Viral growth in social media outpaces large numbers of faux followers said Seth Godin in one of his best ever blog posts today. The following piece was published by Jamie Turner, Editor-in-Chief of 60secondmarketer.com, and is reproduced here with his kind permission:
Seth Godin wrote a terrific blog post today. He discussed the propensity for many brands to focus on getting more followers instead of focusing on providing “viral-worthy” promotions or “forward-to-a-friend-worthy” blog posts.
This chart from Seth Godin points out that brands who focus on quantity of followers are missing the point. It’s about the quality of the idea and the engagement of your followers.
This is something the 60 Second Marketer team has been talking about for a long time. Our point is that your brand’s social media success revolves around the quality of your audience, not the quantity of your audience.
We’ve all seen the Tweeple who have 10,000+ followers. In the early stages of the social media game, our collective response was probably, “Wow! This person has 10,000+ followers. They must be really good or really smart or both.”
But after a while, we’ve collectively realized that unless you’re Seth Godin, Chris Brogan or some other well-known person (or brand), if you have more than 10,000 followers, you’re probably spending too much time getting new followers and not enough time providing great content.
Most of us know that there are a number of ways to artificially grow your Twitter and/or Facebook followers. But these techniques are the 21st century version of SPAM. They’re useless, counter-productive and a complete waste of time.
Seth Godin has been preaching about this ever since Permission Marketing came out many, many years ago. The secret is to get real followers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.
When you have a moment, read Seth’s blog on this topic.
Or, if you’re a member of the Short Attention Span Club, you can read these highlights:
- Many brands believe that the quantity of followers is more important than the quality of followers
- In one social media experiment that Seth conducted, 200,000 followers led to a very dismal 25 click-throughs
- The number of click-throughs is directly proportional to the quality of your promotional ideas
- If you start with 10,000 “fans” and have an idea that nets .8 new people per generation, eventually, your idea dies out (yellow line)
- If you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net pass along), it doesn’t take long before you overtake the other plan (green line)
- If you start with 100 people and the idea is just slightly better (1.7 net pass along), it can really take off (purple line)
Seth’s bottom line on all this is slightly different than mine, but they’re both relevant:
- Seth’s Bottom Line: The better the idea, the more viral. The more viral, the greater the success.
- Jamie’s Bottom Line: The better the follower, the more engaged they are with your brand. The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to pass along your content.
They both highlight an important lesson about social media — that wracking up a bunch of “faux” followers only results in this decade’s version of SPAM. It’s useless. A better alternative is to build genuine followers more deliberately. In the end, you’ll have an engaged audience who will be more than happy to pass your social media promotion along to others.
Make sense? What are your thoughts? What’s your point-of-view on all this?
If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert Clay's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:
You don’t have to be Seth Godin or to even read his words to know that quality is better than quantity any day. That really is schoolboy stuff.
As for the sentiment “just do more viral” that’s really easier said than done. I know the focus is narrowed to twitter here, but who constantly and regularly tweets viral content? Isn’t viral supposed to be viral in its own context rather than viral because of the status and reputation of the source?
Paul Mackenzie Ross´s last [type] ..iPhone 4
So what do you tell the person reading your post who has generated a lot of likely faux followers to do now to mograte to that quality of followership? What do they do now?
It’s pretty easy to focus in on those who are advocates among your followers. There are numerous tools available to check who interacts with you; who retweets your messages etc. Just set up twitter lists for people in each of these categories then focus your interactions mainly on these self-selecting followers and rebuild your network around them. You can also have a big clean out and unfollow everyone who is not on one of those quality lists, there are numerous tools that allow you to do so.
I think that the best way to act is to avoid following yourself people just to follow them. It is logical to follow accounts that interest you. I like to look at the following/ followers ration because it shows people who only follow in order to be followed. At that point, I agree that they could spend more time interacting with their followers. In other words, better have a rich conversation with few than nothing with 10,000 people.
Great job!
You make some very good points Olivier. I agree. I personally approach it as outlined here: http://marketingwizdom.com/twitter
Thanks, Robert, for pulling together an excellent, detailed analysis. Although the analogy is imperfect, I’ve always approached web-based relationships the way I approach relationship building in general: quality over quantity. And this philosophy has personal and professional dimensions. Don’t get me wrong: I’m human. I often respond to follower growth with delight and, on occasion, find myself feeling validated by the numbers. But as you point out, engagement is the key. In fact, I find no greater validation than truly connecting with a given follower, with a name, a face, a bio and something engaging to share that day. In fact, since I come to this space to listen and learn…before sharing…I find it most gratifying when my “social life” complements my overall mission and goals…where numbers simply tell a part of the story. Keep up the great work, Robert. Always appreciate your posts.