The first questions
When we first meet a client, we ask a series of questions. The purpose is to get to know the client and determine the correct strategic direction. We ask questions about their customers, about their competition and about their goals. Every once in a while a client or prospect will talk about increasing the number of followers or fans (“likes”) as a goal.
You are what you measure.
When selecting your goals, understand that what you choose to measure will ultimately determine the actions you take and the results you get.
If you choose to focus on simply the number of fans or followers you have, then you are playing a popularity contest.
Likewise if you are worried about your Klout score, Empire Avenue valuation or your Peer Index score, you are playing a different type of game. In some industries, focusing on these metrics could lead to tangible results, in most cases however, it likely will not.
For us, we prefer to measure referrals, speaking engagements, web site traffic to conversions, and other metrics that directly correlate to revenue. Our favorite metric are these things called dollars. They look like this…
Old School versus New Skool
Old school marketing is about impressions. Ad buys were sold based upon impressions. The belief was that more impressions would lead to more sales. It is a numbers game. It is quantity over quality. It’s a simple blast strategy that statistically states if 1 out of every 1,000 people that see your ad buy from you, get more people to see the ad.
It is because of this old school marketing that we care about followers and fans. The old school theory penetrates through the social media reality than more doesn’t necessarily mean better.
In new media, and the coming promise of web 3.0, the semantic web, we can be highly targeted. We can focus more on individuals that matter rather than the masses that distract us.
Distractions
All of the “ego-metrics” distract you from looking at what really matters, getting new business. While some companies stay up at night hitting the refresh button on their browser, over-and-over, worried about breaking a new threshold in followers, others are focusing on the one customer that needs help right now. While one CEO is obsessing over Klout scores, another is simply having lunch with a new prospect they met online.
When formulating your strategy, try to see beyond the obvious “feel-good” numbers. If you want to measure followers, measure the ones that refer you new clients, count the followers that purchase from you or the ones that publicly promote the heck out of you. Those are followers worth counting. But don’t just settle for counting the people that went through the effort to click “Follow” or “Like” many of whom could be spammers.
When responding to customers, don’t just look at their Klout scores to determine who to respond to. You never know the actual clout an individual possesses, so treat all of your customers as if they were influential.
Try Harder
I know we all want this whole thing to be easier. It’d be nice if followers nicely translated to dollars. It’d be nice if once you hit a 75 Klout score your company stock jumped 5%.
That’s just not the reality.
If all you measure is your followers and fans you
Do yourself a favor: dig deeper, try harder.