Social Media – Is Quality over Quantity More Effective

I had a little snigger to myself after reading an article in the Saturday papers that had suggested that Kevin Rudd, the current Prime Minister of Australia, had artificially boosted his Twitter follower numbers to make himself appear more influential in the social media world. The article goes on to suggest that a substantial number of his Twitter followers are based outside of Australia in countries such as Ecuador and Belarus.

If Kevin has inflated his numbers, he has done nothing that a lot of other individuals haven’t done to appear more influential in their chosen field, in fact I wrote an article about this called How to Fake Your Twitter Followers last year.

It’s easy to fake and inflate your social media following on sites such as Facebook and Twitter to make yourself look like a guru, but what is more of an issue to me, and I’ve seen it starting to appear more and more in business lately, is when KPI’s are tied to how many followers a marketing manager can generate.

This sends a totally wrong message to Marketing Managers that numbers are more important than quality when it comes to your social media community.

To me, quality amongst your social media followers should be far more important, and choosing who you should follow back is also a consideration when it comes to being recognized by search engines such as Google, they place more emphasis on quality of connections than they do on numbers of followers. 

Tying a marketing managers KPI’s to how many followers they can generate is nonsense, it displays a total misunderstanding of how social media should be used by senior management in these companies, KPI’s should be based on developing a solid following of consumers who will engage with you, who will buy your product or service and who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer as a company.  

Trying to judge your ROI is going to be far more difficult as well, having an artificially inflated following will not convert into sales, why? because the majority of these followers have no interest in your company or product, they’re just along for the ride.    

Your KPI’s should be based on building a solid community of quality followers.

Using this strategy is far more effective in creating increased sales and conversions than concentrating on building large numbers in social media, particularly when looking at your ROI.

So remember, the catch phrase is quality over quantity, it’s far more effective in the long term if you want your social media strategy to be successful.