How many fans does my business need?
Here at SMR Social we get approached everyday by new and established businesses who need our help on social media. There are 2 scenarios that highlight the importance of starting your social media campaign properly:
- A new business that just wants to increase fans and followers as soon as possible
- An established business that have hundreds of thousands of fans and followers but no engagement
Scenario 1…
When we’re in talks with startups or businesses that don’t already have any social media, one warning sign for us is when they don’t stop talking about hitting 1000 Facebook fans asap, or 10,000 Twitter followers within a month. Yes it’s great to get your fan base up but if it’s all you’re focussed on then your mindset is completely wrong. Would you rather have 1000 Facebook fans on your page and only reach them organically? Or would you rather have 10 fans on your Facebook page but reach 100,000 targeted fans with your message?
Scenario 2…
We often get approached by established businesses that have huge followings on Social Media that will either be concerned at their lack of engagement, or will be quick to highlight how many fans/followers they have. It can be quite easy for us to tell how valuable a pages followers are just from looking at engagement rates. That’s what’s important after all, valuable fans not as many fans as possible. When engagement rates are low it usually turns out that a large percentage of the pages’ fans aren’t in the target audience. This is usually because they’ve ‘bought’ fans or followers in the past for a very cheap price.
What can we learn from this?
If you’re just starting out on social media, it’s really important to define your target audience and go after them. Don’t set goals of 1000 fans in 1 months etc. You don’t know how much it’s going to cost or how long it’s going to take until you start putting the work in to reach your fan base. It’s better to have 10 fans that are interested in your business than 100,000 fans that don’t even speak the same language.
There used to be an argument that having thousands of fans made your page look popular and therefore more trust worthy. In the early days this may have had some truth to it, but these days people are more social media savvy. They can tell a fake fan base from a mile off, just like we can.
Be patient with your social media campaign. It’s not something to be rushed!
