And then it happens…. You’re racking up page likes faster than Adele collects Grammys and your business’ Instagram page hits 100 000 followers. Everyone erupts with applause. The office is abuzz with excitement, so the bigwigs pop a little bubbly to celebrate. This is a big deal, after all. High social media followers numbers mean massive engagement and that business revenue is about to skyrocket, right?
Umm… not quite.
The truth is that followers can mean absolutely nothing. Just because a person likes your page, does not necessarily mean that they are engaging with your content or will ever convert into a paying customer of your product/service. Followers don’t matter as much as influence and interest do. You could have thousands of followers online, but if just five are actually interested in your offering, then the audience you’ve built isn’t very valuable. In social media, quality trumps quantity.
If You’re Not Spending, You’re Still Paying A Price
Popularity on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter is determined more by how a brand uses the platforms intelligently and what it knows of them. This is what you should know:
- Organic Reach Is in Decline
It’s no secret that social media platforms have intentionally changed algorithms over the years to cut organic reach. Currently, the average reach of an organic Facebook post hovers around 5% of your audience. That means non-promoted content from a page with 1000 followers will only be seen by 50 people. The easiest way to boost engagement is through Paid Media, which allows businesses to reach broader audiences that are likely to engage with your brand and with greater accuracy than organic media.
Paid media refers to all content that has been promote on social media with a budget. Paid media is an essential component of revenue growth.
Read more: Why Paid Media Needs a Place In Your Marketing Strategy
- Superficial Followers Exist
It’s not uncommon for people to follow brands on social media for superficial reasons, but have no actual interest in supporting the business. These individuals may have only followed you to win free prizes in a “Follow. Like. Share” competition, or because a friend who works at the brand pressured them to like the page. Either way, superficial followers do not represent real value to a brand. The solution to this is Paid Media’s advanced targeting feature, which unlike organic, gives brands total control over who sees their content and when.
- Numbers Don’t Always Equal Sales
A large following is no guarantee of sales. Pages receive follows for a boatload of reasons that have nothing to do with buying. To encourage higher financial returns, you need to connect with true fans and build an engaged community that will purchase what you sell. Without them, numbers mean nothing.
A high engagement rate is much more valuable than one’s number of followers. It shows who’s connecting, who’s converting and that the business is making money. Paid media is the best solution to building that engaged community of followers; a fanbase with genuine interest and intention of supporting your brand.
To learn more about how we Coffee Creative Studio can strategize and execute Paid Media campaigns for your business, get in touch with us.
See related projects >
