This is a no brainer. Every social media “expert” at any given time is ready to spill out this magical sentence: “on social media 100 friends are worth more than 1000 acquaintances” as soon as someone starts (or is about to start) bragging about the number of followers.
Why is it that talking to 100 people is better than talking to 1000 people? That makes no sense, this is marketing – we want to get the word out, we want everyone to follow us. That’s why we are launching these campaigns, which everyone will like and we’ll have pretty sweet follower numbers afterwards.
You want to know your customer
What keeps your or anyone else’s business alive are customers – those, who pay for your products or services. You have to keep them happy, because twitter follower number or Facebook fans won’t pay your bills or salaries of your employees.
That’s my problem with generally entertaining social media campaigns – while you get a lot of new connections; you still don’t know who your real audience (existing or potential customers) are. Sure, your latest facebook post might get 50 likes, but were your target audience (real customers) between those people? Maybe your real customers actually didn’t like this one, but you’ll never know. And I hope that I don’t have to explain why you shouldn’t displease your existing (paying!) customers.
Real influence doesn’t come from forced recommendations
Auto tweet after logging in with twitter credentials isn’t going to help you make more friends or sales, forget about that. What will help you to get to new customers are real tweets from real people with real opinions about your product. For example: “this new ice cream is the best I’ve had” or “I’ll definitely return to that bakery – great service & muffins :)”. That’s why more and more marketers are tapping into klout data – that’s how they can reach out to people whose opinion matters and let them try out things. After these influencers have tried these things, they tweet about them – they’re real opinions from real people about things they’ve tried, that’s why they’re so valuable – they’re reliable sources.
That’s why you should decide very carefully – who you’ll try to connect to and how. And why. Every one expects that you’ll say good things about yourself, but the trick is to make others talk about you and this can be achieved by connecting to those who’s opinion matters. Especially in your niche.
Time = money
Talking to 100 people takes a lot less time than talking to 1000 people. That’s why you should talk to your customers first. After a while, if you’re building a community, your customers will talk to their peers and answer their questions about your brand or product for you. That’s when you know that you have a healthy community. And don’t forget to reward those who are most passionate.
What are your reasons? Tell me in comments.
