These are SERIOUS fans, the kind you want in social media!

Building a client base is hard – like building a follower or fan base in social media. Anything worth having usually doesn’t come easy. Which is why it troubles me that many potential clients start by saying “can you get me 1000 followers/fans in a week?” Or “get me 10,000 followers this month?”

The answer to those questions is not yes or no, it’s “why?”

Technically, sure, I could get you those followers. I can make a complete nuisance of myself and use all those follower “bots” and generally sell out to get those followers (Please see my social media gone bad elevator analogy post below.) But what good are they if none of them interacts with you? If no one is Retweeting your message, reading your content, interacting with you on whatever social media platform you’re on – what’s the point? If it’s just so you can tell your boss, your client or yourself that you “earned” followers, you’re going to be pretty disappointed in the long run.

Social media is about quality over quantity. I would challenge someone that made such a request that if I can only get you 500 followers/fans in a month, but those 500 people thought that what you posted or showed them was so awesome that they in turn went out and told their friends/contacts (by Retweets, or posting on their Facebook wall, or sharing a video, etc.) then those 500 followers/fans are actually WORTH MORE TO YOU than 1000 fans that either lurked or ignored you. Actually, I’d say that a person who engages with your company, asks questions, posts feedback, takes a poll, responds to a survey – is WORTH AT LEAST THREE TIMES MORE than a wet blanket follower.

So, we, the social media mavens that we are (or strive to be) are going to concentrate more on cultivating quality followers or fans. We’re going to listen first to what they have to say to us, we’re going to respond and talk to them, and then we’re going to watch social media magic happen as they go out and then become ambassadors FOR us and say to ourselves “I’m so glad I didn’t worry about sheer quantity, because this is so much better!”