How many followers can you get me?

This is a question that often comes up when we talk about digital marketing for social media. The correct answer to this question is: don’t know, don’t care.

Context: Facebook has been considering changing the way we see ‘Likes’ on Facebook and Instagram posts. The company is carrying out active tests to see how it can push social media users back towards focusing on quality content and connectivity, instead of allowing vanity metrics to influence their behavior.

Do fans build reach?

A common misconception is that building fans and followers allows you to sustainably reach those people in the future.

Not for organic posts

Organic posts are content you publish but do not boost/promote via paid options.

Your page may have 10,000 followers. That does not mean that the content you post will effectively go out to 10,000 people. In fact, it is perfectly possible that your post might actually end up with no more than 50 views. There is no such thing as free reach.

An average social media user may follow 100s of pages/accounts but that does not mean that they wish to see content from them every time they scroll through their feed. You may actually be following 1000 pages but will see content from only a handful from them every time you login because the platform knows what you like.

Definitely not for paid posts

Paid posts could be paid ads, as well as boosted content.

The reach you get on paid social media content comes entirely from the targeting you setup and the money you put behind it. You may have setup a company yesterday and a Facebook/Instagram page today, but a well-built ad and a decent budget could give you the same social reach (and clicks!) that a well-established competitor might be enjoying.

Do fans build page credibility?

While platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat continue to give off the impression that vanity metrics (like followers, likes, and comments) matter, developments in Facebook’s targeting features and capabilities have made it clear that the platforms’ AI gives little to no value to them when judging a page.

For instance, the quality of a post is usually judged from the type of engagement the post records during the first 500 unique views. This is also what is sometimes referred to as the “Learning Phase”.

Don’t bet on Page Visits

Modern day social media users have very little time and they like to spend it scrolling through their feed consuming the perfectly curated content that the platform chooses to serve them. As a business owner engaged in social media marketing, most of the reach, clicks and engagement that comes from social media marketing comes from your content showing up as sponsored content in your target audience’s feeds.

A very small fraction actually visits your Facebook/Instagram page. Your content should be built to send people to your landing page. That is where the conversion happens. Not on your Facebook/Instagram page.

Clicks, CTR, Conversion Rate, Engagement Rate

These are the key metrics you need to be actively monitoring. These are the only metrics that provide any indication of a campaign’s success. In sharp comparison to vanity metrics, these key metrics are built to keep track of your audience’s actual interaction with your content.

Your social media is one of the critical touch-points in your customer’s lifecycle and these key metrics are the indicators that you are making actual progress through your social media marketing.

At bfound, our social media marketing services are built entirely around these key metrics.

Need some help with your social media marketing? Talk to one of our experts or check out this page to learn more about how we do it right.