Does it Really Matter Who Likes You?

Numbers count, especially when trying to determine if your marketing tactics work. Many companies use objective numbers like Facebook likes or Twitter followers to measure a campaign’s health or success. These numbers are verifiable, quantitative and logical, but likely overestimated. In a world where very often more is better one might believe having more followers is a direct correlation to success, but if your followers aren’t loyal to your brand or planning to take action, do they really matter? Likes don’t correspond to a line of revenue or a level of brand awareness.

In a Forbes article, Jayson DeMers describes what is called the Pareto Principal, which basically states that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your customers. In the world of social media some users are simply more valuable than others. With a majority of social media users who consume information but don’t contribute or interact much what is the value in the large numbers often used to measure ROI? One hundred active followers who share your content and respond to your calls to action are much more significant than a million meaningless followers.

Popular fake following services offering “get big quick” schemes are now a multi-million dollar a year business. However Google is working to weed out these imposters and Facebook and Twitter are also taking steps to suspend or delete accounts that demonstrate evidence of aggressive following or purchasing fake followers. Social media marketers vilify the practice of buying ‘fake’ social media followers from dubious ‘click farms’ as not just poor practice but pointless. They argue that only authentic followers with a genuine interest in the brand can potentially be moved to a point of purchase.

For generations anthropologists have observed how humans follow expert or high-status individuals in small groups and how those in larger groups use popularity in the same way. However, whether this identifies true influence is debatable. Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar has demonstrated that humans have social brains capable of handling about 150 friends and family, and no more. He claims this is the number of people you can have a relationship with that involves trust and obligation.

In the end, quality content that is relevant to your industry or your brand will eventually build an audience with genuine interest in who you are, what you post and what you are selling.

forbes.com; theguardian.com

Bullets

• Some shocking Content Marketing research results reveal that only 44% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy and small companies are 40% more likely to have someone in charge of content marketing than larger enterprises.
  contentmarketinginstitute.com

• Companies that blog more than 15 times per month get 5 times more traffic. The average content length for a page that ranks in top the 10 position is 2000 words and articles with images get 94% more views.
  pharmavoice.com

• People want to be in control of the content they receive: 86% of people skip TV commercials, 44% of direct mail is never opened and 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they previously opted into.
  webbiquity.com

• Despite all the hype about online, 67% of B2B content marketers consider event marketing to be their most effective strategy.
  Social Fresh

• In 2014, 39% of B2B buyers identified that they share infographics on social media frequently.
  demandgenreport.com