Numbers vs Customers - the Business of Social Hype

“Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity”

How many times have you heard your mentor/coach/YouTube idol use that phrase? Chances are a few but the same can also be paraphrased for your social media community. Often people focus more about the size of the fan or follower base, rather than the quality.

Yes, a million followers is cool. But you know what’s cooler?
[No, not ‘a billion followers’ for you Social Network film fans]
A thousand followers who are actually converting into leads and sales

Brand awareness is important for brands though, don’t get me wrong, and this is where the importance of content and context is key. Engaging your audience is important. Knowing if they are customers and how to make them so is vital.

In a recent chat with a prospective client, their question was “so how are you going to deliver thousands of followers or fans”. To their surprise my response was to the effect of “It doesn’t matter”. The truth was that they already had around 26,000 Twitter followers and a similar number of Facebook fans yet only 2.5% of these were retained customers of theirs. The real focus for me and the Gumption team is to drive more of their current community to become paying customers.

On that note, I leave you with the question:

Would you rather million fans on Facebook paying you nothing but attention? Or a thousand people in your community paying you for your valuable services?

...We know what our answer would be.