Social Media Should Be about Engagement Not Likes and Followers

Marketing is all about engaging with the customers and measuring your results. There is never a cookie cutter approach to anything and that is what makes it difficult and fun. We all use social media on a regular basis but for business purposes the approach is a bit different. 

The typical business owner cares about two things, likes and followers. They think if they have a large enough number for these two their social media profiles are a success and no longer need any further development.  They could not be more wrong with their reasoning. Yes, these two figures are the popular ones but there are more effective figures that will help you measure success.

 Before embarking on a social campaign you have to lay out your set of goals. You have to establish what the goals are and why you want to achieve them. For example, a goal could be to increase the number of comments per post; in turn this will increase customer engagement.

To those not in the loop, likes and follower figures can be manipulated. There are plenty of places where you can pay someone to increase your likes and followers. Granted these are not targeted or real users but they will look nice on your fan page.

Your most important stats should revolve around engagement. Specifically with Facebook, the Edgerank algorithm determines the weight of your posts, giving comments much more weight than likes. If you want your posts to be shared and show up on other peoples newsfeeds you need people to engage with them.

When people engage they are simultaneously contributing to a discussion and are creating genuine content on your behalf. This is why social media is a very cost efficient form of marketing, it could lead to infinite possibilities and cost you almost nothing.

In terms of ROI you can’t find a better marketing outlet than Social Media. If done correctly you can increase your brand equity while driving traffic to your website. Having a social profile is nothing, being active and consistent with posting quality content is a different story.

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