30,000 Followers Won’t Pay the Bills
Social media has earned a lot of attention in the past year for being the latest “must-have” of any integrated marketing campaign. While social media marketing is extremely valuable and can be tailored to work for almost any company in any industry, it is not the magic bullet that some businesses seem to think it is. Having a strong social presence is just one part of a well-rounded marketing strategy. If you’re focusing the majority of your efforts and budget on social media marketing, you could be limiting your chance for success.
I’ll admit that I use social media marketing on behalf of my own company, and I find it useful in its own way. Twitter is a great place to link to great content, both blogs and articles that I write and to those that I find interesting/useful. I post the latest SEO video lessons to Facebook and am a member of Internet marketing, SEO and social media marketing groups on LinkedIn. All three social networking sites are a great place to build the Brick Marketing brand, but I don’t expect to get any real leads from my time spent on these sites.
When it comes to establishing connections, I consider getting social media followers/Fans to be of secondary importance. My primary goal is to get website traffic to convert; I want them to fill out a proposal form or sign up for the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter. All my social media marketing efforts are designed to drive traffic to the Brick Marketing site, not the other way around. That’s why I always recommend that clients place their “Connect with Us” buttons in the footer of their website. Why would you want to encourage someone to leave your site and Like you on Facebook? Isn’t it better if you encourage them to stay and get them to do business with you right then and there?
I’m not saying that having those relationships on social networking sites isn’t important. You never know what kind of affect your presence there is going to have on a potential customer. Think of it this way, say someone sees a one of your Tweets and follows it over to your blog. They read through a few posts and are impressed by your content, so they sign up for your RSS feed. After a while they connect with you on LinkedIn. They find out you’re going to be appearing at an upcoming tradeshow from a press release you sent out, so they make sure to stop by your booth. There, you get them to opt-in to your bi-weekly newsletter. Somewhere down the line they visit your site and finally fill out your proposal form. Which touch point do you attribute that lead to? They never followed you on Twitter or Liked you on Facebook, but you eventually converted them. Isn’t that the real goal?
Having 30,000 fans/followers is certainly impressive, but you have to look at the quality of those social networking connections. Did you run a Facebook promotion where consumers had to Like your page to get the special deal? How many un-Liked your page when the promotion was over? How many of your Twitter followers actually reTweet your posts? How many of those accounts are even active?
At the end of the day, your social networking activities need to help you build your brand, drive traffic to your site and help you convert visitors into purchasers. Having 30,000 fans/followers doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t help you achieve those goals.
13 Responses to “30,000 Followers Won’t Pay the Bills”
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Indeed, the social media campaigns have to be integrated with the internet marketing plan.
However, this integration doesn’t mean that FB posts or tweets have to be too pushy & commercial, they should rather help building trust, interacting with the audience, raise interest in the brand and the activities developed by the company…
Great posting nick, well said …its amazing how many people believe its the be all and end all to mass followers with little or no plan.
Business first order of business is to make money.
I think you nailed it in the last line, Nick. ‘Achieve those goals’. The key to using social media as one of your marketing tools is to set specific goals (that doesn’t mean # of followers or likes) so that you can measure whether or not your efforts net results.
I set aside a very specific amount of time to work on social media. But it is just ONE component of the overall marketing efforts such as blogging, networking, presentations and marketing collateral.
Hi Marnie,
Thanks for reading and your comment!
Agreed, I also spend a certain amount of my time on social media related tasks each day…its like brushing my teeth for me
Take Care,
Nick
Niick,
good post. I totally agree that many self proclaimed social media “experts” believe it is the golden goose of selling.
I think Facebook and Twitter certainly have their place in today’s marketing. I’m like Marnie, I set aside a certain amount of time in my daily schedule to work my social media marketing and networking. I have found it a more valuable tool in expanding future business relationships than spending an equal amount of time doing the old fashioned cold calling via telephone. I work towards establishing more Linkedin connections through social media than Twitter followers.
This post is on the money, there’s no point at all having lots of followers than will never have any interest in what you are selling. Marketing basics apply firstly determine your market, where are they to be found what are their interests, concerns needs wants etc.
Then you can determine what social media channels you are going to use and what your message is your offers etc.
I have put a post on my own blog that deals with some of the tools that can be used to identify your targets using twitter.
Regards
Mark Wheatley
Well said, A thousand of followers who are not active will not do any good to your site. It is better to have 100 active readers than to have this thousand of inactive users..
You are absolutely right.. if you don’t have targeted followers or fans then the count doesn’t make any sense.. Even if you build good relationship with your fans it can generate some sales but can’t help you more.. But atleast it can give visits to your website which could help you other way..
I agree, you can have all the followers in the world, but if there not buying what your trying to sell then it doesn’t really matter. I’ve found for myself that a lot of the traffic I do get from social media sites isn’t very good traffic. Most of the time they visit just to browse for a few seconds then disappear.
What a helpful reminder, Nick! I have really enjoyed this article and forwarded it to my friends. I’ve been working as a social media manager for a number of local businesses and see how easy it is to get caught up in the numbers game. Quality over quantity! And most importantly sales. Sometimes I wish there’d be a more direct link/statistic I could show between social media success and sales, but it’s not that obvious…right away.
Keep up the great work, I love reading your blog every day!
Thanks Anna for being a loyal reader!
Take Care
Nick
Hi Nick, I love the articles Brick Marketing sends out and read them all. Social Media is all the rage but your article hits square in the head that the “objective” is harnessing the power of social media to drive traffic to the money site. Well said!!!
Thanks Nick. I receive a large number of marketing emails a day and I always read yours because I find them interesting and valuable. Thank you again for a great post, Roger