The Fallacy Of Social Media Following
By Bill King
In today’s world of information-overload, are you struggling to engage customers and prospects with your marketing? Are the click-rates of your emails falling as thousands of rival emails flood your clients’ inboxes? Do you find yourself trying to justify your social media activity by number of likes but struggle to link them to any commercially-advancing behavior?
How about LinkedIn connections? It seems we’re all happy to connect to any- and everybody in the water and wastewater industry but once connected, unwilling to engage in a conversation. So, what’s the point?
It comes down to one word … followers.
The value of connecting to customers on social media is to follow them as they post and to influence them as you post. Put another way, if you’re not creating content for your followers to read, then they aren’t following you. There’s nothing to follow.
And in order to create a following, you can’t simply be posting about your latest product or Company announcement. Obviously, you want too. It’s your job to promote your latest and greatest. But most of your followers are unlikely to be in the moment of sourcing a new [insert your product here] when they see your post.
Every now and again, the stars align, and your tradeshow booth announcement shows up in an attendee’s feed as they are heading out to the show to look at new [insert your product again here]. But most of your following won’t be heading to the show. Most won’t be considering your product when they see your post.
Confounding the problem is that social media use is inherently flighty.
It’s just not an experience designed to hold the user’s attention on a single post. It works best on a mobile device and involves scrolling quickly through a feed. It shows up in the parts of our days when we’re on the move. The five-minute break between meetings. The smoke break. The (I don’t want to say it) wait at the traffic light. It’s highly transient.
How valuable then is the reader engaging in long-form content? How excited should you feel when you realize you have a customer taking the time to download and read one of your articles? What value should be put on the reader who loads the printer so that they can print off your article, grab a cup of coffee and immerse themselves in what you have to say?
As life comes at us all faster and faster every day, creating the content assets to stop people in their speedy tracks and slow down enough to sincerely engage with your marketing becomes ever more important.