focused on results for our business.
With that different focus, the obvious answer changes to NO… follower count isn’t the be all end all of measuring your social media marketing success. You can spend hundreds of hours creating content, engaging with people, going to events, writing a book etc. and still only have a couple thousand followers. Instead, here are a few other things to keep an eye on to gauge your success:
- Are the people who go to your site downloading anything or engaging with you?
- If you have email marketing, are they signing up?
- Look at your subscription numbers.
- How long do they stay on your site? Do they come back?
- Check out your bounce rate, return visits, time on page and page depth.
- Are you being talked about and remembered?
- Look at your mentions on different social media platforms.
- Are people reaching out to you and asking you for input, advice, guest speaking, or guest blogging?
There is so much more to measuring your success than follower count. Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t just look at the easy numbers and don’t let yourself stress about them. They’re going to go up and down. Make sure you look at everything in depth and if something needs to be changed, change it. Keep going though, your work is making a difference, you just have to know how to look at it.
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