If you don’t have the pleasure of living with a tween, you may not know about the currency of “friendship,” the numbers that rule the middle school set. Kids track the number of their Likes and Followers on Instagram with the obsessive interest of a stock market day trader. Literally overnight, your popularity may rise or fall by several numbers; rock solid data that validates or devalues your worth in this world.
On any given evening, I might ask my daughter: Is @sandwichham49 really your friend?
Sounds silly, doesn’t it?
But how different is the business world’s current preoccupation with analytics? When a blog post fails to elicit views or our newest Facebook photo gets fewer Likes than the last one, we scramble to discover the cause… and fix the offending low numbers. More than one of our clients has accumulated high numbers of followers on Facebook–they look impressive to the board members–but when we evaluate engagement on the platform, very few of the followers actually interact with the posts.
Similarly, most businesses today have a website, but the ease of navigation and effectiveness of the information contained there varies greatly. We have even seen fun corporate videos go viral… but does the resulting “popularity” raise the bottom line?
Most importantly, if you take a brief glance at your analytics, the number of clicks may fool you. Or perhaps you’re one of the cool kids who doesn’t care about popularity: many companies are simply too busy conducting business to stay on top of social media and its shifting allegiances. The problem with a non-existent or even cursory evaluation of your social media performance is that you may miss the real heart of the matter. You may be “popular” but never get asked to the big dance.
Challenge your team to delve deeper. Are your posts getting Likes but failing to engage potential clients? When a visitor clicks on your homepage, does she explore the site and take the more telling step of downloading an e-book or requesting a consultation? When you gain a follower on any platform, is that follower someone who shares your content marketing with others? Is that follower worth the number he represents?
My tweens at home still have years left to navigate the ever-shifting spectrum of popularity. And my advice to them is the same for them as it is for clients: popularity is fleeting. Make sure your “friends” are real, not merely virtual.
For a free social media consultation, contact Contrast Creative at (919) 469-9151.