The growth of 'followers' is often used by Social Media agencies as a gauge of how well they're doing for their clients. But is it enough?
Not these days. We manage some Social Media accounts for small number of clients; there are thousands of followers but very few interactions. Depending on the main purpose, this could be OK or it could be an issue.
Most of our clients use social media to show their products with a hope that their followers will be interested to buy or share details with others. It's a way to get the company's name known to more people.
One specific client posts products, opinions and related information, inviting feedback and with a view to gaining more followers to interact with. It's a completely different approach from that of most companies because he is a one-man-band who likes exchanging views of his and others' work. This client is struggling to gain followers, more than the others are - possibly because there are very few products to showcase (3). For whatever reason, he remains largely invisible.
Whether you have accounts with Meta, X, Tumblr, LinkedIn or other social media, having followers is not an indication of success. People follow you if you can give them something for free, e.g. humour, glamour, cute cats, etc. but it isn't (and never has been) a great medium for promoting your products or services, just because you have a high number of followers. And now, sadly, it's not always good for interacting.
Take Tumblr, for example. Tumblr has 'Ask me anything' that can be added to your profile. Author Neil Gaiman (Good Omens and other fiction) is excellent at interacting with his Tumblr followers, fans of his work, and they feel closer to him and the glamour of his world. I have only one client on Tumblr and nobody is interested in asking about his work. To be fair, he has only managed to gain 8 followers (0.001% of Neil Gaiman's entourage) in just over a year.
Today's favoured medium is video - whether on YouTube or TikTok - and again, these are classed as SOCIAL media. However, it's useful to upload videos for incorporation into websites. Many of our clients are not suitable candidates for Webinars or 'live' broadcasts - although there is one client who publishes a regular podcast which is popular with followers. Unfortunately, we have no further stats at the moment, regarding this medium.
Social Media, in general, is not designed as a business tool yet advertising revenue from businesses are the main reason that social media can function as a free service for others.
The issue for smaller companies with low budgets is that social media has become saturated and competition is as fierce and futile as competing to get a website listed on page one of Google, especially amongst the myriad of 'sponsored' entries that take priority.
We are currently looking at the cost of in-app advertising for one of our clients. We'll let you know what we find out and when we spot the next opportunity for small businesses to compete on a level playing field, we'll let you know.
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