This post is an excerpt from one made by Sara Hodge in the Connect for Entrepreneurial Women Facebook group. For daily tips, support and information on social media marketing for small business, be sure to join for free right here.
Running the numbers
Ask any social media manager who is running accounts for various clients and they’ll all tell you the same thing.
The #1 concern of most clients? Numbers.
“How long will it take you to get my Facebook page to 10,000 likes?”
“How many followers can you get me in a week?”
“Can you make this go viral?”
Of course numbers are most certainly important, as is ROI. And it’s frustrating to wait sometimes for that hard-to-measure social ROI to finally kick in, since social marketing is a slow and gradual process.
Put an ad in the paper and you can tell in a matter of days if it worked or not.
Social… not so much.
Drastic measures
This pressure to continue pushing hard for bigger numbers has begun to take its toll on the social media landscape. People paid in to apps like Instagress, some allowing it to completely automate their Instagram accounts, following and unfollowing, posting inappropriate canned comments left, right and center.
Everyone hated it.
Everyone it seems, except for those doing it. Their numbers exploded.
It’s annoying, but it’s hard to argue with that. Some dude out there with 3 blurry photos of his cat currently has about 30k more followers than you do.
It comes to a point where we have to ask… do the numbers really matter?
What about authenticity? What about ethics? What about actual human CONNECTION?
Social media is interactive.
Whether it’s an auto post on Instagram or a drive by copy-paste promo shared in 9 different Facebook groups in a span of 3 minutes, it’s all about the numbers.
“How many people can I get…”
The problem is, robotic connection doesn’t work with humans. It is ineffective. It annoys everyone. It doesn’t get sales.
Yes, it gets 30k followers. The vast majority of whom are either also bots or completely irrelevant randoms.
Bots and randoms don’t buy stuff. They don’t come into your store to seal the deal. They don’t need coaching packages, or facial moisturizer.
Real people do.
Instagress is down. Chalk one up for the humans. What else can we do to bring social back around? Some say a noticeable change has begun. Have you seen it?
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