If you want to be successful online, then building a social media following should be one of your top priorities. But there is a misconceptions some bloggers have, that success can be determined solely by the numbers.
For example, in email marketing, they say the more subscribers you have, the better your chances are at selling more products. In blog readership, you get more traffic because you have that many more people that are subscribed to your RSS feed when you publish a post, therefore helping you gain more attention.
But It's Not All In The Numbers
Numbers in a Social Media Following
A number is just that. A number.
So you want to be successful and you think that building a social media following will get you there. Great. How many people do you think it would take before you started to make enough money online? 1,000? 10,000?
When in reality it's not in the numbers at all! It's in the interactions and engagements. It's in the way these fans see your updates in social media that makes you successful. What type of success are you looking for? Most of us are doing this for the almighty dollar, and that's ok too, but some have a perverted sense about how they're going to make that money, and they forget about the fans on the other side of the update who are seeing their posts.
Why have 10,000 fans on Facebook if only 5-15 people interact with you on every update? I would rather have 1,000 engaged fans than 10,000 non-engaged one's.
And you can see the point I'm making, but we still have an idea in our head about numbers, and if we could just get a certain number of fans we could be successful!
The magic beans of social media
No one can really tell you how to build an engaging social media following. You can search this term in Google and you won't find the secret sauce because it differs for each person and the niche they are in, the content they're creating, and so forth. But recently, I have spent six months of highly extensive research into what happens psychologically when you post an update and was really surprised to see that I stumbled upon something that not a lot of people understand.
How To Engage Your Social Media Following
Instead of posting links all day to Facebook and Twitter (or any other platform), try stepping out of the box. Try using social media tools like Buffer or PostPlanner to schedule your posts. Facebook pages have the option to ask a polling question to your social media following, post an image, or simply write whatever you want in that little white box that's not just for links. Do a test and ask a question and see how many people answer you. Are you getting the results you want?
The end result is to get traffic, sales, and readers to your blog.
Here's what I mean; take a look at this video from Ms. Ileane about Linking Your Facebook Profile To your Facebook Page
But the first step is in getting them there through your social updates. If you're one of the 250 people that have bought my new ebook this week, then you'll already know that emotion is a great way to create engagement in social media. Find what works for your readers!
In the update itself, this is where you, and you alone, can either trip yourself up, or draw people to you. There is something that I discuss in the ebook called reticular formation. One example of this would be if you lived by the railroad tracks and the train came by blaring it's horn in the middle of the night but you didn't wake up because the reticular formation has trained your brain to drown out certain things that you're used to.
On the other hand, that same process can wake you out of a dead sleep when you hear an unfamiliar “bump” in the living room while you're asleep!
Same goes for your social media following
What's the first thing you do when you get on Facebook? Just like everyone else, if you're going to browse, you scroll until you find someone familiar to you. Someone you trust. You may not know that you trust them, but subconsciously, you do and don't know it. That's why you stop at their updates.
Your fans are no different. Their reticular formation has conditioned them to stop at people they trust or know, someone who is familiar to them. The main premise of what my ebook is about is to help you “bump” people out of that conditioned state of mind and cause them to engage you!
Anyone can build fans and followers. There are simply hundreds of tools out there that you can use to your benefit to help you climb the ladder of raising your following, and I don't dissuade anyone from trying these tools either! You've got to find what works for you, but these will simply help you build the following, not build engaging followers.
Engagement is the key to a successful social media marketing strategy on any platform. Numbers mean absolutely nothing in social media. It's how your fans and followers interact with each individual update that you post is what's important!
If your social media following is not interacting with you, then you need to work on getting them out of that mental state that they're in. They don't trust you yet. Build trust by showing people you're human like them. If all they see is links coming out of your social media account, they don't know the difference.
Post some funny pictures! Do a contest! Upload a picture of you doing something stupid and let them see that you have a sense of humor!
Because if they're not responding, then you're not doing something right. Anyone can build a social media following, but a true business person understands how to take that social media following and create an engaging group of true fans.
Hi Wade,
I know when it comes to social media, you are one of the masters. Your recent publication should be a must have meaty piece. This post is just a peep into it.
BTW, with time, I came to understand that it’s not the number. It’s about the followers that are counted. Who are they and how you are esteemed by them. If you buy fake numbers, you get into real trouble.
The best is to take time and steadily and naturally grow your following.
thanks for the nice read this weekend bro
Thanks Enstine, yeah numbers don’t matter, its the engagements!
Hello Wade… I’m with you on the engagement aspect with social media – I’m curious though, after you’ve done that and have much interactivity on your social site, how do actually use that engagement to generate revenue… any tips on that?
Excellent article Wade!
Social media is an important area that every blogger should master on their own time.
The numbers on social media shouldn’t matter to you unless it is the number of the engaged.
I always say that if you engage successfully with your followers, than your more apt to succeed in getting them to do something for you.
Since you have built some sort of trust with them through engagement, they are more willing to follow through with a command you create.
Engage, engage, and engage, even when you think you engaged enough, you still have to engage some more!
I love how you said that social media marketing isn’t just throwing a link out there, but try to add more flavor to your strategies.
Happy to see your article here on Basicblogtips!
Samuel from internetdreams.com
Yup, thanks a lot Samuel! You have to stay consistent in the engagement of your fans to build a lot of trust!
Hi Wade, I agree with you on the concept that greater numbers doesn’t necessarily mean more traffic, and engagement is essential.
I’m also glad to see you’ve noted that timing is also important when interacting and sharing stuff on social sites, that’s where automation tools come in I guess.
Also a lot of people wonder why they aren’t getting anybody to engage with their stuff on Facebook or Twitter, and one of the questions I would ask those people is ‘are your fans actually interested with what you’re sharing with them?’.
If an individual can combine sharing great shareable content, and not just your own content either, with frequent engagement to targeted fans and followers, then as far as I’m concerned that’s the recipe for success in social media.
Great post as always on BBT 🙂
I’m a firm believer that consistency is the key to building any type of engaging social following! Keep at it!
Hello Wade,
This is indeed an interesting topic you put out and i am loving it. I am still studying the true power of social media and how to take its full advantages.
I am so agree with you, the amount of your following doesn’t matter, what matters is the engagement. Buying followers is not the right way. Thanks
Glad I could help. There’s more to it than just buying followers and posting! You should check out my new ebook on the psychology of social media!
In recent weeks, I’ve been putting more effort towards social media. It seems like it’s the future of website promotion, since pretty much everyone is online. I believe a study showed that people are more than 50% more likely to purchase a product if their friend recommends it to them, and it seems like with new social networks such as Google+ that social media will start having an effect on SERP rankings as well.
You’re right. Social media is the forefront of internet marketing. When you say that more people will buy something when a friend recommends it goes back to the trust issue.
When you can create trust and friendship with your fans, then YOU’RE that friend thats recommending something!
Hey Wade,
You have written very different and awesome article.I really like all the point.One thing which make me crazy after reading this post that my fb page not having more than 500 likes but my engagement is around 100.I got this engagement last week after giving my readers a freebie (you may call it bribe also).This freebie really help to engage readers on my fb page.
If you have 500 fans and 100 of them are engaging with you consistently, then you’re doing a great job!
I love social media. I have a friend who’s make hand made hair bows for kids and I’ve helped her with her Facebook page. She only has 300 followers but she makes money hand over fist – more than her competition who have upwards of 1000 followers. It’s all in her interaction and persistence!
Excellent post on social media. We need to do more to up our engagement and engagement is key. Not so much how big a number of followers you have but how engaged are they. One thing you don’t want to do is buy likes and followers. The vendors of these type of services will get you a ton of followers and likes but precious few if any will engage.
Thank you for sharing this.
I agree, buying likes is only something people do to fulfill a need they have on their fan count! lol!
I couldn’t agree more! I’ve had the thought before- “I have ____ followers, but how many of them actually care about or read what I’m saying?” That’s when I decided to engage my followers more, ask more often for feedback, responses, etc. If people feel a real connection to you and your page, they are far more likely to come back, buy from you again, or whatever it is you’d like visitors to do. Thanks for your tips!
No problem! Glad that I could help!
Hello Wade
That’s an excellent article. I see many people now days want to pay for having high following number, when I see people asking where they can buy twitter followers for example I just say to myself “what the hell” those are called dead followers why would you even consider paying for them. People just want to get as biggest following they can get but they forget that, that’s not the most important thing. It’s better to have 100 followers that interact with you then 10 000 that don’t even know who you are.
I agree with you! However, there will always be a market for buying followers. That’s just the way people are! They don’t understand that once they get them…whether they are real or fake (and most of them are fake), they’re not going to be any better off!
i think social media marketing is the best way to increase traffic especially for blogger who is hunting for traffic but we must work hard and not easy to give up doing this task.By the way thank for this valueable post.
Yup, it’s good to have an engaging social following. It takes time to acquire, but worth it!
Agree, number doesn’t generally mean anything. It is much important who are the true followers and business connections that you are making. Of course it is much easier if you have business website that offer some kind of product or service. Like anything else it is all about hard work and being social.
It’s true that numbers don’t mean anything…and a lot of people, if not all, would agree with this point. But how many of them read this post and then went and worried about their follower count? lol!
posting some of the entertaining content can help make the readers in the social media websites more interactive. The articles they want to have should be the same what we intend to post. The readers will be interactive enough only if we provide them the content that they are interested in.
You should check out my new ebook below to see how posting really affects the reader in social media. I’ve done some extensive research in the psychology of social media online.
A masterpiece article . i do agree on all the points you mentioned @ Wade . in my perspective one should not only post their regular blog updates but also some randon content that would entertain people ..On their social networking profile/forums/pages.
Best wishes,
pramod
On social media only human face can work well; official account, fake account, brand account can never bring as much results as a personal account can. We must not make our account simply outbound or inabout. It must have two-way trafffic you not only to share your personal thoughts, your products and your cause but equally you have respond well on others sharing of all types.
Very informative post I found on social media after a long long time. Thanks my friend Wade Harman
Nice post bro!
I reall picked some social media marketing tips here.
I’ve also shared via my social networks
Thanks
Daniel
Excellent post.
I have seen probloggers interaction with their followers. They reply to their followers quickly and that’s one of the best technique to build a successful social media following.
An excellent post!.
Before I have buy 5000 followers on Twitter.Because I think I will traffic to my blog and get profit.Actually,I have traffic but conversion ‘s very low.
It is easy to say, honestly, and very hard to do. I have tried every possible way, and found that funny picture made my followers interact with my posts, we hate links, people hate links, hate anything that look like and advertizing. they are on social media only to have fun, and to be honest i found that social media is the worst place to look for traffic.
I think the very fast of way of building your community on social media is to be active. Show your presence and let the community realize that you are an expert. Engage with other people on the network and try to be more helpful because once you have establish your authority on the network more and more people will be attracted with you and to most will believe with what you are sharing with them.
I have been able to been able to get a lot of engaging traffic on Google Plus using circles. I run a tech blog, and I had been adding people who like to comment and share on popular tech pages to a tech comments circle. I can then easily interact with them on some of there posts and in turn they have started interacting with me and sharing my posts. It has snowballed since I started this in february and I have been adding between 5 and 6 hundred new followers a day to my google profile over the last week. I haven’t been going to other tech pages over the last month, I have just been adding people now commenting on my posts and working on engaging with those new followers to keep them around.
I just have to figure out how to get the same kind of thing going on facebook 🙁
You really understand what you are saying. I can attest all what you said on this post. If I may rephrase this”But It’s Not All In The Numbers” to ” It is not the number in most case”. Number is useless if your followers do not interact with you and read your social updates. Let me relate an experience. Around February this year, I got two retweets that thought me a lesson. The first was having just 2+k followers and the other was numbering 100+k. Could you believe I got more result from 2+k retweet than 100+k? In fact the result was not something to be compared. It was then I understood that to have a very little number that interact with you is better than having a huge number that is virtual.
This is always great to remember. I get caught up sometimes in trying to get my numbers higher. I really need to be focusing on getting engagement higher. I know you mentioned polls and asking questions. I’ve tried those a few times with no luck. What other methods would you recommend?
In social media number of following is just a number and how people interact with you can really build the number of following and interaction is really important.
True, funny stuff usually works, but not for everyone. You have to build on what your followers like, and that consists of testing a lot of different things.
I agree completely! I’ve had too many clients obsessed purely with the numbers, while not engaging or offering any special value in the slightest. I don’t have to tell you it never worked out as well as they had hoped.
Growing natural true followers is the key to success….. It is very difficult to achieve in quick time though…. It is a long term process….. Your post is extremely important in building and understanding how social media should be used positively….
Hi Wade,
Thanks for sharing this interesting post. I completely agree with you. Only link posting will irritates your visitors rather it is beneficial to create polls or notes and ask your viewers to share their reviews. Try to makes your readers engage.
I know that endgagement is all but what if you manage to engage with only 10-15 at a constant basis. It wouldn’t get redundant after a while?
Its better to have a 100 social followers who are actually interested than have a 100K followers who don’t give a damn, this is where interaction comes in.
Hi Wade,
You are right at the point. This post can take many bloggers out from the misunderstanding that numbers matter. People should have a reason for liking or following your blog and it can not be by fluke. The tips you have shared are also great and helpful. Thanks for this useful article.
Just a good piece of information on Social Media following. I do think, believe, and always says numbers are not important but the people who are following something. Authentic people in less numbers can do much more wonders than a batch of bots in following.
Thank you for helping me understand why people post some of the things they do. I agree that building trust is very important to the success of the blog.
Numbers really don’t mean anything with it comes to social media. I totally agree with you on this. Besides posting valuable information on how to grow your business, I do also think that you should post some things about your everyday life as well, like you mentioned here. People can connect with you a lot better when you do this because they feel that you are like them.
Why engage with someone who appears to be this information uptight individual. Like the old cliche’ goes, “People Join People”, so why not show who you are to your facebook friends and fans? It goes a lot further!
Thanks for sharing Wade!
Informative post, had an interesting read. numbers are just number. It’s all about how many real followers you have not just the numbers.
There are no alternative of social media following for online marketing career. Through social media its easy to reach to the targeted people. And the social medias also offering this facilities to its user.Thanks for Sharing.
Hi Wade,
Nice post you have shared with us. I agree with that, numbers don’t mean anything. Short and targeted followers list is more better than big untargeted followers list.
We need to be active on social media sites to interact with our followers, because interaction is the key of success.
Great Tips!
I find that uploading pictures work best for me.
I get the interaction part but how do you increase your number of clients in serious niches with funny pictures?
My point is, some niches simply won’t get any decent results from social media promotion. The only niche I had success with on social networks was general internet marketing, but of course, most of my followers and people that responded were business owners looking to sell their own stuff.
This is something I struggle with. I try and put up posts that will engage people to interact but I usually just hear crickets. lol I think part of my problem is I need to keep at it consistently. I’ll post regularly for a time and then get caught up with other things and let my facebook and other social sites get neglected. I’d love to learn more about how others get their followers to interact.
Numbers count as well. But only if there’s quality in it 🙂
Hey Wade,
I guess numbers still has an effect but not it’s not the main reason for success in this kind of field. Yes, you do have a plenty amount of followers but doesn’t really interact or even retweet what you have posted or promoted, it’s still no use. Quality is better than Quantity. That should be the first priority.
Wade, thanks for introducing the concept of reticular formation to me – very interesting indeed. We have over 6000 fans on facebook and have pretty much fallen into the trap you mention (just posting links to our latest posts and not interacting with the readers). Will have to think about how to shake it up a bit and readers more engaged!
Nice tips given in this article I really found them useful and helpful thanks for sharing Man have a nice day a head!
Nice post, Social media have great role in Internet marketing. it helps in mainly drawn the traffic to website.
Your tips are so true which I think many of us have not been able to utilize the use of facebook page and other social media channels. I really like the idea of conducting poll asking people what interest them, I will use this strategy for my page soon. Thanks for sharing.
Sadly too many people get caught up in thinking that the number of followers matters. Probably why there are so many people buying twitter followers or FB likes. Not really sure what they are thinking since a bot cannot buy your product or service.
Hi Wade, How are you?
Yes, I agree with you Social media is becoming like a oxygen for online Business.For example Facebook and Twitter are the most valuable sites helps to rise your business and makes the brand of your product, After reading your post, I got new Idea how we can get more benefit from these sites..
Thanks for sharing it with us..
i think social media marketing is the best way to increase traffic especially for blogger .
Social networks are the future.
Wade,
Your advice is similar to that given by many others on the subject of social media, especially the caution to ignore numbers when it comes to followers or fans. What is important is engagement. Small engaged communities are better than large indifferent ones. I suspect most are somewhere in the middle with a small percentage of highly engaged followers as a part of a larger whole. Thanks to nirmalablog for sharing this post with the BizSugar community.
The problem with these sorts of features is that they’re inherently limited to readers whose “following” is directly tied to the Blogger software and its members, so it will reflect only a slice of readers. A follower widget (or gadget, as Google calls them) claiming 21 followers only refers to Blogger members, not to the overall number of people reading the blog, which could make the owners of smaller blogs get a bit image-conscious.
When your twitter figure reaches 2000 and if you don’t have enough followers (more than 1800 ) then you can’t follow anyone else!! You should flush those who are not following you. And start again following. Simple, isn’t it?