Why ‘Followers’ or ‘Likes’ don’t equal success

Its almost two decades since the dawn of social media marketing and still to this day it is hard to measure the return of investment (ROI) of your daily social media efforts. There are so many intangible factors that are hard to put into figures such as SEO improvements due to consistent posting, the increase of your brand awareness “I’ve seen this on Instagram”, or shaping your brands language and feel in the mind of a followers “I like this brands vibe”.

One mistake I see happening too often is that businesses try to measure their Social Media Campaign success on the number of Facebook, Twitter followers or likes. It seems logical to use objectives such as numbers to measure overall success but the real value of social media campaign success lays deeper. Let’s put the myth to rest and look at what really matters when it comes to the success rate of your social marketing efforts.

We automatically fall into the trap to believe that more is better, but what really matters is how these followers engage with you and your content.

Having more followers or more likes on a photo does not automatically mean that they value your business or product since these likes may be from indifferent users. The real engagement and the type of follower you have is a whole lot more important than the general amount of followers.

Rather than the amount of likes you get on a photo what matters is WHO is liking the photo. You could have 1,000,000 followers that never engage with your content or you could have 10 followers that like, share and engage with your brand, which one do you think is more likely to buy your products?

The best way to get real followers is by posting creative, fun and interesting content consistently. Run out of ideas on what to post? Have a read at my ‘What To Post’ here.